Things That Have Worked in Chemistry Lately

2026-03-06 8:41 PM

#chemistry #teaching

I've changed a bunch up in both of my chemistry classes this year. Here's a short list on some things I've tried and what I think about how they've gone.

• Regular repeated practice in second year chem. This second year course builds on first year concepts and gets into college-level material. For kinetics, they struggled with vocabulary and when to do what in labs and calculations. During the equilibrium unit, I made flashcards and I pick random items to start nearly every class. They get regular spaced repetition on the core concepts and that has translated into better retention on quizzes.
• Explain to an elementary student. For an exit ticket, I've started asking students to abstract concepts down to the simplest language they can come up with. It helps me see how they're processing information and how they take it to the basic ideas. It also mixes up the way they recall and rephrase concepts I'm assessing regularly.
• More time between labs. I try to include a lot of wet labs where students are either observing and describing or collecting real data and analyzing. I think I do them too close together and it overwhelms my first year classes. I've slowed down and that's helped them chew on ideas a little more effectively.
• Paper and pencil workspaces. For years I was in the edtech bubble. All of my thinking was about how tech should be in the room. I've swung back the other way and I've focused heavily on problem solving skills through written work. If they can write something down, they can generally figure out what to do next. With digital methods, it's too much clicking without thinking.
• Worked examples instead of following along for notes. Trying to write and listen is a complex skill not many of my 10th graders have developed. I've started using printed worked examples to annotate main ideas rather than writing problems down from scratch. It has helped my classes see the big picture before trying to tackle problems themselves.
• Feedback on everything. This one isn't new, but I work really hard to have next-day feedback on assignments so students can take stock of what they're doing well and what they need to avoid doing wrong on the next task. Whether or not they use the feedback is the next question, but I try to draw their attention to it as much as I can to build up the capacity to learn from mistakes rather than immediately moving on to the next thing without thinking about how they can improve or maintain good habits.