You do not need a special, beautifully designed “sub activity” sitting in a folder somewhere. Some of the best chemistry sub plans are probably already sitting in your classroom, on your computer, or in your stack of extra copies. Here are some of my favorite ways to turn what you already have into an easy sub day.

1. Save Your Extra Copies

This is one of my favorite teacher hacks because it requires almost no additional work. 

If you have some worksheet you never got to, clip it together. If you have a worksheet from another teacher that doesn’t totally fit your vibe, run copies and clip it together. When you have extras of something, bring it back to the copier and make some more. Clip those together. Label these packages A, B, C etc. Then in a Google Doc describe to yourself what’s in these packages. 

Come 5AM, you write an email “In this drawer, pull out package B and distribute to students.” Boom. Sub plans done. 

If you don’t mind students redoing an assignment, (I know I don’t!) create “Unit Folders.” All your extra Atomic worksheets can go into a folder and students can choose 1 Atomic Worksheet to do again while you’re away. It doesn’t even have to replace the old grade. Just treat it as a review assignment. You can have 10 sheets on isotopes, 15 on average atomic mass, 25 on spectral lines… As long as it can go in your grade book as “Atomic Review” it’s fine! Wins all around. 

2. Make a Quick Practice Review Packet

This is basically the more organized version of the extra-copies method. If you have my Quick Practice Worksheets, pull a few from topics your students have already learned and combine them into a review packet. You don’t even need to perfectly match whatever you’re currently teaching.

Actually, I like using sub days for older material. Students forget things. Giving them a dimensional analysis problem when you’re currently teaching bonding isn’t wasted time. It’s retrieval practice! Plus if you’re using interactive notebooks, you know your students have the reference material they need to complete the work you left for them. 

Choose a few skills, and you’re done. Make a couple of these packets ahead of time. Keep them somewhere labeled CHEMISTRY EMERGENCY SUB PLANS and forget about them until you need them. Drop them in that Google Doc I mentioned earlier. “Package D: First Semester Math Review.” “Package E: Graphing Review.”

3. Have a Vocabulary Day

Vocabulary review is another easy option because it works with almost any unit. Pull vocabulary from your current, or several previous units and have students review it.

Depending on how much structure your class needs, they can:

• Define the terms
• Draw diagrams or examples
• Use each term correctly in a sentence
• Create their own review questions
• Do a crossword or joke puzzle

It’s not flashy, but sub plans don’t need to be flashy.

4. Bring Back an Old Game

You know that review game your students loved three units ago? Use it again.

The same goes for task cards, card sorts, matching activities, stations, or other hands-on review activities you’ve already taught students how to use. These are especially good sub plans for classes you trust to work somewhat independently. And because students have already seen the format, your substitute doesn’t have to spend 15 minutes trying to decipher your elaborate instructions.

I tend to do things like this when the marking period is changing, and I don’t want to have to squeeze in a last minute grade to the gradebook. It’s also good for when you know your students well enough to know that they’ll take care of the materials and put them away nicely. 

5. Turn on a Movie, But Make It Chemistry

Yes. I said MOVIE. There is absolutely a time and a place for a movie day. But you can make that movie do a little more work for you. I have chemistry movie sheets that take regular movies and sneak chemistry questions into them.

A movie sheet might mention that a kiln operates at 1500°C, for example, and suddenly your students need to calculate that temperature in Kelvin.

They’re watching a movie, quietly, not destroying your classroom, but they’re also reviewing chemistry.  Everyone is happy! 

6. Know When Your Class Needs Quiet Work

Of course, not all of these tricks work, because you’ll eventually have that class. The class where you second guess how high your fever actually is. The class that is absolutely better off with you half conscious in the corner than leaving them with a substitute. 

This is where I love reading comprehension. Give everyone their own copy. Give them the questions. Let them work quietly, independently, and locked into their seats. 

Sometimes the best thing you can leave behind is structured, independent work that forces everyone to have a little quiet time. And they’ll still learn some chemistry while they’re at it.

7. Don’t Feel Like You Have to Move Forward

This might be the biggest one. Your students do not have to learn new content every single day. If you’re unexpectedly absent, you don’t necessarily need your substitute to teach the next lesson in your curriculum. You don’t need to have the sub pull up my YouTube channel to teach your students while you’re gone (although you totally could!)

Review is valuable! One day spent strengthening things your students have already learned is not going to derail your pacing. In fact, if you have something relevant prepped, it may even help! (Nothing like some dimensional analysis review right before jumping into stoichiometry!)

Build Yourself a Sub Plan Menu

Instead of creating one day’s worth emergency chemistry sub plans, create a menu of options you can pull from depending on the class and the situation. And keep them in that Google Doc so you don’t have to think much when you’re already feeling down. 

Keep:

• Extra copies from previous assignments
• A few cumulative Quick Practice packets
• Vocabulary activities
• Old games, task cards, and card sorts
• Movie sheets
• Reading comprehension activities

It’s so much easier to stick with this “menu” than it is to come up with something on the fly and panic buy something from TPT that you’ve barely looked at. If being too sick to teach somehow creates three additional hours of work I feel like we’ve misunderstood the purpose of a sick day.

The post Hacks for Chemistry Sub Plans: Stop Starting From Scratch appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

That isn’t what an interactive notebook has to be. In your classroom, you’re the boss. And you get to decide what “interactive notebook” means in your classroom. 

In my chemistry classroom, the interactive notebook became a living textbook. Every lesson, guided note page, practice problem, and review activity had a permanent home. By the end of the year, my students had created a complete chemistry reference they could use for studying instead of relying on a traditional textbook they rarely opened. (Or more realistically, my school never bothered to purchase.)

If you’re considering using interactive notebooks in your high school chemistry classroom, here are the strategies that made them effective and manageable for me. 

Think of the Notebook as a Build-As-You-Go Textbook

Many chemistry teachers don’t have a textbook anymore. Others have one but rarely use it because it doesn’t match their curriculum or teaching style. Or periodic table is Chapter 21 (I’m looking at your Zumdahl). An interactive notebook solves that problem. Instead of handing students a giant packet at the beginning of each unit, you’re creating the textbook one lesson at a time. Every class adds another page to the story of chemistry.

The biggest advantage is flexibility. If your students need an extra day on dimensional analysis, add another practice page. If they struggle with electron configurations, insert another guided notes lesson. If you discover a great activity halfway through the year, simply glue it into tomorrow’s notebook.

Unlike a printed workbook, your curriculum can evolve with your students on a near daily basis without requiring you to rewrite an entire unit.

If you have no idea how to construt your interactive notebooks, check out this post.

Establish a Consistent Routine

The best interactive notebooks are effective because they’re predictable. Students should know exactly what happens every time you hand them a new page. Here’s my routine: 

• Teacher makes copy of notes page and chops it in half using a guillotine trimmer
• Students walk into classroom and collect notes page and a glue stick before taking their seat
• Glue in the new page
• Complete guided notes together
• Teacher hands out “Show What You Know” Q-card
• Students practice with immediate feedback (we go over each question and make sure the correct answer goes into their notebook for study material)
• Return glue stick at the end of class on the way out the door

When students know the routine, you spend less time giving directions and more time teaching chemistry. This type of consistency also makes it much easier for students to find information later when they’re studying.

Keep the Cutting and Gluing Simple

One of the biggest complaints about interactive notebooks is that they take forever to assemble. And this is where your “creative license” comes into play. If you choose to have an interactive notebook full of elaborate foldables with a ton of tiny flaps and trap doors it will take forever. 

Your high school students don’t need time for arts and crafts. They need simple, organized learning. Whenever possible, design pages that don’t require your students to handle a pair of scissors. Print your notes 2 to a page and chop them down the middle with a guillotine trimmer before your students even get their hands on them. Your school probably has a guillotine trimmer hidden somewhere in the building. Ask the secretary who has worked in your building the longest. She knows where it is!

I still love an occasional foldable when it genuinely improves understanding, but those should be the exception rather than the rule. Your students will appreciate spending their class time learning chemistry instead of cutting out twenty tiny notebook components. 

Make Every Page Worth Keeping

One of my personal rules is simple: If it goes into the notebook, it should be valuable enough that students will want it later. Avoid busy work that gets completed once and never looked at again. If anything fits that bill, I print it full sized and expect it is simply used as extra practice that students can hold onto in a folder if they want to keep it. 

Instead, fill notebooks with resources students will actually revisit:

• guided notes
• worked examples
• vocabulary
• practice problems
• reference charts
• review pages
• common mistakes
• formulas
• glossary (get a free chemistry glossary!)

When students realize everything important lives in one place, they naturally begin using the notebook as a study guide.

Give Students Immediate Feedback

One of my favorite strategies is using what I call Q-Cards, but they’re better known as “Show What You Know” questions. Students answer a question independently directly in their notebooks. Then after a certain amount of time, we go over all the questions and I give out the answers. They check their work and ask questions as needed.

This accomplishes two things at once. First, students receive instant feedback while the concept is still fresh. We all knkow how much I love self assessment! Second, those completed Q-Cards become built-in study materials for quizzes and tests. Instead of reviewing random worksheets from weeks ago, students already have a collection of questions and answers organized right inside their notebook. Plus it means I’m not in a rush to get graded assignments back to my students to use as study material. The notebook becomes more valuable every single day!

Don’t Feel Like You Need the Entire Year Planned

This is one of the biggest misconceptions I hear from teachers. “I can’t use interactive notebooks because I don’t have my whole curriculum finished.” You don’t need it finished.

In fact, one of the biggest advantages of interactive notebooks is that you only need tomorrow’s lesson ready. Since pages are added as you teach, you can adjust pacing, insert additional practice, remove activities that aren’t working, or completely change your plans without wasting hundreds of printed pages. Your notebook grows with your class. That flexibility is especially valuable during your first few years teaching chemistry.

Skip the Notebook Checks

This might be controversial, but I never wanted interactive notebooks to create more grading for me. Notebook checks become another behavior management system, and in my experience, they don’t accomplish much in a high school classroom.

By tenth and eleventh grade, students understand the consequences of being unprepared. If they choose not to keep their notebook organized, they’re the ones who lose access to their best study resource before quizzes, tests, and the final exam. Natural consequences are often far more effective than another completion grade. I’d rather spend my planning period creating engaging chemistry lessons than flipping through 150 notebooks looking for missing pages and handing out 100s to students who don’t need them.

Build a Notebook Students Actually Use

The ultimate goal isn’t to have a pretty notebook (at least that’s not the primary goal). The goal is to create something students reach for without being told. When they begin asking, “Can I use my notebook?” instead of “Do we have notes on this?” you know you’ve built something valuable.

Throughout the year, students gradually create a personalized chemistry reference that reflects exactly what happened in your classroom. That’s far more useful than a generic textbook. Plus they can write it in, annotate, color code, and decorate as they see fit. Much more like how they’d behave with a college textbook they purchased. 

Ready to Build Your Own Chemistry Interactive Notebook?

If you’re excited about using interactive notebooks but don’t want to spend hundreds of hours designing pages from scratch, I’ve already done the heavy lifting for you. Whether you’re looking for a single lesson, an entire chemistry unit, or a complete year-long chemistry curriculum, every resource is designed to fit seamlessly into an interactive notebook while keeping assembly quick and classroom management simple.

You’ll find:

• Individual chemistry lessons
• Complete chemistry units
• Interactive notebook pages
• Guided notes
• Q-Cards with immediate feedback
• Practice activities
• A complete year-long chemistry curriculum

The result is a notebook that grows into a personalized chemistry textbook that your students will actually use long after the lesson is over.If you’re ready to make the switch, browse the collection and start building your own chemistry interactive notebook one lesson at a time.

The post How to Effectively Use Interactive Notebooks in High School Chemistry appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Some periodic tables are extremely basic and only include atomic number, symbol, and atomic mass. Others are packed with information like oxidation states, electron configurations, valence electrons, electronegativity values, and more. And there are good arguments for both!

Over the years, I’ve found that the “best” periodic table depends a lot on your teaching goals, your students, and how much support you want to build into the learning process. In this post, we’ll break down the pros and cons of different types of periodic tables so you can decide what works best for your classroom.

First: What Do Students Actually Need a Periodic Table For?

Before choosing a periodic table, it helps to think about how your students will use it throughout the year. In a regular high school chemistry course, students commonly use the periodic table to:

• Identify atomic number and mass
• Determine protons, neutrons, and electrons
• Predict ion charges
• Identify metals, nonmetals, and metalloids
• Find valence electrons
• Understand trends like electronegativity and atomic radius
• Write electron configurations
• Predict bonding behavior
• Calculate molar mass
• and probably more that I haven’t thought of…

That’s a lot of information to ask from one chart! The next question is, Do you want students to memorize and infer some of this information, or do you want the periodic table itself to provide it?

There’s no universally correct answer. Both approaches have advantages.

Simple Periodic Tables: Less Information, More Thinking

On your most basic periodic tables, you’ll have just the element symbol, the atomic number, and the mass. That’s all. This is what the “experts” use everyday. (It’s also what you’ll find on my pocket periodic table that I got from my HS Chemistry teacher, Mrs. P.) These are also typically what a student would receive on a standardized test, though not necessarily. If your students are going to take the ACT or AP Chemistry, this becomes more important! I’d check out the reference tables given during the State exam if you have one of those.

Advantages of the Simple PT

My favorite part of using the simpler periodic tables is that students actually have to learn how to read them. They become forced to recognize patterns (which I think is REALLY what chemistry teaches them! Who needs to know that water is a polar molecule in the real world?! It’s all about pattern recognition, baby!)

For example, instead of just looking and seeing that chlorine has 7 valence electrons, they have to recognize that chlorine is one space away from Group 18, the noble gases. The noble gases have a full valence shell of electrons. For chlorine, one short of full, would be 7 valence electrons. Ya see all the content knowledge I just packed in there?! Oh, it’s a beautiful thing!!!

Consider oxidation states. When it comes to bonding, students start to realize that ALL THE elements in group 17 have a -1 charge, (to fill up that valence shell with one more NEGATIVE electron). This method creates stronger chemistry skills over time.

Disadvantages of the Simple PT

When the first/only periodic table your students are given has very little information on it, it starts out as a frustration before it becomes a tool. Do you remember how frustrating rulers were when you first used them in first grade? Or maybe your protractor in fourth grade? Once you got the hang of it and learned to use the tool, it felt like a cheat code. Same goes for the periodic table. You’ll get plenty of moans and groans at the beginning. “Why can’t this just have the names of the elements?” “Why do I have to memorize oxidation states?”

But the thing is, your students aren’t really memorizing anything. They need to learn how to use the tool. Soon, group numbers, common oxidation states, and periodic trends are simply embedded into the tool’s usage. But before that happens, your students will be frustrated and will complain. (Personally, I think the frustration is worth the learning, but in your classroom, that’s a decision for you.)

Detailed Periodic Tables: More Support, Faster Accessibility

The more detailed periodic tables are going to have loads more information. They can include things like:

• element name
• state of matter at STP (often by color coding)
• oxidation states
• electron configuration
• electronegativity
• there are plenty more things that could be here, but they are far less popular, like density or melting point

Advantages of a Detailed PT

Your chemistry students have LOADS to learn this year. They’re doing algebra within this course. They have 400+ words to learn, most of which they’ve never heard of before. They’re working in the lab and writing lab reports, which very well could be more labor than the lab “worksheets” they may have filled out last year, when they were getting their feet wet with high school level labs. Giving them a more detailed periodic table could be seen as throwing them a bone in this very taxing course.

A more detailed table could be something you choose for your whole class, or as a form of differentiation. Some students may need the extra help, particularly those who have specific learning accomodations or are ENL students. It’s also a great option for homeschool students that don’t have access to an expert chemistry teacher (not knocking homeschool parents at all – you just may not know chemistry like a regular classroom teacher.) Perhaps it is a differentiation amongst students, or maybe between your honors and grade-level classes. Read more on simple differentiation methods I use in my classes in this post.

A more detailed periodic table can be an excellent choice if you are looking to have your students work more independently. Instead of asking, “how many valence electrons does sulfur have?” they can check out the electron configuration to get their answer. (This is assuming, of course, they know how to read electron configurations…)

Disadvantages of a Detailed PT

The biggest downside of all is that your students stop looking for patterns and instead just blindly read the “data” table that is the periodic table. If your students simply read that fluorine has 7 valence electrons, they can easily miss the opportunity to see the pattern amongst all elements in Group 17. They can miss the ENTIRE POINT of the specific organization the periodic table has. (That’s less likely if you explicitly teach a lesson on the History of the PT, but it’s something to keep in mind.)

Not only that, it can be very visually overwhelming. Depending on the amount of information, the space each element is allocated, and the font size, your detailed periodic table can quickly become a jump scare instead of a proper tool. Your students are already intimidated by chemistry. This much information can quickly make them clam up.

Perhaps the most scary of all (at least for me) is that your students may completely lose the ability to navigate chemistry. Now, this is an extreme situation… but I’d hate for your students to not know by May that Group 18 is the last group without looking at the periodic table for confirmation. It can feel a bit like a student who puts 3+5 into the calculator “just to be sure.” The chances of that being every student in your room is very slim, I’ll give you that, but it will happen to a kid or two. Just something to be on the lookout for.

My favorite Periodic Table

My favorite periodic table is one that is a nice clear font, where the capital I has caps on it (unlike the font I’m using to write this post). I want my students to be ABSOLUTELY aware of the difference between Iodine (I) and Chlorine (Cl). My dream periodic table has a very clear atomic number, usually bolded, and a mass that goes out at least to the hundredths place. Obviously I want group and period numbers along the top and left side of the table (and repeated for the f-block!) And that’s really all I want. If I chose to use a “more detailed” PT for students who needed accomodations, that would only include the element name. I have my students memorize a short list of about 50 element symbols and names (the ones we will actually use in our chemistry class). You can get that list for free here.

How to Choose a Periodic Table

If you’re brand new to teaching chemistry, don’t stress yourself out tyring to find the “perfect” periodic table. There really isn’t one. Instead ask yourself what you really want your PT to do, and what you want your students to know.

• What information is important for my students to know independently?
• What information am I okay with them needing to reference?
• Which students (if any) need some extra support? What does that look like for them?
• Do I want to do a gradual pull back of information that keeps students learning, and reduces the help they get?

In the end, the periodic table is simply a tool that helps students to understand chemistry and patterns in nature. And truthfully, it’s okay to change your mind halfway through the school year. There’s no issue with giving more support or asking your students to be more independent based on what you see in them and their abilities.

Need Help Planning Your Chemistry Curriculum?

If you’re trying to figure out when to teach concepts like electron configuration, bonding, periodic trends, or oxidation states, I have a free chemistry curriculum map that walks through a full-year sequence for regular high school chemistry. It’s designed to help chemistry teachers organize their year in a way that actually builds understanding step by step instead of feeling random and disconnected. You can grab the free curriculum map here.

The post How to Choose the Best Periodic Table for Your Chemistry Students appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

But trying to review an entire year of chemistry in a few class periods rarely works well. Students feel rushed, the review becomes surface-level, and the most important concepts don’t get the attention they need. In order to be effective, final exam review should be strategic.

In this post, I’ll walk through a simple framework for deciding what to review and what to skip, so your review time actually helps students succeed. Because it really should be different year to year, and based on the students in your classroom. 

Why You Shouldn’t Review Everything

The biggest mistake teachers make with final exam review is trying to cover every unit from the entire year. But the reality is, not every topic needs review. There are three categories of content that usually don’t need much class time.

1. Concepts That Are Too Basic

Some early topics simply become foundational skills that students use all year long. Your students don’t need this review from you. If they need it, they should get this review on their own. Things that come to mind are, metric conversions, lab safety, atomic structure, and reading the periodic table. 

Even if you didn’t integrate spiral review, students have practiced these skills repeatedly throughout the year. That happens by default. Chemistry requires these skills to be practiced all year. Spending precious review time on them often isn’t the best use of class time.

2. Concepts Students Already Understand Well

Sometimes a unit just went really well. If your students mastered dimensional analysis, or they nailed the mole concept you should not be spending time reviewing this. If most students performed well on a test and demonstrated they actually understand content you don’t need to review it. This is especially true if it’s a skill that continued to pop up during the remainder of the course. Nomenclature comes to mind. Once it’s learned, students use it all year long. There’s no way they did well, and forgot it all by the end of the year. On the other hand, acids and bases might not be in this category. They may have understood the first time, but didn’t get a lot of continued practice, so a quick refresher would likely suffice. 

3. Content Students Can Easily Review Independently

There are also topics that students may not remember perfectly, but they’re straightforward enough to review on their own. This is one of the many reasons I love building interactive notebooks with guided notes. Things that come to mind here are vocabulary-heavy topics (phase of matter, physical and chemical changes), memorizing formulas, and basic concept recall. Ensure your students know how to study on their own. They should be able to handle these easier topics on their own.

Let Your Test Data Guide Your Review

Instead of guessing what students need, one of the best things you can do is look at your assessment data from the year. Go back through your unit tests and ask:

• Which units had the lowest class averages?
  
• Which concepts required the most reteaching?
  
• Where did students struggle the most?
  

Those are the topics most likely to show up as weak points again on the final exam. For many chemistry teachers, the biggest struggle areas tend to stoichiometry, gas laws, solutions, kinetics, and redox. These topics often require multi-step reasoning, and a deep understanding of multiple concepts in chemistry which makes them much harder for students to retain months later. The topics were tough for them the first time around, and they also will review many topics all at once. This is where structured review activities are most valuable!

A Simple Strategy: Review the “Big Thinking” Units

Another helpful rule of thumb is to focus your review on the units that required the most problem-solving and conceptual thinking.

For example, understanding potential energy diagrams requires students to:

• read chemical reactions
• understand Collision Theory
• differentiate between endothermic and exothermic
• understand heat of reaction/enthalpy
• calculate enthalpy
• convert between joules and kilojoules
• manipulate enthalpy (Hess’s Law)
• have an understanding of moles as a way to group atoms/molecules

and I’m sure I could come up with 5 more if I took the time. 

Finding those heavy hitters will help your students the most. Simpler topics like naming compounds or identifying phases of matter often come back quickly with minimal review. Make sure to invest your time wisely. 

Let Students Use Their Own Data

One of my favorite strategies for final exam preparation is giving students a way to analyze their own performance data (you know I love self assessment!) In my classroom, students use a test score tracker where they graph their scores from each unit test throughout the year.

When it’s time to prepare for the final exam, this becomes incredibly valuable. Students can look at their graph and immediately see patterns:

• Which units they did well on
  
• Which units they struggled with
  
• Where their performance improved over time
  

From there, students can decide which units they personally need to review. This gives them ownership over their studying and helps prevent the “study everything the night before” approach that rarely works. If you haven’t been using a test score tracker for the whole year, you can usually still get the data together. Just go into your gradebook and print progress reports. You should be able to filter TESTS for the FULL YEAR. Then print them out and distribute them to your students. That’s effectively the data table that will form the graph. 

Remember That Understanding Can Improve Later

Another important thing to keep in mind is that students sometimes learn concepts better later in the year. A student might struggle with atomic structure early in the year, but after learning about the periodic table and bonding, the ideas finally click. If you only look at the original test score, it might seem like atomic structure needs heavy review even though the student now understands it. This is why I allow my students to retake tests. But when they do, they must plot the retake on their test score tracker as well as the original score.

One way to check for this is to give students a short benchmark or practice final exam before your review days. This gives you new data showing what students currently understand. If you’d like something ready to go, I have a final exam / benchmark practice test available that teachers can use to quickly collect this type of data before beginning their review. There’s a companion document that connects each question to a unit of study, so when students get their tests back, they know EXACTLY which lessons and units need their attention. You could even graph this data on the test score tracker as well. 

Add Some Student Choice

Review is most effective when students feel like the work is relevant to their own needs. Instead of assigning the same review packet to every student, consider building in some choice. Students should choose two or three units to focus on based on their test score tracker.

You might set up:

• Review stations for different units
  
• Choice boards with different topic reviews
  
• Small group practice based on similar struggles
  

This allows students to spend more time practicing what they actually need. Read more about ways that you can review with your students without adding anything new. I really like to break out old stuff and do it again. There’s no need to create 16 different review activities for each unit of chemistry. 

Final Exam Review Should Be Targeted

The goal of review isn’t to reteach the entire course. It’s to help students reconnect with the most challenging ideas and give them the confidence to apply what they’ve learned. In total, you should be targeting review using assessment data, student reflection, and bringing back heavy hitters.  Make sure to use that limited review time wisely before your students showcase all they’ve learned! 

The post How to Choose What to Review for Final Exams in Chemistry appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

One of the biggest frustrations teachers experience is this: You teach a concept in October, your students do well on the test, and you move on. Then April rolls around… and it’s like they’ve never seen the concept before. (I’m talking about YOU, Significant Figures!)If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This happens because students forget content that they don’t revisit regularly. When learning is concentrated in one unit and never practiced again, it’s easy for information to fade from memory. That’s why spiral review is one of the most powerful strategies you can build into your classroom.

What is spiral review?

Spiral review is taking intentional time to review old content by cycling it through your current content multiple times. It is usually the things that your students already understand but may need a refresher on.  You don’t want these things to become things that your students will need to be retaught.  Spiral review is typically student centered.  The biggest benefit of spiral reviews is that bringing up this material up again and again helps to force the content into long term memory.  You can get a free copy of my list of spiral review strategies here.  It’s a great thing to keep at your desk as you write your lesson plans.

Why Spiral Review Works

When students revisit information after time has passed, they have to actively retrieve that knowledge from their brain. Just the EFFORT of that strengthens memory. Those concepts have an easier time sticking around long term. You really want this happening every day in chemistry class considering its cumulative nature. Here’s the nuts and bolts:

• It helps with retention. Students are less likely to forget concepts taught early in the year
• It helps to build connections between chemistry topics. Ideas start to connect with ease.
• Reduces cramming. Both in your in-class year end review, as well as students working on their own. Talk about a confidence boost.
• Identify learning gaps sooner. You can catch misconceptions and misunderstandings before they snowball into something crazy.

It Doesn’t Have to Take the Place of Regular Review

I LOVE review activities. I think they are great, and certainly a useful way to spend class time. (There are many administrators that will tell you that spiral is an alternative to review days. “It saves time.” Phooey.) You can do one or the other, or you can do both. I think both is best. The problem with doing only traditional review days is that they often turn into teachers simply reteaching weeks, or even months of material ina cram session the day before the test. It’s stressful for everybody, and it’s not super effective.

If you are implementing spiral review in your chemistry class, students are revisting the old content a bit each day. PLUS they can get the massive content dump right before a test. But with that spiral added in, the review day is a lot more effective. That’s truly where learning gaps are filled and connections are made!

My Favorite Spiral Review Strategies: 

1. Incorporate old questions into new content.  This is usually happening on publisher made materials, but make sure to do it on things that you create for your students as well. 
2. Do Now or morning work is a great time to review some old content as you grapple with current content. I plan to piece together a year’s worth of chemistry bell ringers at some point for TPT! They will be spiral review focused!
3. Early finishers: any activities that your students do when they have extra time is a great opportunity to revisit old content. 
4. Sub Plans: absolutely leave review work with your substitute.  Then you don’t have to worry about the kids or the sub having any type of confusion with the content. 
5. Task cards: Old sets of task cards can be used again and again – reuse them! This is also a great way to use up the last 10 minutes of class when your lesson finishes a little quicker than you expected.
6. Unit Review or Station Review: any old activities, games, or stations that you use can be reused.  This works especially well with content that is built on past material. Chemistry example: Lewis structures and chemical bonding
7. Turn & Teach: I learned this method from Whole Brain Teaching and I love it.  Student A turns to Student B and teaches them what they know.  They take turns.  Give them a prompt that should be “review” in nature. 
8. Choice boards: A few of the activities can be old content, and some can be new. Choice boards are not my favorite. They feel like a lot of work. But if they work for you, integrate some old content!
9. Use of games: I love reusing an old review game, and so do my students! The more games the better. Here’s a blog post on ways to turn a boring worksheet into something more fun. “Games” doesn’t have to be a scary word for teachers.
10. Projects where the rubric focuses on both old and new skills as a way to test the new and keep the old fresh. I’m not really a “project teacher.” But if this is in your wheelhouse, then absolutely, go for it!

Again, don’t forget you can get a printable version of this list to keep at your teacher desk as you plan your lessons. 

A Better Way to Prepare for Final Exams

One of the biggest advantages of spiral review is what happens at the end of your school year. Instead of cramming in review sessions to your calendar, and your students scrambling to form study groups, there is a sense of calm. Your students have been practicing all year long. That means when final exam review starts, it feels very focused. That’s especially true if you give a practice final exam, or have been using my test score tracker all year long. Students can dial in on the few topics that are still a bit shaky for them instead of relearning all of chemistry in just 10 days.

By revisiting concepts throughout the year, your students learn more, retain more, connect concepts, and feel more prepared for exams. And most importantly, you can get away from the “teach, cram, test, forget” cycle and move toward deep understanding of chemistry.

The post Spiral Reviewing Content Throughout Your School Year appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

When students get stuck, when they miss questions, when concepts feel disconnected, I bring them back to electrons. Because once they understand what the electrons are doing, the rest of chemistry starts to make sense. This phrase is truly the key in connecting chemistry concepts. Let me show you what I mean.

When Students Are Confused, I Ask One Question

When a student gets something wrong, I rarely start by correcting the answer. Instead, I say “chemistry is all about the electrons.” And then if needed, I get a few probing questions or prompts going: 

• “You forgot about the electrons.”
• “Look at the valence electrons again.”
• “Where are the electrons going?”
• “Who wants the electrons more?”
• “Are the electrons shared equally?”

Because chemistry (the kind we teach in high school) is really the story of how atoms interact with each other. And atoms interact through their electrons. This consistent process of bringing it back to the electrons really ingrains for students that chemistry is really all about the electrons. It centers every test question, every concept, every lab. 

Electrons Connect Everything

One of the biggest struggles students have is that chemistry feels like random topics.

Atomic structure → periodic table → bonding → reactions → moles → thermochemistry → solutions → acids & bases → redox

To students, it can feel like ten separate classes that have nothing to do with each other. But electrons connect them all.

Here are just a few examples of how electrons work at connecting chemistry concepts:

• Light: Electrons changing energy levels
• Periodic trends: How tightly are electrons held?
• Ionic bonding: Electrons transferred
• Covalent bonding: Electrons shared
• Intermolecular forces: Electron distribution and polarity
• Chemical reactions: Electrons rearranged
• States of Matter: phase changes are related to IMFs
• Solutions: dissolving process
• Acids and Bases: becoming ions when dissolving
• Redox: Electrons transferred again

When students realize this, chemistry becomes less about memorizing rules and more about understanding behavior. And understanding sticks.

I will shout it until I’m blue in the face. Put it on your wall. Say it 180 school days. The number one scientific image in the world, that everybody knows is the periodic table. It’s LITERALLY organized by the number of total electrons, valence electrons, electron orbits, and you read patterns in it based on, you guessed it, ELECTRONS. If you want to learn more about using this rule to build a good foundation for your chemistry school year, you can take my PD, here.

Why I Don’t Teach Nuclear Chemistry with Atomic Structure

And the “hill I’m willing to die on” when it comes to teaching chemistry is that Nuclear should NOT be taught with Atomic Theory. And I know there’s a ton of people who do this differently, and respectfully I disagree. Because nuclear chemistry is the exception.

Nuclear processes are about protons, neutrons, nuclear stability and radioactive decay. When nuclear is placed right after atomic structure, students often merge the ideas incorrectly. They start trying to use electrons to justify nuclear decay. They use the nucleus to justify chemical bonding. And those misconceptions are hard to undo. Trust me! I combined them my first year and BOY did I regret it!

When nuclear is done separately and placed at the end of the year students already have a solid handle on the fact that chemistry is all about the electrons. In fact, when I start my nuclear unit, I say “chemistry is all about the electrons, until you get to nuclear.” And that contrast actually helps understanding. It is the exception to the rule.

Electrons Give Students Confidence

One unexpected benefit of this approach is confidence. Students stop feeling like chemistry is random. Instead, they have a tool: “If I don’t know the answer, I find out what the electrons are doing or want to do.” That shift moves them from memorization to reasoning. And reasoning is where real learning happens.

Learn More About Teaching Chemistry

I have a PD Training titled, Making Chemistry Connections that goes more into depth on connecting chemistry concepts in your classroom. You can find that training and others in my TPT store, or in my website store.

The post Connecting Chemistry Concepts: Chemistry Is All About the Electrons appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

(This post is adapted from a podcast episode you can listen to here.)

Why I Changed my Mind About Test Retakes

Like many teachers, I used to think retakes meant:

• students wouldn’t study the first time
• grades would become meaningless
• I’d spend all my time making new/duplicate test

But the reality is that traditional testing often measures timing and circumstances more than learning. Students get sick. They have bad days. They misunderstand one concept and it tanks their whole grade. If our goal is mastery, shouldn’t we allow another opportunity to show it?

That question is what pushed me to try a new approach.

And when it really came down to it, I had learned that test retakes happen all the time in the “real world.” The SAT, your road test… heck maybe even your teacher certification exams are things that you can take again and again until you pass or improve your score.

My Simple Test Retake Policy.

My policy is really straightforward:

• Students can retake any test within the current grading period
• There is no time limit on when they take that test (doesn’t need to be within X number of days)
• The can retake as many times as they want
• the highest score repalces the previous score
• they must fill out a test reflection form (this is a small yet simple barrier to entry that keeps students from retaking over and over without actually studying)

That’s it. No complicated point system. No averaging. No weird hoops to just through. And surprisingly, my students didn’t abuse it.

What Actually Happened When I Allowed Retakes

Here’s what changed almost immediately:

1) Students Took More Ownership of Their Learning

Instead of asking, “Can I get extra credit?” students started asking, “Can I come for a retake?” They moved from chasing points to focusing on understanding. If you know me, you know I love to push responsibilty on to my students. When we’re about two weeks out from report cards, I print out each student’s gradebook page. I force them to look at their average and their test scores. If they are unhappy, it’s time to review that material and retake the test. I’m not going to be held responsible for a failing test score if this student had an opportunity to improve it, and chose not to.

2) Parent Phone Calls Were Easier

“Why is my child failing? What are you going to do about that?”

“Absolutely nothing, ma’am. Your child has had 8 weeks to schedule a test retake with me, before school, after school, during luch, or during study hall and chose not to. I’d suggest you have a conversation about the importance of seizing opportunities, and prioritizing their education.”

It also helps to have this policy written into your syllabus. If you add this in midyear, send out a teacher announcement via email, or have a signed “syllabus addendum” homework assignment to make parents aware.

3) Test Anxiety Dropped Dramatically

When students know one test won’t permanently define their grade, the pressure decreases. A lot. When anxiety drops, performance improves. Students walk in on test day feeling calmer and more confident. Read more about improving student confidence in chemistry in this blog post.

4) My Classroom Culture Became More Positive

The biggest change wasn’t their grades. It was the relationships I had with my students. They knew I was a teacher who wanted to see them succeed. Not somebody trying to catch them on a bad day. That trust changed EVERYTHING. (Even for the kids who NEVER came in for a retake. Just having that option made all the difference.)

5) Retakes Didn’t Create More Work than I Expected

This is the part that teachers worry about the most. Not every student even comes in for retakes. It’ll likely be a handful of your students that take you up on the offer. Many retake only once. (Who wants to take a chemistry test after school when they could be doing something else…?) Most students actually improve both their scores and knowledge, which helps them out later in the school year for midterms and finals.

The teacher workload is manageable. Especially when you compare to the benefits. You can literally administer the same test if you like. You can give your student a different version of the same test. You can change from a 30 question multiple choice test to a 5 free response questions. This is the RETAKE afterall. You don’t have to follow the same rules. Heck, you could even make it a lab report if that aligned with the original content of the test!

Does Allowing Retakes Lower Rigor?

Sure doesn’t. In fact, it may even increase rigor. Students are required to keep working until they understand the material. And keep up with the current material at the same time. That persistence builds deeper learning? Read more about balancing rigor and grace.

What about Students that RELY on the Retake?

When I tell the kids that I have this retake policy in the beginning of the school year, I make sure to let them know that it doesn’t mean that they should do nothing while we’re learning and rely on the retake in two months. Because if they don’t know it now, they’re probably not going to know it in two months. And during that two months of time, we are going to be accumulating more and more content that they need to know and understand. That kind of scares them into learning it the first time around, because they don’t want to have to rely on the retake. 

A Minset Shift that Matters

I want the students to be able to show me that they learned whenever they learn. I don’t really care if it happens “late.” And I know that there are some people out there who were going to say, but what about the kids who learned it the first time around?

What about them? Lucky them that they learned at the first time around that all of the pieces lined up so that they were able to learn it the first time. I don’t think that we should be penalizing kids because they learn a little bit slower or a little bit later than other kids. At it’s core, this test retake policy tells your students this one powerful message: Learning matters more than the timing.

And when students believer that improvement is possible, they try. It’s not a DOA situation for their chemistry score if those first few weeks give them a run for their money.

If You’re Considering a Retake Policy

If you feel like you can’t offer unlimited retakes and you just want to be able to offer one, there’s other options, or ways to ease into it.

• Have your students come to a required tutoring session prior to the retake. Maybe that’s coming to your classroom during lunch or afterschool for some extra help.
• Have your students complete a reflection sheet that highlights the things they do and do not understand.
• Require them to correct the original test first. Maybe that is the “proof” they’re ready for a retake so you don’t have to do an extra work creating a new test that won’t change anything.
• This post really isn’t about test corrections and getting points back, but you could do that instead. But I don’t think it has nearly the same impact.
• Offer an alternative assignment that would demonstrate that they learned the same information but showcased in a different way. This could be a written paper, a lab report, or a packet of worksheets on the topics on the test. My quick practice worksheets would be a great alternative!
• Shrink your retake window. If a student wants to retake a test, it has to happen within two weeks, or 30 days. Maybe don’t start out with the entire marking period.
• Allow only one retake. See how it goes. Then upgrade to unlimited retakes. (All the cool teachers are doing it! – I’m kidding. That’s peer pressure, because I can’t go back to no retakes.)

Holding Students Accountable and Giving Grades Truly Based on Learning

I think that when kids are given the option, there are a lot of kids who will work really hard to get a better grade. And there are a lot of kids would just will take whatever grade they have and then that’s it. Even if they fell asleep during the test claiming, “I’m just going to retake it in two weeks!”

When it’s the end of the marking period and the kid isn’t proud of their grade, you have the ability to say that it’s on them because they didn’t utilize the retake window. You have the opportunity to say to a student that they were the ones who forfeited this chance, they didn’t take advantage of it. 

And then, more or less, you are in the clear for giving a kid a grade that they actually deserve. All of those typical excuses go out the window as soon as you start offering retakes.

The post My Retake Policy Completely Changed my Classroom appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Here are the simple ways I build test prep directly into my normal lessons, so review days actually become synthesis days, and not panic planning days.

1. Rework Classwork

At the end of each guided notes lesson, I give students a short set of independent practice questions. This usually takes about 8–10 minutes and students work directly in their notebooks.  Students work on their own, and try applying the newly learned content immediately. When they’re done working, I share the answers. 

This does several things at once. Students can IMMEDIATELY check their understanding. You KNOW how much I love self assessment. Your students can correct their mistakes while the lesson is still fresh, before moving on to the graded assignment for the day. And lastly, your students are leaving with plenty of example questions with the correct answers/solutions EVERY DAY. 

By the time we get to unit review, these questions are perfect for going back and reworking. It’s especially great for at home studying. Since your students have this material, that means your review time can be spent connecting concepts, fixing misconceptions, and strengthening weaknesses, instead of attempting to cram in everything the day before the test. 

2. Reuse your task cards, card sorts and games on purpose

If you already use task cards, card sorts, or games (really anything worth laminating) during your lessons, you are sitting on built-in test prep. I’m in love with my laminator because I plan on using these activities again and again. I use these things, once during the lesson when the concept is first taught, and again during unit review. And sometimes again

When you do this consistently, students aren’t busy worrying about the structure of the activity. Instead, they’re focused on the chemistry. This is really powerful because it’s way more low-stress the second time around. Your students know the type of thinking that is required. And so they just take all their time and energy and make connections between topics instead of figuring out what to do. Plus, by reusing what you have, you aren’t creating any new materials, just for review. 

3. Use lab rewrites as review (for the right labs)

If you are a believer in test makeups, lab rewrites, and learning at your own pace, this tactic is for you! During unit review, I allow for lab rewrites. But only for a few specific labs. Students are only allowed to work on lab rewrites for labs where the content directly matches the content of the test. This lets the lab do the work to reinforce concepts that the students need to understand for their test. But at the same time, they’re actually getting work done and improving their grade in chemistry. Plus a lot of the time, your students are working together. Win-win-win if you ask me!

4. Build review into your classwork before it becomes “review”

One of the easiest ways to turn normal lessons into test prep is to stop thinking of classwork as isolated. When I write classwork worksheets and assignments, I like to include one or two questions that connect back to a previous topic. But even if you didn’t, you can ask students to compare today’s concept with something they learned earlier in the unit or the school year.

Students don’t even realize that this is review. By the time review day arrives, students have already been practicing connections for weeks. This is the beauty of spiral review. You can check out this post about spiral review strategies that I use in my classroom. If you use my Guided Notes Curriculum, the structure lends itself to very simple spiral review, but I’ve already done that all for you! 

5. Chemistry is all about the electrons

The easiest way for your students to review, or spiral as they go through the content, is to ALWAYS bring it back to the basics. In my classroom, I say it probably 1000 times a school year, (that’s 18 times a day): “Chemistry is all about the electrons.”

Electrons is the common thread among all chemistry concepts. Except for Nuclear that is – that’s why I teach it at the end of the year, and not alongside Atomic When you constantly bring chemistry back to the basics, EVERYTHING you say becomes review. Chemistry isn’t a course about chemicals. It’s a course about electrons! 

6. Keep a small library of activities to keep focus

Before I jump into whole-class review, I ask students to quickly reflect on which topics still feel confusing and the types of questions they struggle with. After baking self assessment into my course, this becomes much easier for them throughout the course. They’ve gotten practice with self assessment largely through my “Show What You Know” questions at the end of every lesson. Plus I have a small library of activity types that I draw from: Mystery, Pixel Art, Card Sort, Logic Puzzle, Quick Practice… This familiarity makes them very aware of what’s easy and what’s difficult for them. Their reflections become very accurate. 

7. Use Learning Targets

Plus (and please don’t accuse me of being an administrator for this) I love learning targets! I don’t spend time talking about them at the start of the day – I see that as a waste of time. But I do have an “I can…” statement written on my board and at the top of the notes. Plus that statement is on my unit outline/study guide. Students have a checklist of the things they should know and be able to do by the time the test rolls around. I really make it a point over and over again that students need to use this list to help them determine if they’re prepared for a test.

If you need help with learning targets, check out my Final Exam Study Guide. While you can use it for your final exam, since it’s broken down by unit, it’s easy for you to use the file for each unit of study in chemistry as the year progresses. 

Why this makes review days actually work

When you build test prep into normal instruction, review days become synthesis days. Students are able to assess their learning throughout the unit and then on review day, should be able to focus review on particular concepts within your unit. They can spend time rewriting lab reports, reworking their Show What You Know Questions, redoing your card sorts and other activities. Notice the “re?” That means there’s plenty of review happening, without you having to make anything new. You’ve already spent the time helping your students strengthen their understanding of chemistry, slow and steady throughout the unit. It’s up to your students to determine what they individually need to relearn.

The real shift

Instead of asking: “What review should I plan at the end of the unit?” Ask yourself, “How can today’s work quietly support the test later?” That single shift turns everyday chemistry lessons into ongoing test preparation, without adding extra materials, extra grading, or extra planning time. And that’s exactly how review days stop feeling frantic and start feeling useful. So keep those review days in your schedule, just put the responsibility on your students to figure out what they individually need from it. It is RE VIEW, after all. 

The post Simple Chemistry Test Review Without Adding Anything New appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

I’m talking 10–15 minutes of direct instruction tops.

At first, it feels almost wrong to stop teaching when you know there’s so much content to cover. But here’s the truth: Short and sweet chemistry lessons leave room for the real magic: practice, labs, and hands-on learning.

And in high school chemistry, that’s where understanding actually happens. Especially when most of your students maybe didn’t enroll of their own free will… Like most of mine over the years

Why Less Teaching Time = More Learning

Chemistry is HUGE. Perhaps it’s the most content dense class in all of high school science. (I mean they don’t call it the Central Science for no reason!) There’s a whole language worth of vocabulary. Tons of rules, and exceptions to those rules. And don’t get me started on the math (and the lack of math skills your students may have). It’s SO tempting to squeeze more, more, more, into every class. But when students get too much information at once, they start to drown. Then they check out, and QUICKLY fall behind. 

Short chemistry lessons let students concentrate and truly understand the essentials. When they understand the basics, everything later in the semester will become easier. 

• The periodic table makes a world of sense after truly understanding atomic structure
• Stoichiometry makes sense when students fully grasp moles and mole ratios
• EVERYTHING about macro chemistry makes sense when intermolecular forces and Lewis structures are locked in
• Bonding patterns click when electron configurations feel familiar
• Redox becomes logical when oxidation states are second nature.

But those strong foundations only happen when students have time to practice, not just sit and listen.

Here’s the rule of thumb that changed everything for me:

Only teach notes you’d be willing to take yourself.

If you wouldn’t want to sit and write down that entire lecture, guess what? Neither do your students.

I recommend this simple test:
If your notes don’t comfortably fit on one notebook page, reconsider the length of the lesson.

One page of notes per lesson means:

• The content is pared down to what students actually need
• You stay focused on the essential concepts
• Students have a fighting chance at remembering what you taught

And I promise, this isn’t about dumbing anything down. It’s about teaching clearly, intentionally, and in digestible chunks. For more on making lecture more interactive with my favorite lecture tool, read this post.

Writing Isn’t Learning. Understanding Is Learning

So many students (and some teachers, especially my World History teacher) think that taking more notes = doing more learning. Those students and teachers seem to fall into the trap that longer and more detailed notes makes it feel like we’re covering more, and learning more thoroughly. 

But here’s the reality: Writing isn’t learning. Listening isn’t learning. Practice is learning.

This is exactly why I’m such a big believer in using guided notes. They help students write less, listen more, and walk away with the right information instead of a hand cramp and a half-formed understanding of chemistry, and poorly drawn diagrams to match. 

Guided notes also force teachers to streamline. If the notes don’t fit, the lesson doesn’t fit. It keeps everything focused and intentional, which is the key to making this teaching style work.

If you’ve never used guided notes before or want to save yourself a ton of prep time, my Chemistry Guided Notes Curriculum is designed exactly for this approach. Each lesson is short, clear, and structured to help students build a strong conceptual foundation without being overwhelmed. There was a 2 week period that I was teaching another teacher’s class because she was out for a medical procedure. The students LOVED my notes for their final unit of chemistry before the final exam. Many of them chose to study for the final with my students because they were captivated by their notebooks by the end of the year. 

The Real Learning Happens AFTER the Lesson

Once your teaching is short and sweet, something amazing happens. You suddenly have so much time for students to actually work with the content. And this is where chemistry students thrive:

• Practice problems
• Whiteboard work
• Collaborative learning
• Lab investigations
• Quick checks for understanding
• Real-world examples
• Simulations and demos
  

All of these activities reinforce the idea that students learn chemistry by doing chemistry.

When students spend the majority of class time actively practicing, they deepen their understanding far more than they would by listening to a long lecture. They get feedback sooner. They make mistakes while you’re there to guide them. They have time to struggle productively instead of getting lost silently during a marathon note-taking session, or worse, when they’re at home doing homework. Read more about integrating self assessment in your chemistry classroom.

If you want to supercharge this part of your class, my Chemistry Practice Workbook is built to pair perfectly with short lessons. Each set of practice problems reinforces the core idea from the day’s notes. It gives students structured, meaningful practice that builds true understanding over time.

Consistency Is the Secret Ingredient

This approach only works if you commit to it all year long.

A short chemistry lesson here and a long lesson there won’t create the structure students need. But when students know they’re going to get a quick, focused explanation followed by lots of time to practice, they settle into a predictable rhythm. Their confidence grows. Their ability to build connections between concepts grows. And best of all, they stop feeling overwhelmed. Just think of a dense lesson. I’ll use predicting products of precipitation reactions as an example. Here’s ALL the prerequisite skills for that lesson: 

• Reaction Types (double replacement reactions)
• Nomenclature
• Solubility Rules
• Criss Crossing charges and reducing
• Balancing Equations

In order for you to have a short lesson on precipitation reactions, you need your students to have a SOLID understanding of FIVE MAJOR chemistry concepts. Short and sweet lessons only work if your students have the skills to keep up. To have the skills, they have to have practice time. In order to have ample practice time, you need short and sweet lessons. To have short and sweet lessons, you need to pare down content to EXACTLY what is needed to understand key concepts. 

Final Thoughts

Short chemistry lessons aren’t a shortcut, they’re a strategy. They build stronger foundations, promote more meaningful practice, and create more focused classrooms. If you want your students to retain more, understand more, and apply more, trimming your lessons might be the best change you make all year. It can be tough to decide not just what, but also how to teach these big chemistry concepts in such short bursts. If you want tools to help you implement this approach without reinventing the wheel, both my Guided Notes Curriculum and Practice Workbook were designed with exactly this teaching philosophy in mind.

Keep it short. Keep it focused. Keep it consistent. Your students will thank you!

The post Reasons and Benefits of Keeping Chemistry Lessons Short and Sweet appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Turn and Teach

I won’t go too crazy talking about Turn and Teach because I have an entire blog post on why I love it so much. The gist is that you teach for 5 or so minutes. And pairs of students, A & B take turns teaching the other what you just taught them. One talks, the other listens, you circulate the room and search for really great communication or misconceptions. Then you hop back into teaching. It’s one of my favorites because students have mentioned how well it works at helping them to understand tough topics. It quickly became my favorite tool for enhancing lecture when I actually took the time to do it. 

Here’s three much quicker (and easier) ways to make your chemistry lectures more interactive. 

Self Assessment

This is probably the easiest of all the strategies and potentially the most helpful. As I’m teaching I’m reading the faces of my students. I’m trying to gauge how well this is going. Sleepy faces usually means I need to act a bit more silly and do a bit more storytelling. But if those faces are confused, I might do a turn and teach to give them a chance to chat with a neighbor. But typically, I’ll drop in a 3-2-1 assessment. 

Students just hold up their fingers to give you an idea of how they’re feeling about the content they’re learning. I give this prompt with one request. Here’s a few examples:  

• How are you feeling about this chemistry right now?
• How’d you do on that practice question?
• How did you score on your quiz? 

Usually 3 fingers are held up for being an expert, or feeling ready to move on. 

Two fingers is for needing more practice, or having 50-70% of the right answers for a couple of questions

One finger is reserved for “lost puppies” who need the content reexplained, or need to sit with a partner for some time to grapple with the work. 

Keeping it Low Stakes

This takes less than ten seconds, but it gives you an instant read on how your class is doing. If most of your students are holding up three fingers, you know you can keep moving. If you have a good mix of twos, you can give another practice question or two before moving on. And if you have quite a bit of ones, you can back track a bit, or have 1s and 3s pair up for group work. 

For the most part, students participate in this because it’s a very low-stakes check in. They don’t have to risk raising their hand to admit they’re lost or have a question.

Whiteboard Checks

Mini whiteboards are an absolute game-changer during chemistry lecture. They give you a way to ask quick calculation or recall questions and see everyone’s answers at once.

I bring this out a lot during my Bonding Unit and Stoichiometry. It works great for diagrams and calculations. “Draw the Lewis structure for carbon dioxide.” Everyone draws their answer on their whiteboard and holds it up.

The magic here is that you can instantly scan for understanding. You’ll spot who nailed it, who’s close, and who might have drawn something completely off. That’s feedback you simply don’t get if you only call on one or two volunteers to come to the big board for everyone to see. Depending on your seating arrangement, most students won’t see each other’s answers, so again, pretty low stakes and typically you’ll get a lot of engagement. 

Question Blast

When I’m in front of a chemistry classroom, you may as well call me the “Queen of Questions.” (This is why I REALLY STRESS everything in chemistry is about the electrons. Because my Question Blast almost always starts with “Where are electrons?” and “What’s the charge of an electron?”) 

In order to help students see connections between concepts (read: Atomic Structure → the rest of chemistry) I ask a LONG string of questions. Let’s say the topic is dissolving ionic compounds, specifically NaCl. 

1. Where are electrons? 
2. What’s the charge of an electron? 
3. What type of bond does NaCl have? 
4. Which is gaining electrons? 
5. Which is losing electrons? 
6. What’s the Lewis structure for water look like? 
7. Is it a polar or nonpolar molecule?
8. What area is positive on a water molecule? 
9. What area is negative on a water molecule?
10. How would Na⁺ and Cl^– behave near the positive area of a water molecule? 
11. How would Na⁺ and Cl^– behave near the negative area of a water molecule? 

Okay, so I’ll tell you: water is able to break apart Na from Cl. It’s called dissociation. 

Using the Questions Blast

See my Question Blast? Right there is ELEVEN questions you can ask your students to help understand what you’re teaching. You can do this for the teaching, or for a recap of the content. You can call on individual students like this, “James, where are electrons?” “Anne, what’s the charge of an electron?” Or you can instead call them out to the whole class. The idea is to kind of sort of make these “rapid fire” questions, hence the term “Question Blast.”

What I love about a Question Blast is how inclusive they are. Unlike think-pair-share, Question Blasts let multiple students contribute in seconds without a huge time investment. It’s a fast way to boost participation and get students actively thinking, even in the middle of lecture. You can even target tougher questions to specific students to check for understanding. Plus it makes for incredible spiral review, since you’ll be tracking back to Atomic, Periodic Table, Bonding and IMFs all year long. 

Bringing It All Together

Self Assessment, Whiteboards and Question Blasts, are all short, simple strategies you can weave into your chemistry lectures without derailing the flow. They take less than a minute each, but they break up passive listening and get students processing information on the spot.

If you’re already using guided notes, these techniques are the perfect complement. They keep your students active without sacrificing structure. I mean, is there anything worse than a jigsaw activity?  The bottom line? Chemistry lecture doesn’t have to be boring. With just a few small tweaks, you can turn your classroom into a place where students are listening, participating, and actually excited to learn chemistry.

The post 4 Quick Ways to Make Chemistry Lecture More Interactive appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Of course, this is somewhat a matter of opinion, and also a matter of how the content builds up on itself. If anything, I’d say give it a try this school year before knocking it. And IF (big if) you find issues with it during your school year, reach out and let me know what you’ve run into. I’d love to collect more information to add to this post. 

Make sure to click here and sign up to get a free copy of the Scope and Sequence sent to your inbox!

Chemistry Basics You Need to Consider

Chemistry (as far as I’m concerned) is the hardest science class because it is the most abstract. Atoms and molecules are too tiny to see. So we have to observe things that happen, and work backwards to assume what the atom looks like. And once that picture has been created, you can work again, to explain why substances behave the way they do. This big chunk of trying to imagine what atoms look like and how they are behaving is TOUGH. Especially for kids who aren’t super interested in chemistry to begin with. 

But the thing is – everything around you is made of atoms. You’re a bunch of atoms, breathing in atoms, eating and digesting atoms, carrying out chemical reactions just by being alive. When atoms work together, they create the entire world around us and there’s something beautiful to that. But when it comes to teaching chemistry, you can’t just start at the beginning of the universe and move in chronological order. It’s too much for first time chemists.

Where do I even begin?

Before even looking at this chemistry scope and sequence, you should take a look at your standards. Find out exactly what it is that you specifically are expected to teach this year. If you’re expected to teach some kind of chemistry elective with no real attachment to standards, find something you like and run with that. Then think of those standards as a to do list. If you’re using NGSS, check out this decipher document to help determine where each standard fits in your curriculum. 

Major Themes of Chemistry

All of chemistry (high school level and beyond) fits into these three major themes: 

1. Chemistry is all about the electrons (my favorite)
2. Structure dictates function
3. The macro can be extrapolated to the micro (indirect observation)

History of Chemistry

Humans learned chemistry in the macro; in real life. The Romans left their urine out in the sun to turn it into ammonia to clean (disgusting but true). They knew a few elements, like gold, silver and lead, but they had a far better understanding of chemical reactions than they did atoms. In fact, Democritus came up with the idea of the atom in the fifth century BC, and very little work was done until Antoine Lavosier and John Dalton popped up in the late 1700s. Humans are really, just now starting to uncover the secrets of the atom that we’ve assumed to be true for so long.

But we know now that the reason the macro exists the way that it does is because of what we’ve learned of the micro. If a sample of sodium will react with a sample of chlorine, there’s no reason for us to say that some of the sodiums reacted one way and the second half in a different way.

All the sodium atoms react the same way because they have the same structure. Their structure gives them a predictable function which we can see with our eyes in the macro.

Micro-Macro Approach 

I’ve found that teaching chemistry opposite how humanity learned chemistry is the easiest way to do it. Start with the micro and use it to explain what we see in the macro. It’s actually a bit easier to do it this way because kids can see the “how” and the “why” of chemical reactions and take the guesswork out!

I used to teach these units in an entirely different order and I found it just wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. I could see all of the connections in my content, but the students couldn’t. That’s because I had the background in chemistry, of course! I really like teaching the course this way, because it makes my students see how the structure of the atom dictates its properties, which we can then predict, even if we don’t know much else about the atom. When I use the phrase “chemistry is all about the electrons” over and over again all year, students know to check out the electrons (structure) to figure out what’s happening!

Unit Breakdown

We begin the course by taking a look at how chemistry stands apart from other sciences. And I introduce the ever dreaded significant figures. Lab safety is a big part of this unit, as well as the specific materials used in a chem lab and not elsewhere, like the Bunsen burner.

After setting up a foundation of what chemistry is, it’s time to get to the micro units. In these units, students will learn about atoms and molecules. Things they really can’t see. This is going to require a good bit of imagination. But this going to help them explain their observations in later units. Water droplets stick to the walls of shower due to intermolecular forces. (Micro explains the macro!)

Next we get into the transitional units, which answers the question “How do chemists measure things we can’t see?” Using some basic ratios, and the premise that ‘if one atom does it, they all do it because they have the same structure’ we study stoichiometry. It’s just some fancy algebra. If you can cross multiply, you can do stoichiometry.

And now that we can measure everything, even that which we can’t truly see, we can get to macro chemistry. The chemistry of substances. Again, you’ll begin with a basic unit, outlining the types of substances. Then how they interact with each other. And then in the final units, you will pinpoint specific types of substances: acids, bases, organics, and their chemistries.

Writing a Chemistry Curriculum is a lot of work

Yes it is! Trust me, I know. I wrote my entire curriculum in about a year, and I’ve been perfecting it ever since. Once I felt good about it, I listed it on TPT for other teachers. Thousands of teachers have purchased the Full Year Guided Notes Curriculum, the Units it is made of and even individual lessons! After receiving feedback from teachers, this year, I’ve cut down the Full Year Curriculum into a smaller version that includes only what would likely be considered the “Core Chemistry” units.

You can see that it has the same micro-macro approach, but it’s a lot lighter. (In fact, I wanted to call this “Chemistry Lite” but “Core Chemistry” felt more academic.) The idea here is that the course can be taught in just one semester, and is really light on the math (notice stoichiometry is missing). Intermolecular Forces is also taken out, which I find to be a tough one for students because it is SO abstract. It can be especially tough for some Special Ed students.

Gases and Solutions were condensed and added into the Matter Unit. Kinetics & Equilibrium, Redox and Organic were also removed because those are applied chemistries and aren’t often part of a high school chemistry curriculum.

Adding in a Unit on Light

After teaching in the brick and mortar setting for 6 years, I became an online teacher. I started teaching in Texas classrooms and with that I began teaching the Texas standards, TEKS.  Considering there is an entire STATE of chemistry teachers that need to teach a unit on Light, I decided in 2025 to pull this unit from my Physical Science curriculum and drop it into my Full Year Guided Notes Chemistry Curriculum. Now if I were to have Light added into my standards, I would teach it right between Atomic Theory and Periodic Table.

But in my heart, I truly believe this is a Physics concept. Light is really a form of energy. I stand firmly on the “chemistry is all about the electrons.” And yes, you can make an argument that Light is about electrons, it is only kind of about electrons. It’s more so about the MOVEMENT of electrons and the ENERGY they absorb and release. As far as I’m concerned, that’s physics. But it doesn’t really matter what I think if that is part of your chemistry standards. Plus it truly is the area where physics and chemistry begin to overlap. 

More Information

You can get this entire document AND MORE right here. My Chemistry Curriculum Outline is actually more than a Scope and Sequence. I have notes on labs, working in time for vocabulary practice and my daily lesson breakdown. Yes! Every lesson I teach IN ORDER with a short blurb about what students will learn and what I use for practice after teaching the lesson. There’s links all over it to blog posts and other helpful resources to make sure I’m giving as much information as I can about teaching chemistry. Make sure you get a copy sent to your inbox! 

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Electron configuration is a topic that feels abstract to students—until you put the periodic table in their hands and show them how it’s secretly the answer key. Because the periodic table isn’t just a list of the elements. It’s a map. 

Why I teach Electron Configuration with the Periodic Table

Getting my students to actually use the MAP to find their answers makes them better chemists, and gives them the appropriate tools to actually solve their problems. I teach my students how each of the sections of the periodic table corresponds to an electron sublevel. The tall skinny chunk on the left (Groups 1 & 2) is the s-block. The wide chunk on the right (Groups 13-18) is the p-block. The transition metals are the d-block. And the lower piece (the rare earth metals) is the f-block.)  From here we can actually SEE the configurations just like a map! 

This works best when you’re working with a “proper” periodic table. As far as I’m concerned, the f-block on the bottom, should NOT include lanthanum or actinium. Those should be part of the d-block. If you remember, the s-sublevel holds 2 electrons. That’s why it’s two elements wide on the PT. The p-sublevel holds 6, and therefore is 6 elements wide on the PT. D-sublevel holds 10 – that’s easy. And finally the f-sublevel holds FOURTEEN electrons, and therefore should be 14 elements wide. That means you need to be choosy about which periodic table you print and distribute to your students!

Using the Periodic Table to Determine Configuration

Let’s say you need to know the configuration of phosphorus. It’s in period 3. It’s in the p block. Now you count the depth into the table. 

1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p³. 

Seriously, take a look at your periodic table. It’s the 5th element in period 3 (add the 2 and 3 of 3s² and 3p³). Or, as I like to see it, it’s the 3rd element in the p-block. Using my guided notes lesson, this is a breeze! Students aren’t writing too much, or even every little detail. Just the things they really NEED TO KNOW. And the rest of the class time, they are actually watching me go through the process of learning HOW to use the periodic table to guide them. Read more about why I love guided notes in chemistry here.

Bring in the Mystery

Once my students get the hang of it, I like to have them actually practice reading these configurations. (Because practice is where REAL learning happens.) In this mystery activity, students get to think critically and apply what they’ve learned in a super fun and engaging way. Using the mystery, students in your class can be assigned roles to play as “Mystery Kids”. They get a hobby, a birthday, a way of getting home and a picture of “themselves.” Using clues from answering chemistry questions, the students in your class narrow down the list of suspects to uncover the culprit in the Case of the Missing Bike. They can rule out other Mystery Kids until they get down to just one person.

You can have your students role play as Mystery Kids to make it more engaging. But if you don’t have as many students as there are Mystery Kids, it’s not a problem. There’s an easy way to trim it down for smaller classes without issue. 

And What if They Need Some Extra Help?

Of course I’m teaching the diagonal rule! It’s pivotal in chemistry. Plus it helps to explain the d-shift (and the f-shift) when you get to the bigger elements. While I use this method as well, it’s not the main point. It’s just an assist. I want my students to know how to read the table, not just memorize the diagonal rule. But of course, the more tools, the better, right? The two together work wonders!

Want to See Where this Fits in Your School Year? 

If you’re planning your school year or just want to see where this topic fits into the bigger picture, I’d love to share my free Chemistry Curriculum Outline. It’s part, scope and sequence, part pacing guide, part lab guide, part daily lesson schedule. It’s really everything you need to help you teach chemistry with confidence all year long: Grab the free Chemistry Curriculum Outline here. 

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