Lab Safety Lesson Plan: Planning and Carrying out Investigations

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Lab Safety Lesson Plan. 

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Lab Safety, and supports the standard of demonstrating safe practices during lab investigations. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Display a picture of someone working in a laboratory, like this:

Ask students:

• What do you notice?
• How is this scientist using safe laboratory practices?
• What else could this scientist do to be safer in the lab?

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read the description on the Lab Safety topic page.
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
• Have students read one of the following Related Reading articles: “Discoveries and Innovations,” “Real Life,” or “Sickness and Health.” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.
  

Step 3: ENGAGE
Students express what they learned about lab safety while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a PSA advocating for safe lab practices, and describing potential consequences of not following these rules.  (Essential Literacy Skill: Determine central ideas)
• Make-a-Map: Make a concept map identifying the steps to safely conducting a laboratory investigation. (Essential  Literacy Skill: Summarize key details)
• Creative Coding: Code a meme representing how to safely work with chemicals in a laboratory. (Essential Literacy Skill:Make logical inferences from explicit details)

Step 4: APPLY & ASSESS 

Apply: Students take the Lab Safety Challenge, applying essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Assess: Wrap up the lesson with the Lab Safety Quiz. 

Step 5:  EXTEND LEARNING

Virtual Lab Simulations: Practice lab safety skills with these virtual lab simulations: Virtual  Labs: Adjusting pH of Food, Virtual Labs: Bacteria Sampling, Virtual Labs: Gram Staining, and Virtual Labs: pH Scale and Meter Calibration. 

Additional Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how BrainPOP Pause Points actively engage students  to stop, think, and express ideas.
• Modifications for BrainPOP Learning Activities: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• BrainPOP Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.