Chemistry Solutions
September 2018
Featured Article
Classroom Commentary
Reflections of an AP Chemistry Exam Reader
This article describes a chemistry teacher’s experience as a Reader for the AP chemistry exam. She shares some reflections, pointers, and insights to help guide other AP Chemistry teachers in hopes of helping them prepare their students to achieve mastery on the exam.
Resource Features
Lessons by teachers with their inspiration for the activity or tips for how to implement the lesson.
Lightsticks, with their eerie glow, capture the interest of students of every age. Capitalizing on this, the authors describe how they developed and used a guided inquiry approach to help students determine the activation energy of the chemiluminescent reaction in a lightstick. They also describe how they used a Vernier LabQuest 2 system, while acknowledging that any data collection system that allows simultaneous collection of data from light and temperature probes may be used instead. In addtion, they explain how they employed the natural logarithm form of the Arrhenius equation and spreadsheet software.
Nuts & Bolts
Functional tips you can implement in your classroom.
Multiple-choice questions are frequently used in both formal and informal assessments in order to determine if students have mastered specific learning objectives. This article discusses the characteristics of multiple-choice items as well as some guidelines for writing them. It is possible to design multiple-choice items that emphasize conceptual understanding and critical thinking skills. The creation of high-quality assessments can provide useful information about student learning and help teachers make important decisions about instruction.
This article outlines the basic considerations for lab safety in the elementary science classroom. Sample student safety contracts are provided by the author for teacher use.
In this article, a high school teacher describes his successful implementation of a system for providing students with instant feedback on their chemistry quizzes. This idea can be easily implemented in your classroom too!
In My Element
Stories about teachers finding their way to the chemistry classroom.
A teacher describes her teaching journey and how she plans to prepare for her first year in the high school chemistry classroom.
Teacher 2 Teacher
@AACTconnect asked:
You Answered:
“ChemSketch is free and works on PCs. It can draw structural formulas, show them as 3-d models, and show bond length and bond angle.” – Bonnie Bloom
“I
have used a free download [for ChemSketch]
www.acdlabs.com/resources/freeware. Also,
there is a chrome application called molview which is free and might be useful
to those with chromebooks.” – Ryan Williams
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Editorial
AACT President Sherri Rukes hopes to inspire members to tap into the great (and growing!) collection of resources and benefits that teachchemistry.org has to offer. She offers ways for teachers to inspire both themselves and others through involvement, collaboration, and contribution to AACT.
Simulation
In this simulation, students will participate in a 10 question quiz. Some questions will challenge students to analyze data to identify the correct state of matter for a specific sample, and then connect the chosen state with an animated particle diagram. In addition, students will examine the behavior of particles in an animated sample as they undergo a phase change, and must correctly identify the change that occurs.
Chemistry Fun
In this activity, students will complete a crossword puzzle by solving each clue that is related to a fundamental chemistry topic.