Went in to lab this morning with a great deal of trepidation and concern.
My frequent surprise over the different collective abilities of different lab sections (small group) of the same lecture course (big group) is reinforced every semester. Each semester I seem to have some sections of lab that understand things better than other sections do. Unfortunately, the converse is also true. Based on results earlier in the week, I expected greater difficulty today with a critical thinking activity for developing a strategy to determine the identity of an unknown aqueous solution. As it turns out, they did not have the difficulties I expected, perhaps in part to do planned remediation strategies because of the expected difficulties. Rather than allowing them significant independence in coming up with a strategy on their own, I circled through the room, breaking down the problem with individual pairs of students and giving them much more individualized attention through a series of question designed to help them come up with the strategies and steps on their own. It went remarkably well. a few pairs need to repeat the process several times before it finally sank in but everyone was eventually successful in coming up with a strategy for analyzing their unknown solution. It is really nice to have the time and the class size that enables this kind of attention to happen.
