How many of you could recite, word for word, a definition you learned in school? When you first memorized the definition, you could state “inertia is a property of matter”, or “density is mass over volume.” However, you struggled to apply it to a new situation and maybe you were unsure of how to construct a model of what it meant.
Supporting the Growth and Impact of Chemical Education
The March 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: nanochemistry; supporting the growth and impact of chemical education research; using technology to enhance student experience and understanding; promoting student engagement; teaching with models; exploring kinetics; experimenting with innovative labs.
Like many members of the ChemEd X community, I am working with colleagues to teach and assess the Next Generation Science Standards in our high school’s general chemistry course. We are invested in engaging our students in Three-Dimensional Learning. This article aims to introduce readers to four of the high-impact shifts in mindset and practices we believe are helping our students learn to be better scientists.
This strategy has been very helpful in establishing relevance to topics taught and in making connections between topics taught within a unit. It also provides a way for students to ask questions and make written explanations of phenomena, which are “Science and Engineering Practices” of NGSS.
Given a guiding question, students determined what they wanted to test, did the experiment and got their CER boards ready for review. Instead of a regular argumentation session, we had a glow and grow session, where students had to provide positive and negative feedback for each board.
National Periodic Table Day is February 7th. Check out some of my favorite periodic table resources.
I put together a Science Reasoning Rubric that can be used for many writing prompts in a Chemistry class. It can be used whether a prompt is more suited toward a claim or an explanation. I like that the rubric can be used for lots of the writing tasks students will encounter in a Chemistry class. This means students get used to seeing it, and this consistency is helpful as students write explanations and claims throughout the year.
I am already planning for my trip to Illinois in July to attend ChemEd 2019! Let me tell you why I want to attend.
Some research indicates that it is not always beneficial for students to work entirely on their own as they conduct inquiry-based investigations. This article explores a method of inquiry learning in which teachers and students work together to envision, conduct, and analyze experiments.
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.
