Articles

Filter by:

1 – 22 of 22 Articles

Nuts & Bolts | November 2024 Using Rolling Feedback to Clear Up Students’ Misconceptions
A high school chemistry teacher shares how student-driven feedback practices and rolling feedback help her address student misconceptions, allowing them to revisit content, correct misunderstandings, and take ownership of their learning throughout the year.
Nuts & Bolts | November 2024 Automated Assessment Feedback to Encourage Student Self-Reflection
A high school chemistry teacher explains her automated feedback system using Google Forms and Sheets, enabling her students to self-assess their performance. This approach enhances self-reflection and ownership of learning, while providing structured and meaningful feedback.
Resource Feature | September 2024 Enhancing Student Self-Awareness of Learning Progress in High School Chemistry
A veteran high school chemistry teacher shares how implementing a year-long strategy using ongoing lab examples enhanced students’ self-awareness, allowing them to reflect on progress, correct misconceptions, and take ownership of their learning.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2024 Flexible Grading and Immediate Feedback in the Chemistry Classroom
This author describes her flexible grading and immediate feedback strategy. Her technique promotes reflection and resilience, while enhancing students’ real-world skills and supporting a positive environment for growth.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2024 It Takes Two: Partner Work in the Chemistry Classroom
A chemistry teacher reflects on his transition from individual to partner worksheets. He shares his journey adopting the “Pass the Paper” and “Turn + Talk” protocols to enhance student collaboration and accountability in his classroom.
Classroom Commentary | March 2024 Experimenting with Standards-Based Grading in High School Chemistry
Two chemistry teachers describe their experiment with standards-based grading, sharing their reasons, methods, and challenges faced over the last two years. They hope to encourage teachers to use this practice themselves, and share their experiences.
Nuts & Bolts | November 2023 A Self-Paced, Mastery-Based Chemistry Classroom
The author uses three elements in her classroom: blended instruction, self-paced learning, and mastery-based grading. These components foster students’ ownership of their own learning, helping them find joy in mastering challenging topics and gain confidence in their abilities.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2021 Chemistry Semester Exam Redesign
In this article, the author shares about her experience redesigning a traditional multiple-choice chemistry semester exam to an authentic assessment for her Honors Chemistry students. Motivated to create an assessment made up of more thought-provoking questions, and encouraged by the style of the AP chemistry exam, she shares example questions, grading rubrics and overall feedback related to the redesign and implementation.
Tech Tips | March 2021 How to Use Online Forms and Surveys to Enhance Remote Learning
In this article, the author describes how the remote learning setting can be challenging for teachers. The inability to observe students’ body language and other types of real-time feedback can make it difficult to plan ahead and adjust lessons on the fly. With this in mind, the author shares some practical ways to use online forms and surveys to both engage students in remote learning and gain more real-time feedback on lesson comprehension.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2020 Assessment of Student Modeling and Stages of Thinking
The author shares her experience with modeling in chemistry, and specifically focuses on the assessment of a student´s individual progress with a model. She offers examples and rubrics that address specific components of the model for teacher assessment.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2020 The Benefits of Culminating Tasks
In this article, a teacher shares her experience implementing culminating tasks in the chemistry classroom. She shares her insight for best practices, and offers suggestions for hands-on lab experiences that can be completed at the end of a unit or a semester.
Nuts & Bolts | November 2019 Drawing Exit Tickets: A New Way to Formatively Assess
The author uses a modified version of traditional exit tickets as a useful strategy to formatively assess student understanding at the end of the lesson. Her students are asked to summarize what they have learned by creating drawings. She shares that recent research has shown that drawing can be more effective than writing as a tool for remembering concepts. Read this article to see how you can use this strategy in your own classroom!
Tech Tips | May 2019 Edpuzzle: A Video Formative Assessment Tool
In this article, the author discusses the use of video media to enhance teaching and learning through the use of the Edpuzzle platform. He shares his thoughts about the many ways that using video media can increase student accountability and engagement, while providing more data about student achievement throughout the lesson. Edpuzzle can be a helpful tool to formatively assess student understanding, identify misconceptions, and drive instruction.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2018 Designing Effective Multiple-Choice Items in Chemistry
Multiple-choice questions are frequently used in both formal and informal assessments in order to determine if students have mastered specific learning objectives. This article discusses the characteristics of multiple-choice items as well as some guidelines for writing them. It is possible to design multiple-choice items that emphasize conceptual understanding and critical thinking skills. The creation of high-quality assessments can provide useful information about student learning and help teachers make important decisions about instruction.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2018 Instant Feedback on Quizzes
In this article, a high school teacher describes his successful implementation of a system for providing students with instant feedback on their chemistry quizzes. This idea can be easily implemented in your classroom too!
Classroom Commentary | September 2018 Reflections of an AP Chemistry Exam Reader
This article describes a chemistry teacher’s experience as a Reader for the AP chemistry exam. She shares some reflections, pointers, and insights to help guide other AP Chemistry teachers in hopes of helping them prepare their students to achieve mastery on the exam.
Tech Tips | May 2018 Use Moodle to Score Lab Calculations Instantly
One of the greatest time demands for chemistry teachers is the assessment of lab work. With a little bit of preparation, you can program Moodle (a widely available and free learning management system used by many schools) to correct students’ lab calculations and provide immediate feedback. The author walks through an example using a simple stoichiometry exercise used with his 11th grade general chemistry students.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2017 Using Formative Assessment to Guide Instruction
Formative assessment is a valuable tool for determining a student's misconceptions and level of science understanding, in order to guide class instruction. While it can seem intimidating, formative assessment can take a variety of forms to incorporate movement and collaboration in the classroom.
Tech Tips | March 2017 Using Google Forms for Remediation
This article, written in lab report format, discusses the use of Google Forms for online quizzes in the chemistry classroom. The author summarizes her experiences and methodology for using these quizzes in her classroom, and includes a link to a step-by-step video guide for creating quizzes as well as tips for implementing them in your classroom.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2015 Getting to Know What Students Know
How do you gauge whether students are learning what you intend for them to learn? This article, the third installment in a series of articles, offers ideas from an experienced teacher.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2014 Standards Based Grading in the Middle School Chemistry Classroom
The purpose of grading is to give feedback about learning, but the traditional point-based system fails to do so. Standards-based grading is an alternative grading system that focuses on student understanding rather than a letter grade.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2014 Formative Assessment—A Powerful, Quick Tool in the Classroom
Formative assessment methods can be a quick, topic-specific tool that teachers can use to discover students readiness for a topic. Formative assessment up-front can make a unit run smoother. These assessments do not have to be difficult to implement, and you will be glad you did it in the long run.