This lab assessment is a wet lab that has students use lab skills to demonstrate their knowledge of polarity, Lewis structures, solubility, and intermolecular forces by justifying the polarity of given compounds.
Nora Walsh highlights activities found on ChemEd X and how she worked them into her own curriculum teaching Lewis structure concepts.
Ordinary playing cards can be used in games where the cards model valence electrons in atoms. These games could provide players with a fun and active way to practice counting valence electrons in simple chemical structures.
In this ChemBasics Talk, Nora Walsh offers everything necessary to plan a unit on the topic of chemical bonding and naming including introductory and discovery activities, manipulative activities, practice problems, her favorite online teaching resources and more. Watch the recording and access resources she shared.
Determination of Lewis Dot structures and visualization of the shapes of molecules using VSEPR theory is an example of an abstract concept that students often find difficult to learn. I have found it useful to have a single worksheet/packet that my students can add to as we cover Lewis dot structures, resonance, VSEPR shapes, polarity, and intermolecular forces.
Card sorts are a great way to achieve a number of classroom objectives. They can be used as a review activity or they can be done during the middle of a lesson as a type of formative assessment. Sorts can encourage students to work with other students or can even be used as a type of exit ticket. I decided to use the strategy about two thirds of the way through a unit on covalent and ionic compounds and lewis structures. I knew there were items we did not cover in the sort but I was curious to see how they would approach these unknown topics.
Lauren Stewart discusses why she is having her students build 3-D models BEFORE teaching them to draw Lewis structures.
