(e)Xtend ChemEd X looks outside the resources available at ChemEd X to items of interest to the community throughout the internet.
Xtend includes Picks, which includes a short description of books, articles, journals, magazines, and web items that our contributors and staff find interesting, professional development events, tweets, and news feeds.
The ACS Committee on Chemical Safety has published new Guidelines for Chemical Laboratory Safety in Secondary Schools. This document is organized with the R.A.M.P. concept – Recognize the hazard, Assess the risk of the hazard, Minimize the risk of the hazard, and Prepare for emergencies. The online document includes two pages for each letter that could be printed and posted in the classroom to reinforce these principles of safety. The documents are provided to strengthen the safety practices of teachers and help them to promote a culture of safety that their students will take with them throughout their academic and professional careers.
This week I had the opportunity to attend part 2 of a 3 day PD for Gizmos, courtesy of a district grant working with ExploreLearning. In a room full of middle school science colleagues (half of whom I knew), I was able to glean a ton of great information.
AMTA will be hosting a distance learning Chemistry 2 course that will run from January 19th -April 27 (15 weeks), with an open house to prepare with technology on January 12th. It will be led by expert chemistry modeling leaders Larry Dukerich and Brenda Royce.
In July of 2016 we learned the names of the four new elements that were confirmed in January; Nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts) and oganesson (Og). Although the newest superheavy elements complete the seventh period of the Periodic Table, curiosity has been reignited in our classrooms as students ask, what’s next?
“What we Call Misconceptions May be Necessary Stepping Stones Toward Making Sense of the World” is an article identifying how misconceptions can be turned into sense-making exercises and classroom conversations to help students come to meaningful, and eventually “correct” views of scientific concepts.
Most chemistry teachers I know do flame tests with their students. It ties in well with many topics, is colorful and the kids enjoy seeing the colors and burning stuff. There are many applications. For years I always mentioned that astronomers use the idea of the flame test. They simply look at stars and examine the spectra from the light of these stars. They then match the spectra with the elements and then they can see and infer what elements are millions of light years away. I always mentioned this but never was able to demonstrate it.
The American Modeling Teachers Association(link is external) has announced a new webinar series to be hosted by experts in the field. The webinars will include a variety of topics and are free to members. Space is limited to the first twenty-three teachers to sign up, but each session will be recorded and made available to wait-listed teachers. The webinars will be hosted on GoToMeeting.
There has been considerable discussion lately of standard based teaching. Essentially, a teacher has a set of standards and they teach to these standards. The idea is that instead of saying "Hey, you got a C on this test, time to move on..." a teacher would say "This is the standard...you can exceed it, meet it or you can approach it...the goal is to meet or exceed the standard and if you do not, keep trying." Here is an example...we were covering gas laws in my class. I asked seven questions about conceptual ideas concerning gas laws.
Join me, along with co-presenter Rachel Murillo, on Thursday, September 15, 2016, 6:30 p.m. Eastern. Rachel brings her background in forensic anthropology to the webinar, along with her current work teaching high school forensic science. We’ll share forensics resources useful for National Chemistry Week, for integrating into classroom curriculum, and for informal science sharing. Anyone who wants to connect science to this high-interest, real world topic will find ready-to-use demonstrations, lab investigations, videos, background information, and more.
ActiveGrade has been a favorite among practitioners of Standards-Based Assessment. It's intuitive interface and elegant data displays helped teachers, students, and parents have meaningful conversations about student progress and assessment. For as little as $60.00 a year, teachers could tap into this powerful intructional tool.