Previously I wrote about taking part in a district-wide high school blended learning pilot. You can read about it here. I received my Chromebook cart near the end of February/beginning of March. A little late but just in time for the periodicity unit I was planning as a blended unit. The following is a breakdown of how I designed the unit.
While attending a professional development session last year I was introduced to the Talk Science Primer, developed by the Inquiry Project and TERC. Although the research and sample population targeted educators and students grades three through five, I decided to review the material to analyze if it had any value in a chemistry classroom.
Revisiting this post from March 2016 - Lowell Thomson describes a process he uses for providing specific lab report feedback using an online Comment Bank.
Revisiting a post from March 2016 - Lowell Thomson describes a process he uses for providing specific lab report feedback using an online Comment Bank.
As a new semester begins, I am excited again. Starting fresh, introducing new people to the amazing world of chemistry, and putting my newly edited labs to the test! In addition, another instructor is trying my labs.
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?”
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.
Think it’s possible to get nostalgic over paperwork? I just did, spurred by editor-in-chief Norb Pienta’s editorial Thinking about Champions in the December 2015 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.
Late last school year at a staff meeting, teachers were informed that we were going to be coached and encouraged to introduce more vocabulary instruction to
“So what corners of the periodic table do I have to memorize in order to get an A on the trends quiz?” This was a question that was asked by one of my students at the beginning of our periodicity unit. For countless educators we teach chemistry because we have a passion for trying to understand the world from an atomic level. However many of our students have extrinsic motivators which result in attempts to find shortcuts to recall the material. If we want to avoid responses like the one stated above we have to identify if we are asking thorough questions when assessing our students.
