Lab Reports

Science is simply not my thing, not when it’s formal sciences like Chemistry. But I’m starting a bit of a micro-school/3 day a week co-op next year and, at this point, it looks like we will have 3 10th graders taking Chemistry.

This year, science and labs were torture. We started the year in a co-op that used Apologia for older students and had a teacher that is completely incompatible with CM principles. I ended up pulling my kids out of science and then the whole co-op.

I never did labs or a lab report in high school. I have no idea what a lab report is supposed to be and my son really, really had a hard time with it.

I need help. How many lab reports do they need to do? The co-op teacher expected at least one a week. But our local High school requires 4 a semester for AP science students.

How do I help my son learn how to write a lab report? At the co-op, the teacher gave instructions like, “write more detail when necessary” but never explained what was necessary. My son was totally lost on how to write the steps without just copying them out of the book and apparently he was doing it wrong.

I am totally clueless on this and really need help.

TIA!