high school chemistry

The August AP Teach session focused on beginning a new school year with a review of student performance on the 2025 AP Chemistry exam. Jennifer Cambre shared ideas for how to interpret and analyze the data from the Instructional Planning Reports.

The July 2025 APTeach session focused on familiarizing AP Chemistry teachers with the Desmos graphing calculator, which is embedded in Bluebook for student use during the AP Chemistry exam, as well as other standardized tests.

As teachers, we’ve all faced the challenge of aligning our grading practices with school policies and our colleagues’ approaches. In my own school, for instance, we’ve settled on a grading system that is 80% summative (quizzes, tests, labs) and 20% formative (everyday classwork and homework).

Capturing students’ underlying proficiency in chemistry concepts can sometimes feel elusive.

I have been an AP Chemistry Reader since 2011, and I am very grateful for this experience.

Given the success of the first installment of Five for the First, I thought I would write a follow-up column highlighting five more activities I do during the first week of school! These are activities I have used to set up my classes for success.

I teach Redox and Electrochemistry as the first topic in AP Chemistry¹.

Welcome to the second installment of our (Re)Bootcamp series! In this post, three teachers share entry points into their larger pedagogical frameworks.  If you have wanted to try new approaches to teaching your content but feel overwhelmed by the idea of overhauling your entire curriculum, check out these "sample-size" activities! 

Dean Campbell*, Ali Patel, Kathryn Campbell *Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois