With the new school year underway, students in chemistry classes have been adjusting to integrated classrooms. In the science department Ms. Beth Karfs has been doing more labs in class to help the students better understand the material.
In this system students are expected to go home and learn the material, and in class they will solve problems, or do experiments to better enhance their understanding.
“A teacher had mentioned it at professional development day, and after doing my own research I really wanted to bring this into my own teaching,” Karfs said.
By having the students go home and learn the material, science teachers like Mr. Lee Johnson believe that students can correct a misconception learned at home instead of learning it wrong and continuing to do it wrong at home.
“Students can enhance their own knowledge now, and I feel teachers can now clear up problems instead of students learning the wrong thing, which causes them to do problems the wrong way which will hurt their knowledge,” Johnson said.
Students also see the benefits of switching to the system. Junior Matt Stern believes that it will make him a better student in science.
“I realize by putting in the extra effort at home, I can now do problems and experiments in class and I can ask questions over material that I didn’t understand instead of just doing it wrong on homework and never correcting it,” Stern said.
The students must make an effort at home, but the results are expected to show that students will have more success in attaining the knowledge and being able to apply it to situations in the classroom.
“Students should now make better connections to what we’re teaching and can now ask more direct questions and get better answers stopping a struggle they possibly had during homework originally,” Karfs said.
With the integrated classroom students will witness new innovative ways of learning, in the hopes science will become more natural.
“Now class is less boring and more interactive,” Stern said. “It really is becoming easier to start learning in science.”
