Latest articles, blogs, and events from the chemical education community

What am I doing to help kids achieve? How do I know when they are there? What is the evidence?

Stoichiometry is arguably one of the most difficult concepts for students to grasp in a general chemistry class. Stoichiometry requires students to synthesize their knowledge of moles, balanced equations and proportional reasoning to describe a process that is too small to see.

An educational reform that has been gaining a large amount of popularity in the last decade is standards-based grading (SBG). The heart of the SBG movement is truly rooted in one very important question, “what do you want your grades mean?”

What am I doing to help kids achieve? How do I know when they are there? What is the evidence?

I run an after school STEM club that involves many projects and activities.

Using a whiteboard or poster paper each group of students creates their interpretation of the model thus far based on a content unit they are given.

Last winter I watched a webinar put on by ACS and AACT called "NGSS in the Chemistry Classroom." As a result of watching that webinar, I took an activity that had NGSS Science & Engineering Practices (SEP) integrated into it and tried it out in class. In this activity, students are required to develop their own procedures and data tables.

Michelle Okroy recently shared some video resources intended to help students learn about stoichiometry.

It's that time of year for those of us on the semester block system - end of course content state exams loom large and student stress is at an all time high. The longer I teach in this environment, the more I see how these tests push teachers to provide packet after packet for review.

Are students reflecting on what their calculated values indicate? This question constantly runs through the minds of chemistry teachers across the country. Recently educators have seen shifts in instruction that promote connections to real-world phenomena using conceptual depth in understanding.

Generally speaking I am good at getting things done. When there is something on my to-do list that I don’t like, I do it first so I can get to the things I would rather be doing. However, when it comes to lab reports, I avoid. I mean I avoid like the plague!