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I will be teaching a high school Conceptual Chemistry this year and have never taught a conceptual class. I have taught a generic and honors chemistry course, but I am looking for ideas for more hands on activities as well as what to avoid. Thank you in advance!

I am new too and will watch replies to your question with interest. cheers Jodie

There is a text by this name with lots of great resources Start here http://conceptualchemistry.com/

Thankyou Pamela Jodie

Thank you very much!

Josh wrote, "[i]I will be teaching a high school Conceptual Chemistry this year and have never taught a conceptual class....[/i]" Tell me more about your class. How many students will you have in it? I can be a little bit more specific in my recommendations. One thing I would stress is the importance of using some type of concrete model when introducing and further discussing chemistry on the atomic (nanoscopic) level. The students that typically take a conceptual class struggle with the abstractness of chemistry. They are certainly capable of understanding these concepts, but they need to have a little more teacher guidance than your typical honors chemistry student. You will also need to help them make connections (that will seem intuitive to you) between what they are seeing in their test tube or beaker and what is happening on the atomic level. One organizational tool I use to help my students do this is called Macro--Nano--Symbolic. First, students describe what they saw happen in an activity or lab. Next, they relate what they saw on the macroscopic level to what is happening on the nanoscopic or atomic level. Finally, I explain that chemists are extraordinarily "lazy" so they have developed a type of shorthand to help them communicate these concepts quickly. Then I introduce the symbolic language that chemists use. You also might consider having your students do a simple activity or lab before you introduce the concept. Dr. Arthur Eisenkraft and his team at COSMIC has proposed this teaching method. I've used it in my chemistry classes with relatively good success. You can watch a web seminar [url=http://learningcenter.nsta.org/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/9/WSNLC211_May12]here[/url] that explain and models this teaching method. The journal article [url=http://learningcenter.nsta.org/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/4/tst06_073_08_33]Artist as Chemist[/url] from The Science Teacher also models how to help struggling chemistry students. Another resource you might check out is the POGIL. You may already be familiar with it. However, in case you are not...it is another teaching method that is used in both the classroom and the lab. It focuses on teaching chemistry content, key process skills, and analytical thinking while students work in teams. It is a very student centered way of learning. You can view several [url=http://www.pogil.org/high-school/hspi/hspi-webinar-series]web seminars[/url] that outline how it can be used in secondary classroom. There are also several sample activities [url=http://www.pogil.org/resources/curriculum-materials/classroom-activities]here[/url]. Let's keep this discussion going as I think it would be helpful to many. Since you have taught chemistry before you have great experience with content, what are some essential concepts (in your opinion) that you think that all students need to understand?

Thank you for the resources! I think the biggest challenge when teaching chemistry is keeping the focus on the concepts and applications of chemistry and not getting caught in the "math whirlpool". I found myself spending so much time helping students with stoichiometry and solving calorimetry problems only to discover they had no clue what the math actually stood for. I know I struggled with this in high school and some college classes so I think it is vital to help students understand the concepts before cracking out the calculators. The biggest concepts students should know (especially the students in conceptual classes) are what matter is, what it is made of, the different states of matter (what each looks like at the molecular level), and the role of energy/heat in all science (nature is always lazy!). For my conceptual students, I am less concerned about the concept of the mole and more concerned that they have an understanding of how the world around them works :) What about you? What are the key concepts you think students must be able to understand. Also, what are some of the quick labs/demos that you have found the most effective for conceptual students? Thanks in advance!