September 2017 Xchange

ChemEd X Website FAQ

With the hope of helping you to get the most out of our website, we will occasionally highlight tips and suggestions. We have a new FAQ page that is a work in progress. At the moment, you can find support to update your profile (add a photo and a tagline), manage your subscriptions and use our filters to narrow the search of the topic you are looking for. 

A Class Discussion on the Nature of Science

The first chapter of many middle and high school science textbooks contain a section on “the scientific method.” As a result, by the time your students get to you they are probably very adept at reciting how science is done, or at least how they think it is done. A short list of easy steps is presented which always, incomprehensibly begins with forming a hypothesis (which some people insist must be an if-then statement), and then BOOM! Science has happened. Check out how this author works to overcome the sense that there is a strict list of steps for every scientific endeavor. 

Chemistry Rocks!—Resources for National Chemistry Week, the Classroom, and Beyond

With its focus on geology and chemistry, this year’s National Chemistry Week (NCW) celebration is a chance to show students that Chemistry Rocks! An upcoming free webinar will show you resources that make it easy to integrate geology and chemistry.

You can find other online resources for celebrating National Chemistry Week 2017 on the ACS.org website. 

The Teacher Page - An Organizational Tool

The Teacher Page should include all of the notes you need to set up, run, and clean up the particular experiment. You should record from whom you obtained the lab and list the location of chemicals in the stockroom. You should add notes of things that worked and did not work so that you have them handy the next time you use the lab. A very helpful part of this idea helps you to calculate amounts of chemicals needed to make multiple volumes of solutions. Using this organizational tool can save time and repeated effort!

Dance Your Final Project

As part of advocating science literacy in her classroom, Dana Hsi has her 10th grade Honors Chemistry students dance their first semester final. This Dance Your Final semester final is to force students to actually read real, published scientific research; have a group final; eliminate test anxiety; and help students have fun with the content. Dana says that of all assignments assigned during the school year, this is the one that students say they sweat the hardest on, enjoy the most, and are the most proud of their work.

Measuring Activity

Chad Husting uses baseballs and "small" balls to introduce measurement into the curriculum early in the course. This activity provides for good discussion. He backs this up with another activity, Density and Measuring. In this activity, students use their measurements to determine the density of several pieces of hardened polymer clay (some of these pieces contain extra pieces of metal inside that causes inconsistencies).

Especially JCE - Sept 2017

Erica Jacobsen regularly highlights JCE articles that are of special interest to high school teachers. If you would like to explore the whole issue in more depth, check out Mary Saecker's JCE 94.09—September Issue Highlights.