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Category Archives: Science
Mnemonics As a Substitute For Understanding
There’s an insidious misconception that the ability to reliably get the right answer to a question must be evidence that the student thoroughly understands the topic. +4-4
High-Level Thinking Skills
As we approach the end of the school year, I find myself getting more and more frustrated about my students’ struggles with high-level thinking. Every year, it seems like they’re less and less able to figure out how to solve … Continue reading
Understanding vs. Getting The Right Answer
In a post on the ChemEd-L email discussion list, Harry Pence wrote: There is a common assumption that if students can do the calculations, they understand what the calculations mean. I didn’t always find this to be true. This is … Continue reading
Summer Assignments in AP Chemistry
I always make my students a promise: that I’ll never give them “busy work”—that I’ll only give as much homework as I think it takes to master a particular skill. Of course, I point out that this means that any … Continue reading
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
There’s a Murphy’s Law-style saying that goes, “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.” When it comes to teaching a high school lab science course, I would say that the opposite is … Continue reading
Teaching Graphing
Some day, one of my students will write a book entitled, Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Math I learned in Chemistry Class. Somehow, in The Emperor’s New Frameworks the post MCAS world, being able to read a graph … Continue reading
Clinging to What We Think We Understand
Einstein once said Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed. +20
Frustrations With Teaching Science in the Current Educational Climate
This is a message I sent to my department head that outlines some of my frustrations with teaching science in the current educational climate. For my out-of-state readers, MCAS is the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System–a set of high-stakes tests that … Continue reading
News Flash: Chemistry Works in Beakers Just Like it Does on Paper
My first-year college prep (middle of the bell curve) chem students have been studying different types of chemical reactions. I taught them to use the activity series to predict whether or not a single replacement reaction occurs. They can do … Continue reading
Baking Cookies as a Way of Teaching Lab Procedures
This year, the introductory lab assignment I gave my chemistry students was to bake a batch of cookies without using a recipe. I’m pleased with how the assignment worked out, so I thought I’d post about it here. +3-1