We did it! We made it to the end of the school year. Now it’s time to dive into a summer that will last approximately eight seconds,...

It’s that time of the year! Final-writing season. Writing a good, fair, time-sensitive final can be a challenge. I’ve written some...

Has this ever happened to you? You come up with a great idea for a lab. You can see how much the kids will learn by applying the...

Let’s play a guessing game on the most important thing to review at the end of chemistry. Significant figures? No. Stoichiometry? Not...

You’ve had this question before. “Should I have weighed my filter paper before I started filtering?” Duh. Of course, you should have. ...

MFEO. Teachers and catch-phrases are just that; Made For Each Other. And yes, I’m a male in my mid-forties who just quoted “Sleepless...

You write amazing questions. You create practice problems for your student that are deep and engaging. By writing all the questions, you...

“Fine.” It’s the worst answer to a teacher’s question. Let me interpret “fine” for you. It could be “this is the best day of my life”...

Don’t you love it when this happens? It’s the 'aha' moment. And it’s one that you set them up for all along. My students discovered...

You have this student in your class. She is perfect. She rarely misses questions on tests. Everything is by the book. Well, I gave...

I made a girl cry in chemistry yesterday. Actually, the world made her cry, I just happened to be the final straw. But in that...

Chemistry is hard. That is why we love it. If it was easy, it would be called “English”. Kidding, I’m kidding. Save the hate mail. But...

You have seen this while grading a free response question. The student started off so strong. The were carefully labeling their units,...

I remember grading the naming test a few years ago. The student started out decently. But the longer she went, the more convoluted the...

Can you picture the eye-roll that inevitably comes when you start across the room with a stack of worksheets? I hate it. Don't the kids...

We've all been there. You've spent hours preparing, thinking through, mixing chemicals, laying out labware, explaining to students. All...

We have all seen it. The kid that twists everything up in their mind. The one we root for. They circled the right answer. Erased it,...

Some topics are a little dry. No matter how important they are or how intrigued you are, the students just don't connect. I will share...

It only sounds judgmental because it is. Idiot mistakes. You know the ones. They are given real world stoichiometry problems and they...

I love this time of year; the start of stoichiometry. It feels like I'm at the cusp of teaching them "real chemistry." But it can also feel intimidating. So I tried something new. I taught them the concept of the mole without having them take a single note. By the end of one period, they were converting among moles, atoms, and grams. In their head. Oh, and they had fun doing it. I started by asking them two silly questions: Which has more things, a dozen cotton balls