As a Chemical Engineering Design and Development Team working for Procter & Gamble Research, it was our job to create a product that was economic and effective against the lipstick on the mirrors!

Our group created a solution, after some research, that we believe would best clean the lipstick off the mirrors.  We created different iterations and choose the best design and created more as our final product.

We learned how to give valuable feedback to activities and lessons created by other groups in the NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET).  Giving effective feedback is valuable for both parties as we edit activities with different point of views with the goal of creating a science lesson on teachengineering.org

Structured Inquiry

Students collaborated in groups following a prescribed set of directions to discover what the mysterious white powder is in a Forensic Chemistry Case.  This is a perfect first week of school lesson as students get used to practicing safety procedures, lab equipment as well as following directions. Using Structured Inquiry at this time will help us scaffold them into higher level inquiry later in the year. 

Guided Inquiry

Towards the end of the first semester, students worked in groups of 3 to 4 to explore chemical and physical properties of different compounds while now being able to name and write formulas and compounds. 

Students were given a table as show and guided to create a chemical reaction to see the different properties.  Students had to come up with the best way to do that. Luckily, it just required them to combine the correct chemicals but it still required some higher level thought processes as the pipettes had either names or formulas given. Students could not simply pick up a pipette but had to analyze the content. 

Guided to Open Inquiry

One of the first reactions of this activity was, "Mrs. Verhofstad, where are the directions??!!"  

In the beginning of the second semester, students are now able to name and write formulas. They are now working on balancing, writing and predicting products of chemical equations.  I used the same materials from their Formulas and Compounds inquiry activity but made sure they had a good mix of different formulas and names.

This time I told the students what materials were available as well as the fact that there are two reactions that will occur.  I had material on the side for whatever they'd like to complete the reaction (clear plastic, reaction wells, beakers).  Students worked with one or 2 people to create their reactions, balance, write and predict the products in their chemical reactions in their lab sheet.