New 2023 AACT Resources to Help Teach Chemical Names and Formulas

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 Chemical Bonding unit. We will now focus on new resources that will support students in writing chemical formulas and naming compounds. 

Help your students master polyatomic ions and test their knowledge with the Polyatomic Ion Word Search. To make it more difficult, students are only provided with a list of formulas for 24 polyatomic ions, instead of the names of each. They are tasked with finding the corresponding ion names hidden in the puzzle and must match each one with its correct formula.

As students are learning to write chemical formulas, use the Ionic Bonding Matchmaker Game. Much like the Ionic Bonding Puzzle, the game lets students see how many of each cation and anion are needed to make the overall charge of an ionic compound zero. The game also provides students with feedback and a score based on how fast they complete each level. 

In the activity My Name is Bond, Ionic Bond, students practice writing formulas for ionic compounds and then determine which is the strongest using their knowledge of periodic trends. 

We hope that these activities can help you reinforce the topic of formulas while teaching chemical names and formulas. 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.