Stephanie O'Brien's blog

This article shares a reflection of my daughter's experience in hybrid AP Chemistry from the perspective of a mother. 

With the end of school upon us and the possibility of remote instruction in the fall, here are some techniques  to address four NGSS science and engineering practices; Planning and Carrying out Investigations, Asking Questions and Defining Problems, Developing and Using Models, Analyzing and Interpreting Data.

While POGIL^Ⓡ Activities are designed to be completed synchronously in a collaborative team setting with the teacher present as the facilitator, there are ways to utilize the activities in an asynchronous online setting.

One reason so many students find chemistry difficult is the abstract nature of the concepts. Research based on the constructivist model of learning has shown that as an educator teaches, the learner makes meaning of the content by drawing from their background knowledge, attitude, abilities and everyday experience and this often results in a different construct than that of the teacher.

The IB Program is a two year program, beginning in the students’ junior year, focused on creating balanced learners who explore content in a wide range of areas to develop effective approaches to learning and be capable of working in global contexts.

I recently attended a workshop at my state conference about improvisation techniques to use in the classroom. As a teacher we are challenged to constantly adapt our pedagogical techniques to meet the needs of our learners, and this workshop provided some new strategies to do just that.

In an effort to align an old VSEPR lesson to NGSS, I told my students that we were going to look at the data available from the real molecules on the pHET simulation we were using and specifically look for patterns. Finding patterns is a cross-cutting concept; one of the three dimensions of NGSS.