Blog 18: 2-Hour Meeting Answer 3

1.  What is your essential question?
What is the best way for chemistry teacher to best assess the scientific understanding of their class?

2.  What is your third answer to your essential question (write your third answer in a complete 
sentence)?
Assessing lab reports and laboratory proficiency allows chemistry teachers to identify the progress and success of each student. 

3.  What are three details to support or justify your third answer (details are examples or facts)?
• Chemistry is learned by experiencing. Experiments have been conducted to prove that it would be harder, if nearly impossible for students to learn chemistry, properly, being able to retain and use the information,  if students were not given the chance to learn on their own. 
• Laboratories need to be conducted in groups because in the real world scientists need to communicate their findings with their groups. Even in a general chemistry class, where students may not be science majors, the class, like iPoly, helps develop student's skills and makes them work together. The class helps teach important life skills.
• Labs show real world applications of chemistry, and the reports make the students explain the phenomena that occurred. 

4.  What source helped you prove this answer is justified for your essential question?
a. My third interview with Dr. Alex, the chair of the chemistry department at Cal Poly Pomona. 
b. The Chemistry Classroom Formulas for Successful Teaching by J. Dudley Herron.
c. Lawrence Edomwonyi-otu and Abraham Avaa (Edomwonyi-otu, Lawrence, and Abraham Avaa. "The Challenge of Effective Teaching of Chemistry: A Case Study - Leonardo El J Pract Technol." The Challenge of Effective Teaching of Chemistry: A Case Study - Leonardo El J Pract Technol. N.p., 25 June 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2012.)
d. My fourth interview with Theodore Crutchfield, a scientists who actually created important patents (like for the first pregnancy test) and my grandfather. 

5.  What do you plan to study next and why? 
Luckily, for my independent component, I get to see and experience for myself a college level laboratory. I will be in the class so I can also observe how the teacher assesses us for each experiment we perform.