Teaching Students to Write Science Lab Reports

by John R. Walkup, Ph.D.

The Writing Across the Curriculum program has long emphasized that every teacher, no matter his or her subject area, needs to help students learn to write. New college- and career-readiness standards also emphasize this cross-disciplinary approach to learning.

At first, when my students struggled to write quality lab reports I reacted like many college instructors: I scolded them for their mistakes and went over the rubric in more detail. When results didn't improve, I developed a cynical attitude toward my students' efforts.

At some point, it finally dawned on me: My students were writing bad lab reports because no one had ever taught them how to write a good one.

Guard Rail Teaching

I have observed plenty of K-12 science lab classes over the past ten years. From my own observations, it appears that the teaching of writing lab reports typically follows what I call "guard rail teaching." Students are provided grading rubrics for which teachers then use to correct their students' reports. The idea is that by learning what not to do, students eventually learn how to do it.

With this approach, students make a mistake then get corrected. They make another mistake, then get corrected. Instead of receiving what we call first instruction, students are instead expected to react to the teacher's criticism and eventually produce a quality product.

It doesn't work.

Guard rail teaching can arise anytime teachers substitute rubrics for teaching. It is much like using guard rails to teach someone how to drive. The car hits one guard rail, bounces off, hits another guard rail, bounces off, and so on.* While the car may eventually arrive at its destination, the driver is likely to emerge from the vehicle in a state of extreme anxiety.

So will students. Guard rail teaching is both ineffective and demoralizing. In short, a rubric is an assessment tool, not an instructional tool.

Change of Direction

While teaching at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (one of the top engineering programs in the country), I decided on a different tack. Instead of assigning full lab reports, I began to focus each lab experiment on a single component of the lab report. And rather than using just rubrics, I taught students to write each component as part of a planned lesson.

By the end of the quarter, I had taught students every component of the lab report. The final lab had them writing a complete lab report - the only full lab report I had to grade all year.

Example Sequence

It's been a long time, but if I recall correctly the sequence of lab reports went something like this:

Lab 1: Mass, Weight, and Volume. Here, students learned to write the Results section, which included measurements and calculations.

Lab 2:  Acceleration of Freely-falling Bodies. Here, students learned to write the Materials & Methods section. Their writing assignment comprised this section and a Results section, which they had already learned to write in the previous lab.

Lab 3: Projectile Motion. At this point, I introduced students to the Discussion section. Their writing assignment consisted of this section and the Results section.

Lab 4: Forces and Vectors. Here, I taught students to write a figure caption, using a photograph of their force tables as an example figure. They included this figure and caption into a Materials & Methods section and included a Results section.

Lab 5:  Torque and Dynamic Equilibrium. Here, I taught students how to write the Introduction section. Their writing assignment consisted of this section and the Results section.

Lab 6: Energy, Work, and Power. At this point, students finally learned to write the Conclusion section, with much attention to distinguishing this section from the Discussion section learned earlier in the quarter. Their writing assignment consisted of this section, the Discussion section, and the Results section.

Lab 7: Specific Heat. I devoted this lab to learning how to write a Sources Cited section. Their writing assignment consisted of this section, the Introduction, and the Results section.

Lab 8: Thermal Conductivity. Finally, for this lab I had my students write a complete lab report.

Graphic Organizers

For each lesson, I provided my students with a graphic organizer to help them sort and arrange their ideas.

At the time, I didn't grade their graphic organizers. I realize now that grading the graphic organizers is actually more important than grading their submitted work because graphic organizers offer more insight into the writing process.

Teachers looking for a graphic organizer to help their students prepare science lab reports will find the Claremont Lab Report Graphic Organizer ideal for nearly any grade level or subject.

In 2013, I presented a workshop at Reedley College on how to write lab reports. For that presentation, I completed the Claremont Lab Report Graphic Organizer for a sample physics lab.

Audience

One more point that doesn't necessarily blend smoothly into the current blog post but needs to be stated anyway:  Students must shift the mental picture they form of the audience away from the teacher and toward a more general audience.

But how can we get students, who have endured years of essay assignments where the teacher formed the principal audience of their writing, to make this shift?

I suggest placing a picture of a science team into the writing prompt and tell them to write toward that team. To reduce students' use of idioms, I suggest choosing a foreign team, such as the one pictured. (Make sure that the group includes females.)

Benefits

Using this targeted approach offered numerous benefits:

• It allowed me to chunk my writing instruction into more manageable learning components. This made it easier to develop my lesson plans the night before each lab session.
• It allowed me to provide more targeted feedback for my students to review. Instead of writing broad statements across ten pages, I could write detailed commentary on more important facets of writing.
• It reduced my students' work load. (Students were very appreciative of this fact.)
• It greatly lightened my own work load. No longer did I face a two-foot stack of lab reports to grade each week.

Student impressions

Most of my students loved learning to write lab reports, even though some students didn't care for my emphasis on writing skills. As proof that you can never please all of the people all of the time, I offer the following quote from one of my student evaluations:

"I dont know why you make us write. We should be learning physics. I never will need to write its stupid!”

*  Those who think this is impossible have never watched a Fuel Altered in drag racing.

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Seeking training at your school or district centered on Cognitive Rigor or Depth of Knowledge?  Call me at (559) 903-4014 or email me at jwalkup@standardsco.com. 

We will discuss ways in which I can help your teachers boost student engagement and deep thinking in their classrooms. I offer workshops, follow-up classroom observation/coaching, and curriculum analysis to anywhere in the country (and even internationally).

Follow me on Twitter at @jwalkup.