(e)Xperience ChemEd X through the ideas and opinions of its community members.
Xperience is where contributed, but not reviewed, ChemEd X resources such as blogs and opinion pieces are found. Here you can find blogs in which our contributors express their personal empiricism and polls in which you the community can provide your opinions.
As a chemistry teacher considering the switch to standards-based grading, you might be wondering how lab reports work in a system that is not based on points. With lab reports, you just need to decide whether you are grading chemistry content skills, scientific communication skills, or both.
This is Part 5 of a 5 part series* on National Board Certification in Early Adolescence and Young Adult Science. This post will focus on Component 4: Effective and Reflective Practitioner. It involves identifying an area where your students need to grow and an area where you need to grow professionally.
What do scientists have to say about the connection between climate change and the bush fires in Australia?
A few months ago I reported that I was involved in a pilot standards based grading (SBG) program. My experiment in SBG started well but required some “tweeks” along the way.
High School Teacher Opportunity: Summer is the ultimate time to recharge the teaching batteries. Professional development during the summer can be a great chance to stop and reflect. It provides time that does not exist during the school year to develop new and better ideas to help students.
Teacher burnout - it is real. How can teacher's adopt more sustainable grading practices to improve their work-life balance?
Flipped classrooms are a popular pedagogical technique, delivering lectures before class so that students can engage in active learning and problem-solving activities during class. Although the response from students and teachers is mostly positive, the approach is not without its challenges. This post outlines some common challenges and how teachers might work through them.
In this lesson, students are offered a variety of alternative versions of the periodic table. Students will identify trends that are consistent from one table to the next in order to understand why the tables they are working with and Mendeleev's version are organized in the manner that they are. This lesson was designed to fit the NGSS performance expectation HS-PS 1.1 but can be used for any first year chemistry course or modified at your discretion.
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.
Chemistry and lasers can be used to create a demonstration that includes several colors and flashing lights. This demonstration connects to topics in quantum chemistry and phase changes.