Teaming up with a STEM Science Coach or mentor can be rewarding to both you and your students. I was surprised at the impact a science mentor has on students when I recieved an email from a former student.
As physical distancing continues and we persist in teaching our chemistry classes online, it behooves us as teachers to spend some time considering how we can purposefully observe and decipher the written work that our students submit.
Upon noticing the substance of their students' chemical thinking, a teacher may decide to either advance their students' thinking or to elicit further chemical thinking toward a curricular aim. Here we will consider the stances that teachers may take in their noticing and interpreting according to the formative assessment model of enactment. This model was derived from rigorous analysis of classroom videos of experienced science teachers (many of whom are chemistry teachers, most are teacher leaders in their school district) doing formative assessment activities with their students. Excellent science teachers have a broad repertoire and use all of these different kinds of teaching moves in different moments, depending on the in-the-moment purposes that teachers have which are shaped by knowing the specific students and the challenges they are facing at that moment, as well as in the context of the overall lesson purposes.
The Structure and Motion of Matter (SAMM) survey, developed by Sevian et. al. is detailed here.
Jenelle Ball, the AACT Past President, highlights the resources available in the AACT multimedia collection
I was excited for the opportunity but I never thought my science coach would be interested in developing and executing lessons with me. Luckily for me, my experience ended up being nothing like what I expected. You can apply for this experience too. The deadline to apply for Science Coaches for the 2019–2020 school year is September 1, 2019.
Jenelle Ball, the immediate past chair of AACT, shares some current events and visions related to ACCT. This is the first of what we hope will be a series of informal articles highlighting the benifits of joining AACT.
This page is intended to help readers find access to articles cited within ChemEd X materials.
The American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) has just made a major announcement. The first AACT Chemistry Teacher of the Year Awards have just opened their nomination process. Awards will be given to teachers in each of three levels of chemistry education. One for K-5 teachers of science, one for grade 6-8 teachers of physical science, and one for high school chemistry teachers.
As with most conferences, even the small ones, there is way more than I could put in one blog. Here is what impressed me the most. Several people from the national and local ACS made a point of doing whatever they could to reach out to teachers. As Dr. George Bodner said (and I am paraphrasing), the ACS first looked at what they could do to teachers. They then examined what they could to for teachers. Now they are asking, "How can we work WITH teachers.
