New 2023 AACT Resources to Help Teach Chemical Reactions

As chemistry teachers around the country plan activities for their students, AACT will highlight resources from our high school resource library that can be used to reinforce topics in different units throughout the school year. Our last post highlighted resources to support a unit on Chemical Names and Formula. We will now focus on newer classroom library resources to use in a Chemical Reactions unit plan.

Our Classifying Chemical Reactions animation highlights the five basic types of chemical reactions and includes a short check your understanding quiz at the end. The accompanying lesson plan has more practice for students and a chance for them to find real-world examples of the reactions. 

A booklet from the activity "An Introduction to Chemical Reactions: A Story of a Valentine’s Day Dance".

I have always used a dance analogy while teaching the types of chemical reactions. Betsy Rogers takes it one step further in her activity An Introduction to Chemical Reactions: A Story of a Valentine’s Day Dance, by creating a story complete with a little booklet to help her students remember the type of reaction. 

At the end of the unit, use the Clean Air Chemistry activity to bring everything together. Students will use their knowledge of balancing reactions, determining the type of reaction, modeling a reaction, catalysts, and the law of conservation of mass to complete this multi-step activity. Students will learn about air pollution and some steps toward mitigating it. 

We hope that these activities can help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit about Chemical Equations. Most of these lessons were made possible by great teachers who shared their own resources. We need your help to keep the collection growing. 

Do you have a great demonstration, activity, or lesson related to this topic that you would like to share with the community? Please send it along for consideration.