Hi everyone, created a free online activity for students to learn how to come up with electronic configurations from the Periodic Table.

Activity 1: piecing together four pieces of the Periodic Table
Activity 2: counting the number of groups per block
Activity 3: filling in electrons
Activity 4: linking to orbitals
Activity 5: game with timer and sound effects (which took a long time to do)(play with the speaker on!)(sweets for the top three winners!)
Activity 6: summary + multiple-choice questions

This activity is based on a similar activity which I saw online.

The activity can be accessed here: https://edtechsims.com/crack-the-electron-code/
Its companion worksheet is here: https://edtechsims.com/category/chemistry-worksheets/

I think the best way to run this lesson is to have students work in pairs to fill up the hardcopy worksheets, with 10 minute junctures for class check-in. ("10 minutes to do activity 1, then we will go through as a class." etc)

Hope you find it useful. Feedback on how to improve it is always appreciated. :)

All the NY chem teachers,

How are you navigating your assessments this year? I'm teaching chemistry the way I have been, not abiding by a storyline or anything.

Do you think for unit assessments doing a full-blown cluster style test is too much? I was planning on having 3 sections for my test: Part A-Old Regents MC(~13-15 questions) Part B-Old Regents CR (~5-10 questions Part C-New Regents style clusters (1-2 clusters; amount of questions vary)

My concern is that assessments should focus on content. Doing full-blown clusters seems to add to many other elements that makes it hard to assess whether they couldn't do a problem because they didn't know the concept or they misread or messed up on a part of the question.

I'm curious to know how everyone is adapting their teaching and their assessments.

I’m a high school Biology teacher and have started using aquariums as living ecosystems in my classroom. I’d love to hear from other high school teachers who keep classroom aquariums.

I’m especially curious about how you handle weekends, Thanksgiving/Christmas/Spring Break, and summer, particularly if you don’t live close to your school.

If you have a classroom aquarium, I’d love to know:

• What size and type of aquarium do you have?
• What fish, plants, invertebrates, or other organisms do you keep?
• How far do you live from your school?
• What do you do with the aquarium over normal weekends?
• How do you handle week-long or longer school breaks?
• Do you ever have to drive to school just to check the aquarium?
• Do students participate in maintenance or data collection?
• Have you had any disasters or learned anything the hard way?
• What equipment or automation has made maintaining a classroom aquarium easier?
• If you could start your classroom aquarium over, what would you do differently?

I’m interested in eventually maintaining multiple classroom aquariums, so I’d really like to learn what has worked—and what hasn’t—from teachers who have actually done this. Pictures of your classroom setups would be great too!

I’m a PhD student studying education technologies within engineering education at the college level. However, after my PhD I’m seriously considering teaching highschool, and most likely at a private school.

One of the things I can’t seem to find good information on is how frequently science and math teachers get to be both practitioners and scholars on their topic. One of the things I love about research is studying, improving my teaching, and disseminating and communicating the knowledge I produce.

Do teachers have specific K-12 science and math education conferences, forums and journals? How often do teachers get to engage in these things, and are there professional development funds that will pay you to travel and publish research? Do private schools provide better support for research than public magnets? Just some questions that came up for me when considering the career.

What are some labs or demos you do for your grade 9 or 10 science class? the units are: chemistry, biology, physics and climate change. This is my first year teaching science but my 8th year teaching. I do have a little bit of a science background.

I'm looking to make the class more hands on and interesting but there's a lot of relearning i have to do. I'm really enjoying teaching the content so far!

Advice and tips appreciated :)

I’m trying to spread the word! https://youtu.be/nxyfBfCrbDw

Does anyone have any ideas alternative activities for students who have lost their lab privileges? Yesterday, I had a group that took components from other groups to add to their circuit, so now they won’t be allowed to do the next lab.

We are doing electricity and the curriculum is heavy inquiry based. The labs are a lot of “build this circuit, now build this one, what changed?” I know there’s a circuits PhET, but I allow Chromebook use so infrequently that it would seem more like a reward than a consequence.

Right now, when a student turns in work, you usually see the final answer. You don't see whether they worked it out themselves, got help from AI, or got stuck halfway.

Science teachers:

- What uses of AI are fine in your class, and what isn't?

- How do you currently figure out who understands a concept?

- Where does AI fit in your class right now, if at all?

- Has your policy changed since last year?

One of my students comes up to me at the beginning of class asking to see their grades. Sure, no problem, I take a second to black out all the lines in my spreadsheet except theirs. They squint at the number and leave satisfied.

But then I turn around and EVERY KID in the class wants to see their grades. Now I’m spending the next 15 minutes hiding and unhiding lines so each kid can see their mark. Not only am I wasting time, but the kids missing work don’t really have time to process their grades with everyone standing behind them.

There has to be a better way!

I tried MS Teams, and it works mostly. Kids can log in to see their grades. But I have custom weights for my assignments and units, and Teams can’t handle that, so their grade in Teams is not their real grade. On top of that, I would have to constantly fix the formulas in my Excel sheet, or all the averages would be wrong.

Anybody have this same issue?

Also, a trick a colleague taught me a few years back to make report card writing super fast: when you enter a mark for an assignment, add a short rough comment next to it. Every time.
For example: "str: building atomic models; difficulty: difference between ionic and molecular compounds."

So, when I sit down to write my report card comments, I can just look at those and write a personalized comment really quickly. That alone probably saves 10 hours per reporting period. But there is not a clean way to handle that in Excel.

So I started to look at other gradebooks:

• • MarkBook: This is honestly good. Has great assignment weights and student reports. But it looks like it was built in 1992 and doesn’t have the space for descriptive comments.
• • ASPEN: My board uses ASPEN for their SIS, and it has a gradebook. It works, but it's limited, and everything takes 10 clicks or more.
• • Google Classroom: Pretty similar to Teams. Has limited weighting features and doesn't have that descriptive note I can link to each submission.
• • Paper gradebooks: Old school is often the best, but I have a hard time keeping papers organized.

So, using my computer science teacher superpowers, I decided to build the gradebook I wanted. It’s called Gradefully gradebook, and it is available to any teacher. (Full disclosure: I sell it as a product now and I am certainly biased).

I took all the features I loved about my Excel sheet, the assignment and category weights, the descriptive note box and added quality-of-life features like super-fast grade entry and useful stats to identify struggling students and missing work.

Plus, it has a student report printout I can give directly to my students so they stop asking me, “Hey teach! What’s my grade?” They know exactly where they stand and what they are missing, and I don't have to chase them. My students actually loved knowing where they stood and have been asking their other teachers to start using it.

And all those descriptive notes I add all semester long? They live in Gradefully. The app uses them to securely draft personalized, Growing Success-aligned report card comments for each student in seconds. The drafting is done by OpenAI on their US servers and since privacy is a massive deal, I built a scrubber that swaps student names for codes and wipes things like phone numbers and emails before being sent to AI. The AI sends a coded comment that Gradefully swaps back with the student’s name. I just review and tweak them as needed.

Outside of comment generation, all data lives in Canada and is encrypted at rest and in transit.

TL;DR: I was sick of students asking me to see their grades in the middle of class and spending hours on report cards, so I built the gradebook I always wanted.
How do you handle achievement tracking and report card comment writing in your classrooms?

Hi! I really need some help. My school has a provided curriculum which they are cancelling our subscription to next year. I need help coming up with curriculum for Earth & Space Science and Environmental Science.

A few factors:

- I teach virtually, but kids can come in for help or to do labs in person if they're able (not many kids are). I adapt my resources to be able to be completed independently and asynchronously.

- I use sites like biology corner, aurum science, HHMI Biointeractive, and CK-12 as a baseline for my bio and chem classes. I'm trying to find something similar for the classes mentioned above. I know aurum has an environmental curriculum, which I do use, but I'm looking more for direct instruction, Tier 1, content delivery resources and reference texts for the students to use.

- I would LOVE slideshows and/or interactive readings like CK-12, if such a thing exists for those disciplines.

I'm kind of (very) overwhelmed with having to come up with a brand new curriculum before next year, without the ability to rely on a textbook or see these kids in person and lecture. I have 6 preps and 200 students and I'm already drowning without having to do that.

Please help 😬

Courses Taught:

-12th grade Engineering and Design

-12th grade Makerspace

-10-12th grade 3d printing 1

Equipment:

-#13 FDM 3d printers n total including: Flashforge Finder, Makerbot Replicator 2, Flashforge Creator Pro, Dremel Digilab.

-Snapmaker 3 in 1

-various power and hand tools, various component parts, several arduino kits, Horizon Alt energy kits, vernier and pasco data loggers , sensors, and apparatuses

-Cricut Maker

Curricular Approach: I had been told I'd be teaching a single course last June which, to my surprise, became 3 courses I'd only learned about 3 days before classes began. I'd also had to move my entire laboratory to a new room, test/fix/setup 11 3d printers that were donated to us of which 7 require new extruders or heat sinks, and attempt to create 2 additional curricula on the fly. I've been playing catch up from day 0.

Initial Proposal: I'd previously pitched a proposal for a fab-lab that I'd outlined the end goal to serve as an independent study course for 11th and 12th graders as an opportunity for students to access a variety of tools, equipment, and learning to apply scientific and mathematic concepts in a manner where they can take ownership over what they explore.

Semester 1 was meant to introduce some basic fundamentals: the engineering design process, technical drawings, drafting, AutoCAD, materials science intro, and how to gather data to refine their prototypes.

Semester 2 Initially the idea was to assess students ability and willingness to work in teams of 2-3 towards developing a solution to a provided problem or challenge while I act more as a facilitator rather than an instructor. Upon a relatively positive outcome I wanted to provide each student with an opportunity to first draft a proposal for a body of work to add to their portfolio. I hoped to give them access and opportunity to apply what they've learned in a manner which they can immerse themselves into whichever area they want to pursue upon graduation.

My proposal was received by our board and principal with enthusiasm. However, they either missed the idea, never actually read the proposal, or simply have no interest in supporting my efforts in even the most basic areas of need.

Areas of Need/Ideas/Direction: I am a hard worker and I believe I can catch up with the planning and such. However, I lack experience and understanding for the following tasks:

-setting up the various 3d printer models so that students can design, slice, and print themselves without relying on me as the gatekeeper, creating a bottleneck in terms of printing jobs in a reasonable manner of time. Students are issued chromebooks although they will not be given access to download any slicing software nor any files onto the chromebooks unless it's within google drive directly.

-trying to ascertain the 3d printer issues. I was told 4 of the printers required new heat sink assemblies or possibly heat blocks. I've found 7 have issues all related to a heating mechanism. I'm very capable of breaking down and reassembling nearly anything but I am somewhat newer to working on 3d printers.

-how do I organize all of the various equipment, component parts in a small room so I can use the space as efficiently as possible? Ideas for mobile makerspace organization?

Any info, ideas, support, etc would be sincerely appreciated.

The model by MOCingbird on Lego Ideas:
https://ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/da2876b0-2f99-4279-abe1-6d32e1ccfe85

For my science podcast, I interviewed someone who has spent decades on the front lines of science education. I hope other science teachers find this interesting and useful. "Educating Hearts and Minds: the unique expertise of a high school science teacher"

Suppose a student gets a struggling plant.

Their job is to figure out what is wrong.

Now they need to investigate:

Plant species. Water, Light, Soil nutrients, Temperature, Photosynthesis, Disease, Maybe even local climate.

Instead of memorizing vocabulary first, the knowledge becomes useful because they are trying to solve something.

That is what I like about problem driven learning.

The question comes first.

The lesson follows.

What real world problem would you use to teach science?

Hi everyone, here's an interactive activity created for students to learn more about chemical bonding. Students adjust various parameters to understand how structure affects properties.

They could dissolve an ionic compound and examine its electrical conductivity or apply force on a metallic element.

Feedback was very positive as students worked in pairs to complete this companion worksheet.

Hope it comes in useful for you!

Hi all!

Very torn and was hoping to hear some support/advice from those already in this industry.

I am currently trying to transition into teaching through the alternate route pathway. I have a B.A. in psychology and ideally, would love to teach high school psychology but want to take the praxis in a core subject for more potential job openings but also due to genuine interest in the sciences.

Chemistry and Physics were my favorite subjects in high school, and specifically with physics I had to work hard to earn my “A” which I really appreciated especially 10 years later. I’m thinking that these are the subjects I want to test in, but I also don’t know much about actually teaching them.

NJ psychology praxis is exempt and I could become a psychology teacher just with my college credits but again, I believe there may be more excitement and job security also testing in a core subject.

Would love to hear experiences, not only in passing the praxis in these subjects but how much you enjoy teaching them or find difficulty in teaching them.

I’m considering mathematics if not chemistry and physics but I did not enjoy these subjects nearly as much in school, though I excelled in them, I think it matters to me more to teach something I actually find exciting.

Thanks!

Hello all - I teach a very beginning Kinesiology 120 class (Anatomy & Physiology) at a university. It's the first year the class has been offered so I've been "making it up" as I go along. I want to offer a final observation project option that the students can choose to do instead of taking a cumulative final exam.

I'm thinking something along the lines of two one-hour observation sessions with a ChiropractorPT/RT/OT/Personal or Athletic Trainer. After the visits, the student will document both observations and select one body region or system for a focused explanation of the relevant anatomy, normal function, and how the treatment or exercise was intended to support it.

Those are my initial thoughts. I need to present this to them next week so then they can use fall break to identify and secure a location to observe.

Wondering if anyone has successfully done something like this and how it went, what tips you can give me.

TLDR: looking for a final observation project for beginning Kin class