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JCE 94.07 July 2017 Issue Highlights
Encouraging and Supporting Community of EffortThe July 2017 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: artificial...
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Especially JCE: July 2017
How can a student show what he or she has learned in a laboratory? The way that might first pop into your head is the lab report. It is a tangible, written record of an experiment’s results that can...
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Great Science Geek Gear
Let's face it. Science teachers love to geek out with nerdy science wear (See "Nerdy Science Shirts" if you do not believe me). It is difficult not to. When my kids see my newest periodic table...
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Build Your Own Hoffman Apparatus
Chad Hustings blogged this past school year about building his own Hoffman apparatus for each group of students. I have been using a Hoffman apparatus that had been purchased by my district before I...
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Summer Reading/Book Review: Four Laws That Drive The Universe, by Peter Atkins
In a previous blog post, I shared a book Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction, by Dr. Peter Atkins. For my summer reading I wanted to get back to reading some chemistry non-fiction. I did, however,...
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SAFER SCI: Be Protected!
Teaching Science: Liability and You!I. Safety Issues in Doing Science!So here I am at my first teaching assignment in a rural school district several decades ago. This was long before OSHA had the...
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Elemental Haiku
In the August 4th issue of Science Magazine, author Mary Soon Lee shared a review of a periodic table that contains haiku for each element. There is an interactive periodic table you can click on; it...
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Classroom Culture - Phoning Home...before there is a problem...
What are we doing to help kids succeed? "Huh?" "Is this a prank call?" "Who is this?" "This is the first time I have heard from a teacher since my child was in sixth grade. I really...
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JCE 94.08 August 2017 Issue Highlights
Teaching Chemistry from Rich ContextsThe August 2017 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: visualizing the chemistry...
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Safety in Academic Chemistry Laboratories - 8th Edition
The ACS Committee on Chemical Safety has released the 8th edition of "Safety in Academic Chemistry Laboratories. The publication provides advice for first- and second-year university students. Free...
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Accepting Our Role in Developing Science Literacy
What does it mean to be scientifically literate? Defining this concept reminds me of a Supreme Court case in 1964 when Justice Potter Stewart was asked to explain why he felt the adult film involved in...
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Especially JCE: August 2017
Reading about a new idea for the classroom can sometimes spark connections to ideas that you already have in your teaching toolbox. The August 2017 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education triggered...
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Building Buy-In Through a Growth Mindset Classroom Culture
When you incorporate non-traditional pedagogies and grading systems into your classroom like Modeling Instruction and standards-based grading, you need to be concerned about buy-in from students and...
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Mini-Project Sequence: Orange Peels and Polarity
Two years ago, I saw a post here on ChemEd X about popping a balloon with an orange peel--and from this seed grew one of my favorite weeks of the school year.I teach chemical bonding in a pretty...
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Classroom Culture - Experiment on Day 1
"What are we doing to help kids achieve?" The call for ideas on classroom culture really got me thinking. What is the very first impression that I want to make on students? Do I want to pass out a...
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Life as an international school chemistry teacher
For this month's blog post, I was asked to share a bit of a narrative about my life as an international school teacher. So consider this fair warning: If you came looking for a direct connection to...
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Building a Blended Culture in a Secondary Science Classroom
The following blog post is adopted from a talk I gave at MACUL 2017 titled, “Building a Blended Culture in a Secondary Science Classroom.” A copy of the original slides can be found in the Supporting...
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My First Lab of the Year
This was my first week of classes. It is the beginning of the 30th year that I have been a high school teacher and the 28th straight year I have been in the same physical classroom. Shockingly, all of...
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Periodic Table Websites and Apps - An Update
With the start of the school year quickly approaching or having already started for others I wanted to take this chance to update a few resources regarding some periodic table websites and apps for you...
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Stop trying to get your students interested in chemistry!
In 2015, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) published a research report entitled Public Attitudes to Chemistry.1 I was surprised by the public’s lack of interest and enthusiasm for chemistry reported...
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