Lab Safety Lesson Plan: Planning and Carrying out Investigations

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

*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 KNOWLEDGE

  • Read the description on the Lab Safety topic page.
  • Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
  • Assign Related Reading and have students read one of the articles. Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign  Lab Safety Challenge and Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

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. In your PSA, answer this question: What are the potential consequences of not following these rules? 
  • Make-a-Map: Make a concept map identifying the steps to safely conducting a laboratory investigation. 
  • Creative Coding: Code a meme representing how to safely work with chemicals in a laboratory.

More to Explore

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. 

Teacher Support Resources:

 

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments

Related:

    Filed as:  3-5, 6-8, 9-12, BrainPOP, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1