Australia's Science Forum

I was wanting to make the labs more interesting with plants, decorations , posters . Does any one have any ideas ?

Thanks Lara :

See the teachers, they often get brochures from companies that make "fun" science posters. Bright Education is one company. I've just started at a new school and the teacher here was talking about looking at Dominie. I've found it depends on the teachers how well things like posters, plants are looked after. It works well if you have a regular teacher in a lab as they will take ownership of it. But, if you have a number of teachers going in and out of the lab all day, especially non-science teachers you're likely to have more damage caused by the students.

I've googled Science images, cut and pasted into Publisher so that they take up roughly half an A3 page (landscape) usually 4 images per page, got them printed, cut in half and laminated. Makes a nice border. My improvement would be to print onto light card to eliminate the glare from the laminating. Add Velcro dots and put onto the noticeboards!!

I've put fun pictures of the periodic table around and made words with the periodic table for the students to read. I'll have to take some pics and post it on here to show what I have done over the years to make it fun and interesting.

But, if you have a number of teachers going in and out of the lab all day, especially non-science teachers you're likely to have more damage caused by the students.

Why on earth would non-science teachers be using laboratories?

Depends on the school, David. Some schools have a shortage of classrooms so need to use all available space. This was the case at my last school. The size of the school, number of teachers and number of classrooms meant that the labs were always in use. It also meant that the science teachers weren't always given the same lab, so there was no "ownership" of a lab. You can imagine the results. Very pleased to report that things are very different where I am now.

DavidPeterson wrote:

But, if you have a number of teachers going in and out of the lab all day, especially non-science teachers you're likely to have more damage caused by the students.

Why on earth would non-science teachers be using laboratories?

We have a severe shortage of rooms at the moment so I have all sorts of classes in the labs, there isn't a period where they are free. I'm lucky with the school I am at I don't have a problem of walking into, say an English lesson, to set up for a prac and leaving it there knowing no one will touch it. Actually the non-science teachers leave the labs in better condition than the science staff. It does make for some interesting wall displays though with the mix of subjects taught in the labs.

Understand that some sites have room shortages, actually our school officially is over-capacity and we're supposed to be getting extra buildings.
Luckily our timetabler & Assistant Principal is the senior Physics teacher so there's no way she'd ever put non-science classes in our labs. We do have maths classes in there but only because the same teacher who has the kids for science has them for maths, so it is still a science teacher.
Our State Government is pushing & funding STEM and we're up for refurbishment late this year. This means that my bottom 3 labs & storerooms will be gutted and redesigned. During that time there will be real issues with enough teaching space (practical lab space in particular) but also everything I have stored downstairs will need to come up here for who knows how long......