Reddit mentions of Invitations to Science Inquiry

If you have one hour total, then make sure to budget for the students' set up time as well as your own - we can do it ahead of time, but you'd be surprised at how long it takes a group of 30 teenagers to gather & assemble any lab materials, not to mention cleaning them up afterwards! Based on your description, I would budget for 5-15 minutes of time before & after your lab for students to get organized. (Obviously it depends on the complexity of the lab as well)

I would recommend that you take a good couple of labs at the beginning of your term to go over lab expectations/safety/equipment locations/clean up procedures so that you can save time during specific experiment introductions by being able to just focus on warnings applicable to the lab. I've done lab scavenger hunts before to help everyone familiarize themselves with where everything is located in the room.


For actual experiments, there are a number of great resources that I use.

Online:

Steve Spangler Science

> this guy is amazing, and you can find a video of almost every experiment he does on youtube. He also gives a list of required supplies and has other videos called "Sick Science" that are much more straightforward in their presentation

PBS Kids ZOOMScience

> these activities can sometimes be "young" for high school students, but there are a few really great ideas that are easy and quick to replicate in class.

Genome BC


> this is a site from British Columbia (my local curriculum) that has an awesome selection of genetics-related activities for grade 9-12. They are sorted by learning outcome & Grade, so I would try to find those outcomes that are most similar to what you're trying to get out of the experiments!

Let's Talk Science
> I haven't used this site too much, but it has a host of different hands-on activity links that you can download. They are categorized by topic and are available for multiple grade levels


Print:

Invitations to Science Inquiry by Tik Liem
> this is an AWESOME resource. There are more than 400 different activities for high school students compiled into one uber awesome book. It's hard to find, but I managed to find a .pdf online a while ago, so that might be your best bet if you can't find it in print.

Your department "library"
> many schools have collections of science books in their department office. If you don't have a department office, then ask the other teachers in your school if they've built up a library of their own - chances are, they'll have a couple of great print resources that they'll share with you.

Other:

Your colleagues.
> I cannot express the importance of this one! Ask every other science teacher you can and you'll be rewarded with a plethora of information, tips, and points about specific activities. Someone's experience is often a better resource than a text or website will ever be.

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head. It sounds like you might have the opportunity to do a couple of larger-scale labs split up over multiple classes as well - this can be a great tactic for tackling bigger ideas as it gives students a chance to synthesize some of the material in between classes.

Oh, and DEMO DEMO DEMO. If you're ever doing an experiment where a specific set-up or multiple steps are required, SHOW THEM HOW TO DO IT. I made this mistake when I first started teaching and the amount of time that was wasted because students couldn't get even get their labs started was ludicrous. I'll sometimes even have a demo up at the front for them to refer to depending on the scenario (e.x. constructing electrical circuits).

Hope that helps!