Just a quick post today to share a new covalent compounds bulletin board. I haven’t done a great job of changing my bulletin boards out this year, but that can pretty much be said about any year. I always have intentions of changing them monthly, but the reality is I change them anywhere from semesterly …
Science
Chemistry participated in a “Naming Compounds Manhunt” activity this week. I’m usually pretty good about keeping my Algebra kids up and moving around the room away from their seats, but doing this activity made me realize I have not done a good job of this with my chemistry class this year. As a teacher, there …
I created this classifying chemical compounds foldable because my chemistry students are currently practicing classifying compounds as either covalent, ionic, or both. Yesterday, we practiced this skill by classifying common, everyday compounds. On the outside of the foldable, we wrote out a quick overview of the different types of bonds. On the inside of the …
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.
My chemistry students requested that we do something fun for Valentine’s Day. We haven’t done a lab in a while, so I put together a Conversation Hearts Lab. I saw that you could do the standard Dancing Raisins activity with conversation hearts, so I decided to try it out. It turns out I should have …
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 …
It’s Christmas Eve as I write this, so I don’t have a lot of time to pull together a post. After church and lunch, my husband and I will be making the drive to see my parents. We’ll spend the night and celebrate Christmas with them tomorrow. Today I just want to share a quick …
I am a huge fan of these dimensional analysis shape cards that were created by Kathryn Freed to introduce students to the concept of converting units. I have used them with both my physical science students and my chemistry students. To use them, I give students a starting shape and an ending shape. They have …
In chemistry, we did a density challenge this week. Students had to calculate the maximum amount of sand that could be placed in a film canister so that it still floated. We tested our canisters today, and every canister floated! I ordered a set of 24 film canisters from Amazon especially for this lab. The …
Before I share the chromatography butterflies bulletin board that my chemistry students created, I should make it clear that I’m teaching chemistry this year under some not-so-normal circumstances. I still want to keep my chemistry class as hands-on as possible. This has meant that I have to get creative to find lab activities that my …
I’m giving my chemistry students weekly element quizzes until they have the symbols and names of the first 36 elements memorized. I broke the first 36 elements down into three sets. Each week, my chemistry students have 12 elements and their symbols to memorize from the periodic table. When I told my husband of my …
My chemistry students are taking weekly element quizzes until we have the symbols of the first 36 elements memorized. A couple of weeks ago, we played a few rounds of Element Bingo to give them practice remembering the symbols for each element. Students were given a blank Element Bingo card (free download at the bottom …
We’re making slow but sure progress in chemistry. A few weeks ago, it came time to learn to classify matter. While looking through my reference textbooks for ideas, I ran across an idea in the teacher’s edition of Prentice Hall Chemistry to demonstrate to students how to identify substances vs mixtures. Here’s the idea in …
At the beginning of my career, I ran across a set of free scientific method posters from Scholastic. I remember thinking to myself, “These are so cute. I almost wish I was a science teacher!” Fast forward a few years. I’m now teaching chemistry after teaching physical science last year. This means I can finally …
Just a quick post today to share a How Many Elements Can You Name Quiz I recently wrote for my chemistry class. It’s a quiz to see how many of the elements they already know before we delve into our study of the periodic table. I don’t expect my students to be able to name …
Quick post today to share another foldable I made for my chemistry class. Holt’s Modern Chemistry textbook places a big emphasis on differentiating between three different types of research at the beginning of the year. To help my students keep these straight, I made a types of chemical research foldable for them to glue in …
The chemistry textbook I am following this year (Holt Modern Chemistry) begins with an examination of the six main branches of chemistry. I decided to give students a foldable to glue in their notebooks so they would have the definitions of each of these branches. At first, I considered having the students write all six …
I’m pretty proud of how the states of matter foldable I designed for my chemistry class turned out! We put this foldable in our chemistry interactive notebooks. The outside of the foldable shows the states of matter in order of the amount of energy present. It also gives students a place to write the name …
My chemistry students are currently working with basic definitions that form the crucial foundation of the subject. One of these words that must be defined is matter. Before giving students a specific definition, I decided to let them play with the concept themselves through a matter vs not matter card sort. To make my card …
After doing first week activities and discussing lab safety, it’s time to start our formal study of chemistry. Yesterday, I decided to have my students complete a frayer model with the definition of chemistry. But, first, I had students create a mind map/concept map/bubble map/whatever you want to call it map of what they thought …
Another day. Another poster. Today I’m sharing some SI Units Posters. I guess that must mean it’s back to school time. I’m teaching chemistry for the first time this year, so I decided I need to up the number of science-y posters on my walls. Last year, I found out I was teaching physical science …
I’m still on a quest to clean out my drafts folder before the new school year starts in a couple of weeks. As most of you know, last year I taught one section of physical science. When I announced to my math classes that we would be celebrating Pi Day, my science kids wanted to …
In a previous post, I promised that I would blog about my chemistry certification study guide I created to help pass the Chemistry OSAT (certification test for chemistry). Here are the details! This year I taught my first-ever science class. Now, I never planned on being a science teacher, so I never took any …
Earlier this week, one of the science teachers I follow on Twitter retweeted an activity posted by AACT. The activity was called The Periodic Table of Mistakes. At first glance, it looks like a regular periodic table, but there are actually 25 mistakes hidden within the table. I right clicked on the image and selected …