Ideas on Chemistry

Chemistry teaching ideas using the laptops

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Traditionally, because chemistry topics in Chemistry tend to lend themselves to practical work, they become topics with a significant amount of time spent in practical work, and this is great, and helps maintain student engagement. Unfortunately the practicals that are used are often completed with the primary purpose of allowing a practical task to be held, rather than getting the full benefit from each practical that is completed. Furthermore, process skills sometimes tend to be ignored, as if good process skills do not apply to chemistry investigations. So, I suggest the following sequence with an attempt to develop process skills from each investigation.

1. Lead students in using Freemind to create a mindmap to revise what they know of compounds (e.g. from years 7 and 8).
2. Produce a revision quiz for them to revise important concepts about compounds from their years 7 and 8 work. An example is this crossword, or this one on classifying elements, compounds and mixtures (made with Learning Activity Wizards in your portal).
3. If necessary an idea to reinforce the difference between elements mixtures and compound has been done with nuts, washers and bolts. If using this activity, students could prepare a OneNote page (or section) with photographs taken using the laptops to indiacte how the contents of each container illustrates the features of either an element, a mixture or a compound.
4. An understanding of the structure of an atom can be achieved using an Atomic Models project lesson (demonstrated in the log-in section). This uses the TALE object L3125 on Exploring Atoms. Students use the learning object to answer a series of questions on the structure of the atom and models of the atom. Students can also make use of this atomic theory site to recognise some limitations of the models. Students present their answers as a PowerPoint type of presentation (or pdf or Prresenter). A one-note file of this lesson has been prepared here. of the lessons listed here at steps 4, 5 and 6.
5. This is then an appropriate time to complete the Periodic Table exercise from Curriculum Directorate.
6. It is appropratie at this time to inclue an element discovery lesson. Where students try to identify sample elements presented to them. Students complete a table of their results, and then use the periodic table program to identify trends in properties. This practical lesson is also detailed in the OneNote file and is called element discovery (Lessons from points 4, 5 and 6 are also shown in it).

Chemical reactions

When completing reations consider the followig strategies:

1. Students record the chemical reaction as a movie, and include the movie in their results, and then analyse parts of the movie to identify features of what is going on in the reaction. Simple recording of the reation can be done in OneNote. Detailed recording of the movie to allow for more options for still pictures and other analysis may be best done using Premiere Elements. Such pictures could also be into their practical report an be annotated.
2. Record photos of the reactions to be included in their report for the experiment. Again, the photos can be annotated to highlight specific features of what is happening in the reaction.
3. Simulate the reaction using one of the simulators. These tools could be used before (so that they know what to look for) or after (to revise what they should have seen) in the reation.
   1. Reaction of Metals with Acids (Intel) (From TALE) (Search for Reaction of Metals with acids)
   2. Others coming...
   3. Virtual Lab Simulation (This can be run from the laptop by downloading and extracting the windows zip file and then running the file "vlab.jar"). May be more useful for senior chemistry.