Lab Safety Activities for Middle or High Schoolers
Middle and high school students participate in lab projects as part of their science class curriculum. While lab projects offer students fun hands-on studies, labs can pose safety issues for students if they don't know what precautions to take or how to identify hazards. You can reduce safety concerns during lab sessions if you prepare your middle and high schoolers with informative safety activities.
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What to Wear
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Students must dress appropriately for lab class. What they wear can either keep them safe or expose them to hazards. You can educate your students about appropriate attire for the lab through an activity. Give each student a cartoon picture that is full of kids in lab class. Students must highlight the inappropriate clothing that they find in the image, such as open-toed shoes, long sleeves that are getting in a student's way, etc. Then, using another colored highlighter, have students identify the right clothing, like closed-toed shoes, goggles, lab coats and gloves. Follow up with a discussion about right and wrong lab-wear.
Safety Icons
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During lab class, students will be exposed to chemicals, fire and other elements that can pose safety threats. It is important that they learn how to identify safety signs and warning labels. Give students a lesson about the universal safety or warning signs that they will come across in lab, such as a skull with crossbones for poison. Then, give each student a list of hazards and, for an activity, have them create their own warning labels to correspond with each. Allow students to get creative. The point of this activity is to teach them how to identify hazards and to make them familiar with the ones they may run into during lab.
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Safety Scenarios
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Give your middle or high school students lab rules that you expect them to follow for their own safety and the safety of others. After your lesson on safety rules, conduct a game where small teams of students work together to read a made-up scenario about a lab experience gone wrong. The team will have to work together to answer questions at the end of the scenario about which of the lab rules were broken. After the broken rules have been identified, teams can answer other questions about how the situation could have been reversed or how the students should have responded.
Word Games
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Students enjoy doing word games, which are effective ways to make sure the class is familiar with lab safety rules and terminology. Create word puzzles, such as scrambles, crosswords or searches. You can even play the" hangman" game as a class by splitting students into two large teams to compete against one another. The hangman mystery words must be related to a lab safety rule.
Safety Collage
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Give students an art project in which they create collages out of magazine images that represent one of the lab lessons they have learned thus far. Give them old magazines, scissors, glue and posterboard. Students have total creative freedom to link the images on their collage to a lab safety issue. For instance, if a student cuts out pictures of shoes, he could relate this to appropriate footwear for lab class.
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References
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