Atomic Structure

I created this Draw an Atom Before and After Activity a few years ago when I was teaching chemistry. I wanted to get an idea of what my students understood about atoms before we began our study of the atom. Then, I wanted students to reflect on how their understanding of an atom changed over …

I’m super pleased with how my chemistry students’ atomic theory timeline projects turned out. We didn’t have time to cover every theory in class, so this project helped round-out our understanding of atomic theory. I gave them this set of instructions to create an atomic theory timeline foldable.

In Chemistry, we’ve been doing a lot of work with atomic structure. One thing that my students have been having trouble wrapping their minds around is just how tiny an atom and the nucleus of an atom are. I found a set of instructions online that have students cut paper in such a way to …

Earlier this week, I challenged my chemistry students to a Black Box Activity Challenge. The idea is that they would be given containers where they could not see the contents. They would have to use their resources to create a hypothesis regarding what was in the container. My goal was to give my students a …

Want to make it easier to teach your students to create Bohr models of an atom? Check out how to use electron magnets to illustrate and teach this important skill. My sister gave me a set of colored, circular magnets for my classroom.  I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to use them for at …

I’m not totally happy with my notes for electron dot diagrams, so I’m not posting the front of this foldable.  My description is too wordy, and I’m not sure it totally summarized the process of creating an electron dot diagram.  Also, I learned from reading lots of other teachers describe the process online that teachers …

I am so excited about these paper plate bohr models! One of our main goals in physical science is to recognize patterns in the periodic table based on valence electrons.  Before we can jump to talking about valence electrons, we first need to just learn about the placement of electrons in the atom.   After …

There isn’t much to this chemical symbol foldable, but there’s something about it that just makes me so happy.  I wanted to come up with a quick reminder for my students about how to write a chemical symbol that identifies the specific isotope we are looking at. Here’s what our completed interactive notebook page ended …

I want to share a subatomic particles foldable I created for my physical science students to glue in their interactive notebooks. My physical science students are starting our first unit that addresses the periodic table.  I decided to kick off this unit by reviewing the three types of subatomic particles.  This is a review for …