Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment

Some Like it Hot

In my class, I use the illustration of a mountain to help students push through the challenges of chemistry. Stoichiometry is the top of chemistry mountain. As we progress through the year, I say things like “the mountain is getting steep here!” or “there is not a lot of oxygen up here!” or “I will carry you up chemistry mountain if I have to!” to keep students motivated. When students finally get to the top of chemistry mountain (mid quarter 3), the air is thin, they are tired and they are ready to base jump off the mountain (see illustration from a former student below).

Pick - Adapting Assessment Tasks To Support Three-Dimensional Learning

Adapting Assessment Tasks to Support Three-Dimensional Learning is an open-access Editors' Choice article published in the February 2018 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education. The authors outline steps to help teachers modify their old assessment questions that require students to use core ideas, scientific practices and crosscutting concepts to provide evidence they have learned the required content.

Argument Driven Inquiry

I first learned about argument driven inquiry through a post written by Ben Meacham. I was interested in both the stoichiometry  lab and the way that it was presented to the students through Argument Driven Inquiry. This lead me to the Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) website. The website provided many resources. 

Tribute to Alex Johnstone

I am sad to relay that Alex Johnstone died just before Christmas at age 89. I have written a short tribute to him because although I never knew him, he helped me make sense of why most of the time we fail, and that when we succeed... it is a triumphal moment!

Balancing Equations, Candy and an Evolving Activity

I feel like every year I face the same old dilemma. It starts with an idea in mind of what and how something should be taught. This idea is fine until it is discovered that students this year are different than students last year. The idea is changed or “tweaked”. The process is feels similar to having to “reinvent” the wheel each year. This gets exhausting.

A Concise Summary of Chemical Misconceptions

Beyond Appearances: Students’ Misconceptions about Basic Chemical Ideas on the Royal Society of Chemistry’s website has proven a wonderfully handy document to have around. The report is the work of Dr. Vanessa Kind of Durham University (formerly of The University of London) and briefly summarizes student misconceptions and possible pedagogical remedies in eleven different content areas.

The Two Words Every Chemistry Student Needs to Learn

Teaching students the proportional reasoning skills needed for stoich doesn’t have to be that daunting. By adjusting how your students talk about stoich, you will adjust how they think about it; eventually, they’ll proportionally reason in a more effective manner.

This post was submitted for the 2017 ChemEd X Call for Contributions: Creating a Classroom Culture.