Ideas for Successfully Teaching Active Chemistry,
Active Phyiscs and EarthComm
1. Activity Before Content – This is the antithesis of traditional teaching. We want the
students to explore and have their own ideas and predictions prior to us prejudicing them
with out thoughts and ideas…….. resist the attempts at concept explanations prior to the
students exploring through the activity.
2. Antecedent Knowledge – How People Learn tells us this is one of the most
important cognitive findings that help teachers arm themselves with best practices and
strategies. We need to find out what the students know about the concept we are
teaching….. look for misinformation and misconceptions, and make sure the students get
a chance to change their beliefs. For us, we have the What Do You See? and the What
Do You Think sections of Active Chemistry to help achieve that goal.
3. Follow the Curriculum – Maintain a fidelity to the book. Resist the urge to add your
favorite lab or activity, especially the first year.
4. Slow Down!! – All research says to slow down, go into greater detail, go more
in depth with concepts. No more superficial skimming just to cover a topic or concept.
Use inquiry as the backbone of your strategies.
5. Formative Assessments – Look closely at formative assessments to inform and
enlighten your students and to guide your instruction………. not so much as a vehicle to
help assign a grade to them.
6. Assessments – Look at more short answer and extended response questions rather
than the traditional multiple choice and true or false questions. Give the students a
chance to explain rather than choose.
7. Connections - I always say it’s important to connect or transfer what the students are
doing in class to their everyday life……..to show that chemistry and its concepts are
imbedded in the real world and have a real degree of relevancy.
8. Challenge – Give the Challenges a chance!!! They work and work well!!! They
provide the overarching schemata to plug in content, concepts, vocabulary words, etc.
They spark interest and create goals for the students.
9. Mini-Challenge – Make sure you don’t skip this important facet. Doing this part way
through the chapter helps ally trepidations on both fronts (students and teacher).
Everyone feels better after participating in it, especially if it’s your first.
10. Chem Essential Questions – This section encourages metacognitive strategies and
helps tie the lab activities into the major concepts.
11. Student-Centered Class – Shoot for student-centered classrooms rather than
teacher-centered classrooms. This took quite a while for me to accomplish as I hesitantly
mitigated my role. I was at first uncomfortable with this set up but within a semester I
almost totally acquiesced into a new role. That was one of the best moves of my teaching
career.
12. Interventions - Be ready and willing to augment, accomadate, and differentiate with
different students and groups. It does take more work but it’s much better for the
students than a carte blanche approach where everyone gets the same strategies in the
same amount of time, like in a more traditional approach. I did it a little at a time, in tiny
steps, and now each year it’s much easier to start at a higher level.
13. PFCC – Don’t forget the Preparing For the Chapter Challenge in the Chemistry to
Go section of each activity if applicable.
14. Direct Instruction – Try and keep this strategy to a minimum, but when you do use
it, research shows it’s best to keep it in small increments at a time. Much like a good
clinician at a baseball coaches clinic. You teach hitting a step at a time. It takes more
time but it’s much more productive in the long run for assimilation and retrieval of
concepts by the students.
15. Expectations – Have and set high expectations. Be passionate about your teaching
and believe 100% in your researched backed curriculum. As you well know, students can
easily tell if your passion is real or pseudo and this affects their mind set.
16. Process Time – Give plenty of time for students to process what they have just done
and learned. We teachers are under the gun to cover so many benchmarks, grade level
indicators, etc that we subcomb to superficially covering concepts just to give the kids
some kind of shallow coverage but lacking the in-depth treatment that solidifies authentic
learning. The Reflecting on the Activity helps this dilemma we face by giving kids time
to think, reflect, and write in their journals.
17. Bloom’s Taxonomy - Use Bloom’s questioning for portfolio assignments,
interviews, conferencing, differentiating, etc. (eg, define versus analyse) I always ask my
students to give and use analogies also during an interview or conference.
18. Peer Support and Peer Teaching – Take advantatge of this student-centered
strategy. This promotes engagement in the lab, helps establish your framework for the
lab, and helps pique student curiosity in the labs.
19. Content – Learn the content via inquiry, not in addition to the lab. How Students
Learn
20. 5 Teacher Behaviors (Coburn) – These are essential for helping to establish and
promote inquiry science: 1. Ask open-ended questions. 2. Use wait time when asking
questions. 3. Respond to students by repeating or paraphrasing what they have said
without criticism. 4. Avoiding telling students what to do, praising, evaluating,
rejecting, or discouraging students ideas or behaviors. 5. Maintaining a disciplined
classroom.