Erik Haigler
INTASC 6: Assessment: The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage
learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s
decision-making.



NSTA 5a: Collect, organize, analyze, and reflect on diagnostic, formative and summative
evidence of a change in mental functioning demonstrating that scientific knowledge is gained
and/or corrected.
NSTA 5b: Provide data to show that P-12 students are able to distinguish science from nonscience, understand the evolution and practice of science as a human endeavor, and critically
analyze assertions made in the name of science.
NSTA 5c: Engage students in developmentally appropriate inquiries that require them to
develop concepts and relationships from their observations, data, and inferences in a scientific
manner.
In student teaching I was able to teach high school chemistry to juniors and was able to support
my teacher by answering questions and leading discussions during an AP chemistry class of mostly
seniors. The AP class was an unsuspected opportunity that really gave me great insight of how to run
and prepare an AP class, which was much different from the regular chemistry class. After my time in
the AP class, I have decided that teaching AP chemistry is something I would definitely like to do after I
have a good grasp on the 11th grade chemistry class. Due to block scheduling at my school, I was able to
see almost the entire high school chemistry curriculum, which I found to be very beneficial to form a
pacing guide in my brain. Furthermore, the block scheduling system allowed me to review all concepts
and give myself a head start in preparing for my chemistry class next year. For my Unit, I simply picked
the next unit we were covering in class, which happened to be Periodic Trends and Valence Electron
Configuration
My Periodic Trends and Electron Configuration unit consisted of 7 day (90 minutes a day)
lessons that covered all periodic trends, valence electron configurations, and Lewis dot structures. This
covered all required concepts about periodic trends, how to draw Lewis dot structures, how to calculate
protons, neutrons and electrons and develop an understanding of valence electron configuration from
the full electron configuration. All lessons were prepared using the 5 E model of inquiry learning with
numerous formal and informal assessments (NSTA 5a).
My unit started with an inquiry-based mini lab that gave an introduction to protons, neutrons
and electrons and how they interact in an atom. Students should already have a strong prior knowledge
of this material and almost no introduction was needed. This exercise was more of a review session of
what the students should already learned in prior science classes. The students worked with lab
partners to conduct a lab I made with simply materials, such as a plastic bag and other materials found
in the classroom. The purpose of the lab was to show students how subatomic particles attract and
repel in an atom and why this is important to the makeup of the elements. After the lab, I led a
discussion that was very student directed because of the student’s prior knowledge. I gave each student
a laminated periodic table and using the Smartboard was able to identify and label the key parts of the
periodic table for each element, such as the symbol, name, atomic number and atomic mass. Using the
Erik Haigler
key parts, I did a few examples on the board, where as a class we identified the subatomic particles of
various elements and isotopes. After I felt students had a strong grasp of the concept I gave the students
an activity sheet for practice. Students were to first to work on the activity sheet by themselves, if they
needed help they were told to ask their neighbor and if they were still confused they were to ask me.
The next day students were evaluated on the concept with a quiz that was very similar to the activity
sheet.
After the quiz, I played a short engaging video on the elements and periodic trends, which I
thought was a great introduction to our next couple of lessons. The video was followed with an Alien
Periodic Table activity where students had to group and organize the aliens in a way they made since to
them. The table should have shown strong similarities to the periodic table and questions were asked on
their sheet to make the connection to this. After student constructed their table and answered the open
end questions, I gave a short lecture about groups, periods, important families etc. After that, the
students were paired up and given the rest of the period to research and create an interactive project
(powerpoint, google doc, prezi, etc) on the topics covered during the lecture and needed to research
some other information to satisfy the criteria needs. The presentation will be turned in and graded.
The third day started with a Youtube video of a brief description of the periodic trends we were
going to cover in class that day. After the video, the students will reconnect on the Alien Periodic Table,
but this time the focus will be on the trends of the aliens and the questions focus on the connection
between the alien’s trends and the trends seen in the video. (Figure 1) A short interactive lecture using
the Smartboard will be given on three of the trends and student must draw the arrows of how the
trends move across the periodic table. This will be followed with a March Madness activity, where
students will be given a trend and based on that trend an element will advance to the next round, which
will have a different trend key. Students really liked this activity because it was during the NCAA March
Madness Basketball tournament and many of them already had brackets for the real tourney, so the
activity had a strong correlation for them (Figure 2) (NSTA 5c). Student will be evaluated throughout the
activity and l gave them an exit slip where they had to define each trend in their own words.
The fourth day I will show a video about electronegativity and the will be exercise this concept
with a tug of war battle, where each student will represent an electron, the more students/ electrons
the stronger the pull. This will be followed by followed by a student discussion and a think-pair-share
activity that will be done before and after a video to show growth in students understanding after the
class discussion and video. Finally we will end the activity with a Periodic Trend War game; this was
probably the student’s favorite activity and was similar to card games, such as spades, hearts and war.
What I did to make the game was to make element cards on cardboard paper and I had students roll a
dice to pick between the 5 trends and a “dealers choice” for each round. (Figure 3) The dealer then led
and the goal was to play the strongest card and win each round. The winner was the student who won
the most rounds when the cards ran out. (NSTA 5b)
The fifth lesson is a fun video activity where students will review electron configuration and
learn how to write the valence electron configuration. This was followed by a very short class discussion
and answered any questions the students had. Most students picked up these concepts very easily due
to the extensive time spent on electron configurations by my cooperating teacher. This discussion was
followed by Valence Electron Battleship game, where students played battleship on the periodic table.
Erik Haigler
(NSTA 5c) (Figure 4 and 5) When “firing” at the ship, students would call out the element and the
valence electron configuration for practice. Students really enjoyed this activity as well and got very
caught up in the game, the teacher next door came by to say quiet down because his students were
taking a test. The students were playing the game I just got very excited about it, but we did quiet down
and next time I would see what the teachers next door were doing to avoid this issue. This was followed
with a student directed discussion where I did a couple of practice examples and told students how to
draw Lewis dot diagrams using the orbitals and valence electron configurations. (NSTA 5b) After I felt
the students had a decent grasp I called students and had them do examples on the Smartboard and
asked them to give an explanation of why they drew it that way. After the students mastered the
concept, I introduced a drawing activity, where students received 6 blank note cards and picked 5
elements to draw and added information to the card that we learned in the lesson (On the front
students will write the element with the symbol, atomic number, atomic mass, classification, group,
period(energy level), protons, neutrons, and electrons. On the back students will draw the Lewis dot
diagram and orbital notation and give the oxidation number and valence electron configuration) .These
cards were not only a good activity, but also were good study material for the test. Students were
evaluated with their last note card, students paired up and each student selected the other student’s
element note card that they would make. Students then graded each others note cards that I reviewed
and they received a quiz grade for this.
The next day will be a review day where students had 30-45 minutes to do their homework
packet, assigned by my cooperating teacher. It contains key definitions and concepts throughout the
chapter with a few practice problems. Students are to do each problem and evaluate their own
performance and knowledge of the subject before choosing which activity station to do during the last
45 minutes of class. Each activity station had one of the activities we did during the unit. Students also
had the option to continue working on their homework packet, but most students choose either the
battleship or periodic trend game.
The final day of my unit was test day, I wasn’t able to make the test completely myself, but I did
have some input on what questions to throw out and add. The test had multiple choice questions, a bit
of free response, and a chart to fill out that covered all concepts covered in the unit. I was a little
disappointed that I wasn’t allowed to make my own test with many critical thinking questions but my
teacher wanted to use his own test. When grading the test I was very happy on the student’s results,
when compared to their other tests, students on average scored 8 points higher in one class and 7
points higher in the other class. (Figure 6 and 7) Since the test was created by my teacher/Pearson, who
makes the SOL’s, I concluded on the test results that my style of teaching (the 5E model) was at least as
effective as my cooperating teacher’s style (lecture based with activities thrown in). This was very self
motivating for me because I proved that my unit was efficient and well liked by the students when my
cooperating teacher informed me that the 5E model would not work multiple times.
If I were to teach my unit again I would change a couple of things, I would try to find some
newspaper articles instead of watching so many videos and incorporate think-share-pair activities with
the articles. The think-share-pair activity worked great and I felt was one of my strongest activities and
made the students really think outside the box. Also, I don’t think I would do the alien periodic table
twice; I would maybe do the activities together or find another activity for one lesson. Finally, I would
Erik Haigler
ask my neighboring teachers what their plans were that day to avoid being loud on a test day. I really
didn’t think we were that loud and my students were definitely on task, but I felt bad about this. It also
didn’t help that the walls in my building are paper thin and don’t even connect to the ceiling correctly.
Throughout my lesson plan I was constantly evaluating my students informally and formally.
Whenever students were doing a lab or activity sheet I was constantly circling my classroom and helping
students with questions. I made sure I did not spend too much time with one student and made sure I
got to each and every student. This was important because it made sure that the entire class was on
task and had a strong understanding of the concepts. Each lesson plan ended with some kind of formal
evaluation that was graded in some way by me. When grading I made sure to look for common mistakes
and at the very beginning of the following class I would quickly review misconceptions and problems
students missed. Any students that were still struggling with the material I would pull the aside and have
them come after school for 15 minutes or so for a quick review session. I feel that one of the most
important things a teacher can do is to not let students fall behind, this is especially important in
chemistry because the material build on one another. It is very important to me that I make sure all my
students have a strong grasp of the material and do not fall behind. I cannot give up on any of my
students. Just going around to each student and giving a couple of suggestions improves students
understanding so much because if a student gets stuck they tend to give up and I do not want this to
happen. During my spring break week, I was absent and because of this I was not able to go around and
help students the test scores plummeted and were by far the worst test scores in the class semester.