MAKING STAY-AT-HOME LABORATORY EXPERIENCES FOR HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS IN A TIME OF COVID

Science educators all admit that demonstrations alone cannot replace labs, because students must do hands-on labs to learn basic science concepts and gain lab skills, but the COVID-19 pandemic killed most hands-on lab experiences this spring. In NYS, March's statewide school closure left science educators with no plan to ensure that students could do their required labs for Living Environment (LV, aka biology), Earth Science (ES), Chemistry, or Physics: To qualify to write any science NYS Regents' exam, students must do 30 hr/yr of hands-on labs. First, the NYS Regents' Board had to cancel the lab requirements, and eventually, all June Regents' exams. As NYS infection rates stay low since June, educators face another school year in which, if any NYS schools open for in-class instruction remains uncertain, or if they open, for how often and how long schools can safely hold in-class instruction, once the predicted COVID-19 second wave hits NYS.

Once done in-class, redesigned labs allow students to do similar labs at home, by replacing typical lab equipment with things that students have at home or with equipment sets that schools can loan out for 1-2 weeks: To do an ES or Chemistry density lab, a top-loading food analog scale ($14 online) replaces triple-beam or top-loading scientific balances, which would likely disappear if loaned out, while a 250 mL measuring cup ($5, if they lack one) replaces a graduated cylinder to have students measure the density for 70 pennies rather than a copper weight. New hands-on labs to be done at home help to meet curricular needs. For example, a new ES or LV environmental lab that asks them to make a clinometer with a protractor, a straw, masking tape, string, and a bolt. Added to a 25 m tape measure (borrowed from the school if needed), they measure hands-on street tree heights and canopy widths. They can also use the clinometer for ES labs on latitude, star altitudes and azimuths. Since NYC science teachers average 150 students/week/lab, they could not watch each student actually do a lab using most platforms. If schools rotated loaned equipment set, watching a few students/hr was too time-consuming. Having students display their lab via self-movies made on their phones embedded in a powerpoint worked best. While not in-class labs, at least with these new labs students will gain some lab experience, despite COVID.