March 2022

Featured Article

Resource Feature

The Online Summer Food Lab

Two teachers at an independent high school share about their inaugural experience designing and teaching a two-week summer mini-course, Chemistry of Cooking. This course, among others, was designed to engage incoming students with academic material, offer an opportunity to explore a topic of interest, and help students get to know each other and their teachers before the start of the school year. The authors were excited that it was also their own opportunity to learn about food chemistry — a new chemistry topic to explore beyond the scope of the usual tenth-grade course curriculum. In this article, they share about planning and designing the course, as well as ideas for how teachers might incorporate aspects of it into a homeschool, virtual, hybrid, or in-person chemistry classroom.

Resource Features

Lessons by teachers with their inspiration for the activity or tips for how to implement the lesson.

Access is an AACT member benefit. Cleaning Up the Lab

In this article, the author discusses how the pandemic has created what might be an unobvious challenge for science teachers in many schools: a lack of custodial staff to help with keeping the lab space clean. With this in mind, she teaches her students the basics of cleaning up after a lab activity in order to make this behavior a part of their lab routine all year long.

Classroom Commentary

Reflections and perspectives by teachers about topics that affect chemistry education.

Access is an AACT member benefit. Teachers of Young Students are Chemistry Teachers Too

In this article, 2022 Colorado Teacher of the Year and middle school science teacher Autumn Rivera encourages middle school and elementary school teachers to see themselves as chemistry teachers. She shares about how her own love and passion for science was fueled at a young age and knows that teachers of young students can have a similar positive impact. It’s clear that Middle and Elementary school teachers can have a wide range of teaching responsibilities, but if you look closely, you’ll find that most likely they are science teachers as well.

Tech Tips

How to incorporate technology into your chemistry classroom.

Access is an AACT member benefit. Teaching Chemistry in a Blended Learning Classroom: When to Go Digital and What to Take Offline

In this article, the author discusses the blended chemistry classroom and provides recommendations for three instances when it is best to use digital teaching strategies, and three instances where offline approaches are most effective. Technology is an integral part to modern teaching, as evidenced by the emphasis placed on blended learning in many schools and classrooms. In order to effectively teach chemistry in a blended environment, however, it is crucial to know when technology is a benefit and when to stick with non-digital tools and activities.

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Editorial

Rejuvenating Your Passion for Teaching in the Midst of the Pandemic

AACT President-Elect Matt Perekupka reflects on the difficulties teachers have faced in presenting high-quality lessons during the last two years of COVID-interrupted education. With an optimistic outlook for the future, he encourages teachers to embrace the changing world and to incorporate new teaching methods, ideas, and technology moving forward. He also highlights some of the newest chemistry teaching resources offered by AACT.

Simulation

Graphing

In this simulation, students will be introduced to good graphing techniques and how to interpret data presented in a graph. They are introduced to the TAILS acronym (Title, Axes, Intervals, Labels, Scale) to help them remember how to set up a graph and the concepts of line of best fit, positive and negative correlation, and interpolating and extrapolating. Then students complete a six-question quiz on these topics.

Chemistry Fun

Access is an AACT member benefit. Chemistry Kakuro Puzzle

In this activity, students will use both math and logic to solve a chemistry themed kakuro puzzle. This puzzle differs slightly from a traditional kakuro by first requiring students to use a periodic table to find the atomic number for each element symbol appearing in the puzzle. Using the atomic numbers as starting clues, students then fill-in the empty squares with numbers 1-9 that sum to the value of the clue, but without reusing any digits. This activity is a fun challenge for students, and provides the opportunity to strengthen logic and reasoning skills.