APTeach Session Notes and Updates

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Join us for our next APTeach Session! Energetic Collisions - KMT, Maxwell-Boltzmann, and Deviating from Ideal Behavior - October 24, 8-9pm EST. Register now!

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Each one hour APTeach Zoom session provides 15-20 minutes of a discussion centered around a challenging chemistry topic before moving into breakout rooms that allow small groups of teachers to share their best teaching practices related to that content.  

 

APTeach - To Bond or Not to Bond

Video highlights from the September 2024 APTeach Session.

 

To Bond or Not to Bond: Making and Breaking Connections - September 19, 2024

If you were not able to join us for the AP Teach meeting on Thursday, September 19th, you missed a great meeting! During the meeting, To Bond or Not to Bond: Making and Breaking Connections, we discussed covalent bonds, ionic bonds, and interparticle forces. Michael Farabaugh spoke about Morse potential energy diagrams and lattice energy. He gave some great examples of questions that can be used with students and went over some past AP exam questions over the topics. Kristen Vanderveen and Shifra Yonis demonstrated some simulations from PhET and Concord Consortium that can be used to help students understand Morse potential energy curves and interparticle forces. These resources can be used for demonstrations or class activities. Sue Biggs offered some great advice about teaching interparticle forces. Specifically, she cautioned about emphasizing to students a list of interparticle forces in terms of strengths where London Dispersion forces are the weakest, followed by dipole-dipole, and then hydrogen bonding. There are several questions that have appeared on past AP Chemistry exams where students are presented with physical data that does not match this interparticle forces strengths list. Sometimes, London Dispersion forces can be stronger than, say dipole-dipole. When students are taught a list of interparticle forces strengths and do not understand that they can vary from this list, they will often answer these questions incorrectly on the AP Chemistry exam. Sue also warned teachers to be careful with online videos regarding interparticle forces. Some of them were not created with the AP Chemistry exam in mind and use vocabulary incorrectly or do not emphasize information needed for our students. Carrie Alexander completed the session with a great interactive storyboarding activity on the difference between boiling water and the electrolysis of water. This is a great activity that I am looking forward to using with my students to emphasize the difference between overcoming interparticle forces versus breaking bonds. The meeting ended with breakout rooms where everyone was able to share how they help students compare strengths of interparticle forces, address misconceptions, and the activities they use in their classrooms. If you missed this meeting, please join us for our next meeting, Energetic Collisions: KMT, Maxwell-Boltzmann, and Deviating from Ideal Behavior, on Thursday, October 24th at 7:00 ET to discuss deviations from ideal gas laws, Kinetic Molecular Theory, and Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions and teaching strategies to help students better understand these topics. Hope to see you there!

View the PRESENTATION SLIDEDECK and access resource links shared in the full presentation.

 

APTeach - Using Data to Address Unit 1 Misconceptions

Video highlights from the August 2024 APTeach Session.

Using Data to Address Unit 1 Misconceptions - August 22, 2024

AP Teach had a great monthly meeting on Thursday, August 22nd. We had around 45 participants join us for an opportunity to learn, collaborate, and have fun! The meeting kicked off with a mention of changes to the AP Chemistry exam including the new hybrid digital exam format. The meeting focused on using data to address the misconceptions students often have in Unit 1. Various presenters explained what students need to be able to do or explain to be successful on each of the Unit 1 topics. We then looked at AP exam questions and common student mistakes. Instructional strategies and activities were presented to help address the misconceptions in the classroom. There was an engaging activity using stations over Topics 1.3 and 1.4 that was shared, resources to find more practice problems for students, and helpful suggestions to share with students to help them improve their periodic trends explanations. A great activity that was presented to help students with photoelectron spectroscopy(PES) was How I Fell In Love With PES from Melissa Hemling’s article on ChemEdX from 2019. This engaging activity allows students to see the connection between an element’s electron configuration and the PES spectrum. It also gives them the opportunity to see the connections between ionization energies and the interactions between the electrons and the nucleus. The last part of the meeting was an opportunity to share in small groups the topics our students struggle with most often and the strategies we use to address them. I know that I left with a few strategies that I will be utilizing in my classroom this year. Feel free to check out the slide deck from our meeting to see information about what you missed. If you were not able to attend, you missed out on a great evening! Our next meeting, To Bond or Not to Bond: Making and Breaking Connections, will be Thursday, September 19 at 8:00 PM ET where we will discuss chemical bonding and intermolecular forces. We hope that you will join us for a chance to meet and collaborate with other chemistry teachers! Hope to see you there!

View the PRESENTATION SLIDEDECK and access resource links shared in the full presentation.