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Nuts & Bolts | May 2023 Using Notetaking to Help Students Take More Meaningful Notes
In this article the author discusses her journey to transform traditional notetaking in her classroom to a more active, engaging activity for students. She describes several successful strategies that she uses in her middle school science classroom, including group notetaking, processing-based activities, like one-pagers, and combining colors, pictures and text through the sketchnoting approach.
Resource Feature | May 2023 Exploring Social Justice Through a Chemistry Lens
This article details a project that introduces students to the intersection of social justice and chemistry. Over the course of a semester, students study the Flint, Michigan water crisis and discuss the social aspects while exploring the solution chemistry underlying the events.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2023 Enhancing the Lab Experience with Alternative Approaches
In this article, the author discusses the use of both at-home and virtual labs to supplement and support in-class labs. She includes examples of both, and discusses their unique benefits and approaches. She also describes how making and sharing videos of the teacher conducting labs can promote a more engaging make-up experience for absent students. Although many of these approaches were developed for hybrid and remote learning environments, the author has continued using them with in-person teaching to support in-class labs and extend the overall lab experience.
Resource Feature | March 2023 Restoring the Passion for Chemistry: How Collaborating on a Research Project can Inspire both Students and Teachers
In this article, the author shares about her struggle to balance curriculum requirements and pacing with the opportunity to provide real lab experiences for students. Recently, she has experienced science classes dwindling in popularity, particularly since the pandemic. When she had the opportunity to end a particularly difficult school year with a student-led research project, she helped both herself and her students regain a love of learning.
Resource Feature | November 2022 Safely Introducing Students to the Chemistry Lab by Modifying a Classic Investigation
In this article, the author discusses the common objectives of early weeks in first-year high school chemistry, such as safe lab attitudes and techniques, learning SI measurements, and communicating data and conclusions. The lab investigation highlighted in this article can be used to begin achieving all these objectives in an engaging and fun chemical reaction using a heating source with a reduced carbon footprint. The data developed gives an excellent opportunity for students to practice writing results and conclusions in the “claim, evidence, logical connection” manner taught in many secondary schools.
Classroom Commentary | November 2022 Chemical Phenomena in Everyday Life: An Adventure in Writing Across the Curriculum
This article describes a year-long writing project in an upper-level chemistry course that culminates in a Writing Marathon field trip to New York City. The goal of the project was to use student writing about chemical phenomena observed in daily life to make connections to the concepts discussed in class. The author shares that her students enjoyed exploring the city and examining it through their chemistry lens. She found it even more rewarding to watch them apply their knowledge to explain the phenomena around them.
Classroom Commentary | November 2022 Teaching Chimie in Canada

In this article, a Canadian author shares about her experience teaching chemistry in French Immersion, a program aimed at promoting bilingualism in French and English, the country’s two official languages. As she describes, both teaching and learning chemistry en français can be especially difficult, presenting unique challenges. She discusses her experiences as a classroom teacher, extra considerations required to support students in this setting, and the strategies she uses to expand students’ communication skills en français in the context of chimie.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2022 Teaching with Project-Based Learning in the High School Chemistry Classroom
In this article, the author describes her interest and recent success with her implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the chemistry classroom. She discusses her experience using PBL and what motivates her to continue using the approach. She also provides an overview of some successful chemistry units that are designed with PBL in mind.
Classroom Commentary | September 2022 Small Stones, Big Mountains
Learning science at middle and high school level should stimulate curiosity and engagement. Many new teachers, and also those who have been teaching for a while, can feel overwhelmed and consequently miss opportunities to help their students truly experience the wonderment and awe of science. This article suggests small modifications in pedagogy that can make a big difference in how students learn science in the classroom, and seeks to inspire teachers to rethink and re-evaluate their pedagogy approach.
Classroom Commentary | May 2022 Real-World Chemistry: Making Chemistry More Relatable for Students
The article describes a teacher’s efforts to help students better understand chemistry by connecting to concepts they encounter in their everyday lives. The author shares some examples from her classroom as well as a lab for readers to try with their own students.
Resource Feature | May 2022 Bringing Materials Chemistry into the Teaching of Bonding
In this article, the author explains how she incorporates topics of materials science into a chemical bonding unit. She shares several teaching resources as examples, including easy-to-use, show-and-tell style demonstrations that have had been effective at introducing students to the exciting field of material science.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2022 Strategies for Equitable Student Collaboration using Jamboard
In this article the author explains how she recently incorporated a Driving Questions Board and Activity Summary Board using Jamboard in her chemistry classroom. She shares about her purpose for shifting her teaching approach in order to integrate these strategies for equitable student collaboration.
Tech Tips | March 2022 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.
Resource Feature | March 2022 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.
Resource Feature | March 2022 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.
Tech Tips | November 2021 Get Jammin’ in Chemistry!
In this article, the author reflects on her use of Jamboard in the high school chemistry classroom. She shares tips and tricks for integrating Jamboard as an instructional tool for teaching both in-person and remotely. She also includes videos of Jamboard in action, as well as examples of graphics and templates that can be used in your own classroom.
Classroom Commentary | November 2021 Arousing the Spirit of Inquiry
Stories from the history of chemistry can serve as rich and stimulating complements to standard curricula in K-12 chemistry classrooms. Yet even when chemistry teachers have the curricular flexibility to build history lessons into their classes, students can often find this content dry or inaccessible. At the same time, fewer and fewer science centers and museums present content and artifacts on historical chemistry that educators can use to supplement classroom teaching. As ACS celebrates the 100th anniversary of the creation of its Division of the History of Chemistry, this essay reflects on the long-standing desire of chemistry teachers to weave history into chemistry classrooms, particularly by introducing students to the discipline’s material culture. This article highlights the work of the Science History Institute to share artifact- and image-driven stories from the history of chemistry on a digital platform.
Nuts & Bolts | November 2021 Real-World Chemistry Learning Opportunities Are Right outside Your Door!
How can we help students see the connections between various fields of study which are traditionally taught separately? With the Next Generation Science Standards in hand, and eyes newly opened to a multitude of resources, a chemistry teacher took his students to learn at a local wastewater treatment plant. It left a lasting impression.
Classroom Commentary | September 2021 Heterogeneous Chemistry Classrooms: Experiments in Desegregation
How do we create community in a diverse chemistry classroom? How can our classroom dynamics lead to greater social justice in chemistry? ACS Conant Award winner Shea Wickelson shares stories and ideas from her experience teaching de-tracked high school chemistry.
Resource Feature | September 2021 An Inquiry Activity: Mixture Separation Challenge
In this article, the author shares about her use of a hands-on inquiry activity to assess students’ content knowledge. The activity tasks small groups of students with developing and conducting an experimental procedure to separate a mixture provided by the teacher. Read the article to learn more and to access the activity for use in your own classroom!
Nuts & Bolts | May 2021 Chemistry Experiments at Home
In this article, a teacher shares about how she successfully completed lab experiments with students while they were learning at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. The author describes how careful planning allowed her to provide students with all the necessary materials for each lab experiment. Additionally, she explains how lab set-ups can be easily modified with substituted materials, while still providing a valuable learning experience for students.
Classroom Commentary | May 2021 The Value of Integrating Real-World Projects in Science
The author of this article pulls from her experience as both a teacher and a water specialist at a government agency to inspire readers to connect real-world science learning opportunities in the classroom.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2021 Chemistry Semester Exam Redesign
In this article, the author shares about her experience redesigning a traditional multiple-choice chemistry semester exam to an authentic assessment for her Honors Chemistry students. Motivated to create an assessment made up of more thought-provoking questions, and encouraged by the style of the AP chemistry exam, she shares example questions, grading rubrics and overall feedback related to the redesign and implementation.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2021 Remote Teaching Strategies that Will Outlast the Pandemic
In this article, the author reflects on four new teaching practices that he has successfully implemented in response to the current remote learning environment, and shares about how these strategies can continue to be valuable in the future.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2021 Beneficial Classroom Strategies for Teaching in a Pandemic and Beyond
Teaching during the pandemic has challenged teachers to find new ways to help students learn chemistry. In this article, AACT Middle School Ambassador Jennifer Smith describes several teaching methods that have been successful in her classroom. These strategies include weekly student check-in surveys, providing students with audio feedback, and creating video instructions for labs. All are easy-to-implement practices that teachers can leverage both during and after the pandemic