Teach Bohr Models the Easy Way—With the Periodic Table

Bohr models aren’t just bullseyes or cute doodles to add to a chemistry notes page! They’re REAL life pictures of REAL LIFE things. So it’s important to get them right. Here’s how I teach my students to draw Bohr Models: 

1. Determine the number of protons that should be written using the periodic table. At this point students know that the atomic number is the name of the number of protons. 
2. Round the mass to a whole number and subtract the number of protons to determine the number of neutrons. They learn more about the concept of average atomic mass a few days later when I teach isotopes. If students ask, I simply tell them “the closest whole number represents the typical atom of that element.” So that’s what we work with for now. 
3. They then “draw” the nucleus. Really they write X p and X n for protons and neutrons. We don’t actually draw the numbers of protons and neutrons! 
4. Use the period number to determine the number of electron levels. I’m introducing this concept for the first time in the Bohr models lesson, but it comes up again when I teach electron configuration in the Periodic Table Unit. 
5. Last, students count how deep into the period an element is to determine the number of electrons.
   1. The first shell is paired with the first period. That’s H and He, so 2 electrons. 
   2. The second shell has 8 electrons total. But if carbon is the 4th element in the period, you’d only add 4 electrons to that second level. 

Getting Bohr Models Practice

To reinforce this, we do lots of Bohr model practice using only the periodic table as a reference. It gives students confidence—and helps them see patterns instead of random rules.

Show What You Know Questions

After teaching with my guided notes lesson, my students complete Show What You Know questions. These are self assessment questions that are embedded in the notes. What I love most about the SWYK questions is that I give students the answers in class. They get to check their own work and assess progress. I encourage them to ask questions and make sure they feel confident before moving on. The best part is that they have the questions and answers in their notebooks to study from. Which means, if I give a graded assignment, I’m not in a huge rush to get it back to them so they have study material for their test. 

Quick Practice Worksheet

After writing my guided notes curriculum, the teachers that were using it wanted more practice. So I developed my Quick Practice Worksheets. These are exactly what they sound like. Short and sweet chemistry worksheets. And the one for Bohr models is very simple. It can be used in class for more practice, homework or tomorrow’s bell ringer activity. 

Bohr Models Mystery Activity

Once students have the basics down, it’s time to make Bohr model practice more fun—and a lot more memorable. In my Bohr Models Mystery activity where students solve a whodunit-style mystery by answering Bohr model questions. There are 36 suspects, each with their own name, birthday, and hobby. Students are assigned one suspect each (or more, depending on class size). As they work through the Bohr model questions, they uncover clues about the culprit. They use these clues to narrow down the suspect list until only one remains—the culprit!

Whether you’re working with a whole class or just one student, the mystery is flexible. With a large class, each student can take one suspect. With fewer students, or for individual work, you can print all suspects on a single page and let one student act as a detective.

Why This Bohr Model Practice Works

• Students are reading the periodic table for understanding, not just memorizing.
• Every question leads back to the content you want them to master.
• The mystery format builds excitement and keeps students motivated to finish.
• It’s adaptable for any group size—and great for early finishers or sub plans too.

If you’re looking for Bohr model practice that actually helps students learn and retain the content, give the mystery activity a try. It’s one of those lessons your students will talk about long after the unit is over! I have a growing collection of mystery activities you can use in your chemistry classroom. 

Need EVEN MORE Bohr Models Practice?

I’m a big fan of card sort activities! I find that chemistry is a lot of “this or that.” Endothermic or Exothermic? Acid or Base? Try out this free card sort with your students – Atom or Ion? While I would save it for the bonding unit, where I choose to teach about ions, this would be great spiral review of Bohr models when you get there!

The post Engaging Bohr Model Practice for Chemistry Students: Tips and a Mystery Activity appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Significant Figures Background

In order to teach significant figures, students need practice with it!  I typically spend one day teaching how to count significant figures, using the Pacific-Atlantic method. It’s a really simple method! You simply write the number inside of a map of America. If the decimal is PRESENT you approach from the PACIFIC side of the number. If the decimal is ABSENT you approach from the ATLANTIC side of the number. Then you start counting at the first non-zero number. That number and everything that comes after it is significant.

Why We Need Sig Figs

What even are significant figures? They’re digits within a number that give a measurement REAL VALUE. They are not there as a result of rounding. They are confirmed numbers within a measurement. We need them as a way to determine how our measurements were taken. 1.000 is actually different from 1.0. Those extra zeroes indicate a more precise (and expensive) scale!

At the point that I’m teaching sig figs my students have already learned the difference between accuracy and precision. The students know that calculations and the numbers that we report, all the way down to how we round those numbers is important.  My students have a tendency to really understand WHY we need significant figures, but it’s the HOW that gets them. (I find this is a specific issue with my students every year, so it’s gotta be something about the way I teach.)

Practice Makes Perfect

Asking a bunch of 15 year olds to do mindless calculations to get significant figures practice is a mission destined for failure.  Nobody wants to do that! Not even me. Plus students are too new at chemistry to really try to tie these skills into a lab activity.  My solution?  Turn it into a game, of course. And on top of that, make it a competition.  

Significant Figures Activity

We do a Significant Figure Race! I organize the students, using these grouping pencils, into groups of two to four (depending on class size and amount of time). Then I give them a series of very simple math problems that require good attention to the details of significant figures rules. A student answers one question and passes it to the next kid. The first answer becomes part of the second question. I tell the kids that they need to check the work of the kid before them, to make sure that their question is correct. 

Then the second student will answer their question and pass to the third in the group.  Then the fourth answers the final question and passes back to the first student to check the final answer. I usually have the students each have a different color pen or pencil so I can identify who wrote each answer. The group of four who answers their question series first, or the most question series (depending on what I choose) wins!

You can grab this epic significant figures activity for your classroom here! It includes 10 unique worksheets for your students to grapple with, and of course, answer keys!

Other Ways to Use This Activity

Working Silently

You could add in elements of students having to work silently. The condition of silence makes the game that much more challenging! Students have to either write out their answers, or use soem kind of make shift signing in order to communicate their ideas. Great for your first back to school cold when you’ve got a gnarly headache.

Use a Life Line

I also like allowing groups to use life lines. They can ask me to remove a wrong answer from their paper, or ask for a verification on a question that may be tough so they can move forward. When the competition is really tough, I’ve even made the life line of pausing another group’s work for 10 seconds. They have to flip their paper over and can’t work for ten seconds so other groups can speed past them.

Use All Year Long

There’s 10 versions of the worksheet, so you can choose to do this activity once a month. I like to do this to make sure that my students always stay fresh on their significant figures skills. This is super important during units like Atomic Theory and Periodic Table where you sort of take a break from doing so much math. It’s easy to lose the skills if they aren’t being used each day!

Make Boring Skill Drills More Fun

This activity turns something SUPER BORING into something fun – especially if you can award a prize to the winning group (I suggest candy or stickers).  You may find that a common theme in my classroom is to trick my students into learning by changing worksheets into games. You can learn more about the test review games I play in my classroom, and how I make drill skills more fun.

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1. Pixel Art Chemistry Activities

Turn problem-solving into a game! With pixel art activities, students answer chemistry questions in Google Sheets and watch a hidden image reveal itself as they get correct answers. They’re immediately told if their answers are correct or incorrect. That makes these activities perfect for self-checking practice. They bring a sense of accomplishment to learning. I post these in Google Classroom and have my students erase them and redo them to study for their tests. Check out the full collection here. 

2. Link & Solve Puzzles

These hybrid worksheets are tons of fun! The unique format connects each answer to the next question, making problem-solving feel like part of a puzzle. Students must think critically and work step by step being careful to watch decimals places and ensure accuracy. I’ve created Google Sheets that go along with the printables. Students can input their answers and check to see how they’re doing. This way they don’t finish an entire worksheet with an earlier incorrect answer. Because that’s a nightmare for everyone involved. Check out the collection of Link & Solve activities here. 

3. Holiday and Seasonal Activity Packs

If you’re looking to bring festive fun into your classroom during a particular time of year, try a holiday-themed chemistry activity pack. These are designed to keep students engaged in learning chemistry, even on the crazy days before holidays and school breaks. You can check out the collection of holiday packs here. 

Holiday and seasonal activity packs are great for special occasions, but you also need engaging chemistry activities that work year-round.

4. Card Sorts for Chemistry Concepts

I find that chemistry has a lot of “this or that” concepts. Soluble or Insoluble? Ionic or Covalent? Acid or Base? Card sorts are perfect for interactive review and differentiation. Students can work with physical cards to put them into categories, (or assign it digitally in Google Slides.) Make a class set of the cards and use them over and over again. Or you can print out individual sets and send students home with them in paper envelopes they’ve glued into their interactive notebooks. Check out the collection of card sorts here. If you’re interested in trying one out, try Atom or Ion for free. 

5. Quick Practice Worksheets

When I created my Guided Notes Curriculum, the most common request from teachers was corresponding worksheets. Teachers are reporting using them as bell ringers, classwork, or homework. I love that there’s a quick way to let students work with the things they’ve learned in a classic way. Sometimes, the extra practice in a simple, structured format is exactly what students need. (Not everything needs to be playing music and have flashing lights!) These worksheets are designed to reinforce key chemistry skills without overwhelming students or taking up too much class time. There’s a sheet for each lesson of the curriculum, but you can just grab those worksheets here. 

6. Secret Puzzle Challenges

There are just a few of these available on TPT, but plenty in my teacher stash that I need to polish. The idea is that students are presented with multiple choice questions in Google Slides. Each answer is paired with a puzzle piece. The students take the piece that is aligned with the answer they’ve chose and they bring it to the puzzle board. As they build the puzzle, they are figuring out if their answers make sense. Because correct answers will build a good looking picture. And wrong answers make the puzzle look weird. This gamified approach adds an element of mystery and motivates students to complete their work with accuracy.

7. Mystery-Themed Chemistry Activities

Speaking of mystery, who doesn’t love a good mystery? I love these activities so much – they might just be my favorite. Plus they’re fun to create! There’s a group of 36 students that may or may not have committed a crime. You can assign the students in the activity to your students in your classroom so there’s a bit of role playing. As students answer chemistry questions they uncover clues about the culprit to this crime. They can narrow down the suspects based on information about them, like their birthday, and how they get to school each day. Check out the mystery collection here. 

8. Chemistry Quest Adventures

These are a lot of fun and get your students moving around the classroom. Each activity has an adventure theme! With quest-based activities, students solve chemistry problems to progress through a storyline. They start with a question and look for the answer posted in the classroom. Once they find that answer, they get the next question. They follow this trail of question and answers through your classroom. I find that these are great for days that I’m just not feeling great. The kids are actively learning and it doesn’t take much on my part to make that happen. These engaging chemistry activities are also  perfect for review days or to reinforce concepts in an immersive and engaging way.

9. Vocabulary Activities for Chemistry Terms

Understanding chemistry vocabulary is key to student success. It’s why I’m a “mean teacher” and make my students write vocabulary terms fo reach unit. But I don’t have them waste that brain space. We do a matching quiz for each unit and there’s plenty of activities to sprinkle into the unit. Such as joke puzzles, crosswords, term-definition dominoes and a collaborative review games—help students master complex terms in an engaging and memorable way. I’ve got a vocabulary pack for each unit of my curriculum. 

10. Labs That Promote Hands-On Learning

Nothing beats hands-on learning! Labs give students the opportunity to apply chemistry concepts in real-world scenarios, encouraging curiosity and scientific thinking. Structured and guided labs make experiments accessible and manageable for all students. My first few years teaching I was working out of an old art classroom turned “chemistry lab.” I barely had anything to work with. For that reason, my lab activities are pretty low maintenance in terms of teacher set up and materials. But they are highly rigorous. You can get all 41 of my labs in a lab manual here, or you can shop individual labs instead. If you want to read more about how I add rigor to my simple labs, check out this post. 

Final Thoughts

Engagement is key to helping students succeed in chemistry. By incorporating these engaging chemistry activities into your lessons, you can create a more interactive, exciting classroom that keeps students motivated and eager to learn.  If you’re interested in what I use on a given day in my chemistry class, you should check out the Chemistry Curriculum Outline. At the end of the document is my Day-by-Day outline that shows when I use each activity in my classroom. 

The post 10 Engaging Chemistry Activities to Spark Student Interest appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

As a student I had this “dramatic” strategy for balancing chemical equations (or so said my lab partner…) Over the years of teaching, I’ve found this strategy helped ALL of my students to make balancing equations so simple that I made it my staple way to teach balancing. By breaking down the process into clear, manageable steps and incorporating engaging practice, students build confidence and even look forward to the challenge. Yes, you read that right!

My Step-by-Step Approach to Teaching Balancing Equations

Balancing chemical equations is often overwhelming for students because they need to keep track of so many elements at once. To make it manageable, I break the process into a clear set of steps:

1. Split the Reaction into “Before” and “After”: That’s what it is, right? The pieces break apart and get rebuilt in a new way. When we write out a chemical equation on the board in my classroom, we ALWAYS split it with two vertical lines. One on each side of the yield arrow. This simple framework helps them see the difference between the reactants and products. 
2. List the Elements: Next, we list all the elements involved in the reaction between those two vertical lines. This may sound basic, but it’s a crucial step. Listing the elements makes sure nothing gets forgotten, and students can refer back to this list throughout the problem.
3. Count the Atoms on Each Side: Once the elements are listed, we count how many atoms of each element are present on both sides of the equation. 
4. Multiply to Balance: “If you can do your times tables, you can balance equations.” The question you need to ask yourself is “how can I make 2 & 3 the same number by multiplying them?” “How can I get 1 & 3 to become the same number using multiplication?” Students at this point know they are only allowed adjust coefficients, and this little multiplication conversation helps them to see that. 

Through this structured approach, students learn that balancing equations is systematic, and they learn to love it.. They can follow these steps every time and avoid the frustration of guessing or relying on trial and error.

Practice Makes Perfect—And Fun!

Once students understand the steps, practice is essential. But we all know that worksheets can get boring quickly. That’s where I start to bring in some of my fun balancing activities. 

Balancing Chemical Equations Pixel Art

If you’re looking for a fun and self-grading way for students to practice balancing chemical equations, my Balancing Equations Pixel Art activity is a great option. This Google Sheets activity allows students to input the coefficients for each equation. The sheet instantly tells them whether their answer is correct or incorrect. Each correct answer reveals a small portion of a secret picture, keeping students motivated to work through the entire set of equations. When they complete the activity with 100% accuracy, they get to see the full image!

This activity is perfect for independent practice, review, or studying for a test because students can erase their answers and redo the work as many times as they need. Teachers love it because it’s self-grading—no extra work on your part! Whether used in class or as extra practice at home, it’s an engaging way to help students master balancing equations.

The Balancing Escape Room: Turning Practice into a Game

To get students REALLY excited about balancing equations, I designed a Balancing Equations Escape Room Activity using Google Forms. This digital activity transforms the typical practice session into a fun, interactive challenge. Here’s how it works:

• Locked Out: Students must correctly answer the question presented to them in order to move on. That’s what makes it an escape room! 
• Puzzles and Clues: The escape room is filled with a series of coded questions students need to solve. There’s an emoji “spell it out” where emojis ask the students for the coefficient of a specific compound from the balanced equation. There’s also some Morse codes, a Pig Pen Cipher and some mazes. Once the questions are uncovered, students balance chemical equations to get answers to these coded questions. Sometimes, they need to hunt for clues hidden around the classroom. Which makes the escape room all the more fun. 
• Real-time Feedback: The great thing about using Google Forms is that it provides immediate feedback. If students enter the wrong answer, they get a prompt to try again, which keeps them engaged without getting frustrated.
• Collaboration and Competition: This activity works especially well in small groups (I like two or three), where students collaborate to uncover the questions. They can each balance the equation. Just in case they input a wrong answer, they have a few brains working on the answer. You can also add a competitive element by setting a time limit or offering a reward for the first group to “escape.”

Why I love it

What I love most about this balancing chemical equations activity is that students don’t even realize how much they’re practicing. They’re so focused on “escaping” that they become fully immersed in balancing equations, without feeling like it’s just another drill. And I mean, it can sometimes be tough to get students to care about chemistry. Let alone something as boring as balancing equations. 

Why You Should A Balancing Equations Activity

Any time you turn boring practice into something more fun, your students are going to learn without even realizing they’re learning. (Because they’re smiling and there’s no way to smile in chemistry, right?) And if you ask me, especially with the ability to learn anything in the digital age it’s important that we entertain our students. I know that’s a really hot take. But if we want to beat YouTube and AI in education, we’re going to have to offer something different.

Yes, our expertise is helpful. Yes, the ability to ask questions, have them answered and be encouraged is something the internet can’t (at least yet) provide to students. Learning, more and more, needs to become an experience in order to be effective. And the worst thing that happens is that your students don’t become A+ chemistry students. But still had a good time in your classroom. And what could possibly be wrong with that?

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They’ll Only be 16 for One Year

No, I’m not a parent. But I’m aging myself, so I don’t see this one as tough to understand. Looking back on my days of being a beautiful, energetic 17 year old, meeting my husband seems like it was yesterday. (Cue Frank Sinatra.) But at the same time, so long ago. That time slipped through my fingers so quickly. I’d really do near anything to go back and do it all again. I’m sure you have a time you’d love to go back to, too. These kids are 16 and in your class. This time in their lives is also fleeting. I’d hate to give so much homework that 16 turns out to be a not so great year. 

They Have Other Priorities

Work, sports, family, babysitting a little brother or sister… The list is LONG! Your students have plenty of life to live at this age. To me, it seems silly to throw so much chemistry into their everyday lives. (I mean if you were teaching AP Chemistry it’d be a different story – that comes with college credit.)

I Don’t Want Homework Either

This idea of not giving nightly homework became super real to me when I got my lesson plans in order and finally left work at work. It almost felt wrong to give my students homework when I was going home and doing whatever I wanted to do after hours. 

I Got My Teaching in Order

When I finally nailed down my guided notes, we had more time in class for practice. My students were able to grapple with content on their own AND with classmates. Giving them EVEN MORE work to do just seemed like overkill at that point. Which was a big relief for this next point!

Grading is a Headache I Don’t Think is Worth It

Trying to keep up with who was absent, who came in late or left early… Deciding whether to spot check or collect the work. Grading it and giving it back. Giving answers in class. Students sharing answers with each other. Students “forgetting” their homework and bringing it in later… The list goes on and on as to why homework can become a HUGE headache. 

I’ve decided that with my teaching in order and plenty of practice in class, I didn’t need to be doing this to myself each day. Ditching homework made my life easier. In fact, when I initially got rid of homework, I started to make it optional. MAYBE 10% of my students continued to do the homework initially, but we all gave up shortly and we never looked back. 

Chemistry Vocabulary is a Language

There are 15 homework assignments I refuse to let go of and those are my vocabulary terms. After any Unit Test, students pick up the next unit schedule that has the list of vocabulary terms on top. They are to use my glossary to look up the definition of each term and write it down. For the most part, students are able to get this done in class while waiting for classmates to finish their tests. I also give them a few days to get it done, since you know, they have a life to live. (Plus this assignment is not a big deal if they copy it from a classmate.)

Chemistry is tough, and it’s especially tough when students don’t know what the words on the page in front of them actually mean. So this is one I’ve never quit. Throughout the unit, we play vocabulary games and even take a quiz. You can see what I mean for free in my Chemical Bonding Vocabulary pack. I have one of these for each unit of chemistry. 

A Non-Holiday Break

When I was teaching in New York, every February we had off the week of President’s Day. I heard it was related to the gas crisis in the 70s. They shut down school for the four remaining days of the week to be able to save money on heating the school. And since then they’ve never let it go.

Using our state final exam, I came up with 10 different, 100 question multiple choice tests. I assigned the tests out to my students trying to arrange them so friends didn’t wind up with the same test. Yes, they could look up EVERY SINGLE ANSWER. That was sort of the point… Get them prepared for the state final, check on wording of questions, see how they fit together. 

The only reason I did it for February break is because there’s no family holiday associated with February break. I’d NEVER give anything over spring break (Easter and Passover) or Christmas break. That just seems mean to me. Students should be spending time with their families then! 

But Let’s Say I was Required to Give Homework…

If I worked in a mean school that required me to give homework there’s a few things that would happen. 

1. I’d fight admin about it with all the points raised in this post. I’d make it clear I wasn’t in love with the policy, state my case, but still follow the rules begrudgingly. 
2. I’d let students know my position and encourage them and their families to raise their voices if they felt strongly enough. Parents could truly run the schools if they choose to. 
3. I’d set my standard homework assignment as “complete classwork” 
4. I’d use my Quick Practice worksheets

Chemistry Quick Practice as Homework

When I released my guided notes curriculum, it initially didn’t have practice worksheets outside of the Show What You Know questions. Teachers really wanted this, so slowly, I’ve been adding them to the curriculum! (What can I say – I love designing curriculum.) As a result, I came up with “Quick Practice” worksheets, which is exactly what it sounds like. I think the biggest one is 20 questions? The smallest is maybe 5. You can get a sample of the Lab Safety Quick Practice worksheet to get a flavor for what they’re all about. When the collection is complete, there will be over 90 worksheets included. 

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Separation of Mixtures Guided Notes Lesson

I start my lesson by teaching six ways to separate mixtures. They are distillation, chromatography, precipitation  reaction, use of a separatory funnel, evaporation and filtration.  I love using guided notes for this because the kids really get to take a look at the pictures that are included in the notes instead of spending a bunch of time writing. I believe the more time they spend listening and the less time writing the better they will understand the content. My guided notes have scientifically accurate pictures. That means that students don’t have to rely on their art skills in order to have proper notes. I don’t know about you but I can’t draw a distillation setup to save my life!

Now you may be thinking that a precipitation reaction is not a classic way to separate mixtures. I disagree. Precipitation reactions are used to determine if certain ions are dissolved in water. Let’s take lead for example. Precipitating lead with the use of a halide ion is pretty commonplace in chemistry. For that reason I appreciate having the precipitation reaction in my high school level separation of mixtures lesson.

Self Assessment Questions

Once the students have all of their notes taken and have a basic understanding of the ways to separate mixtures they will complete some self-assessment questions in their notebooks. I call them “show what you know questions“. This allows the students to really make sure they have a good understanding before moving into our practice activity. These questions more or less ask them how to separate hypothetical mixtures.

Classroom Activity

When that piece is finished the students will move around my classroom to do the separation of mixtures activity. It’s sort of like a maze. The students have to start with a particular piece of paper which is folded in half and posted on my classroom wall. The students read the prompt and then open up the paper to find a question about separating mixtures. Then they must look at the other folded pieces of paper all over the classroom to find the answer. I call it a “Chemistry Quest.”

For example let’s say the first question is “what type of mixture has visually distinguishable layers?” They would search the room to find the answer, “heterogeneous mixture.” Once they find that card, they unfold the paper to find their next question. As they move through the classroom answering these questions, they write them down on an answer catcher. The only way to complete this worksheet is to have every single square filled out in the correct order. If they finish with empty spaces they have skipped over something and need to go back and find the error.

Solo or Group Work?

I love having pairs or trios of students work on this together. I’m a huge fan of group work and I believe two heads are better than one. Especially with a very vocabulary heavy lesson where students can use their notes, I like that they have the ability to talk out their thoughts with another student.

After listening to me speak/lecture for so much of the class, this really helps them to get their thoughts moving around and helps to loosen them up from sitting in their desks on high alert through the class. 

Modifications

I’ve done this activity for a few years, but I’ve had to modify it a bit. For one of my students his IEP was very specific and this activity simply wouldn’t work for him. I created a worksheet that has all of the same questions and responses that does not require students to move around the classroom. Effectively it looks like a matching worksheet. It was great for this student in particular, but it was also very handy for absent students who didn’t have the opportunity to walk around the classroom.

Additionally I had a student who spoke exclusively Spanish. This was one of the years I did not have a co-teacher and I was left to fend for myself on how to best teach the student. For a very vocabulary have a lesson I find that it’s best to translate into the native language. This resource is also available in Spanish.

You can find this lesson and the activity on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here is what some other teachers had to say about this activity:

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Atomic Candies

This is a great lab for review! If you haven’t already done this lab, it’s great for helping your students to really differentiate between the models of the atom. Students are given 5 treats, determine their prominent features, and then compare those to models of the atoms. For example, the chocolate chip cookie is obviously the Thomson (plum pudding) model of the atom. 

The 5 treats are: gumball, gobstopper or jaw breaker, chocolate chip cookie, lollipop with a candy center – like a Tootsie Pop and a marshmallow. I’ve been told that Gobstoppers are hard to find these days. The reason I chose them was for the colored layers. The Airhead Extreme (rainbow things) are a great replacement!

Flame Test

If your students have good lab composure (and can clean up after themselves) flame test is a great lab for right before break. Especially if you couldn’t get around to it earlier in the year. It does require a bit of prep work on your end. You’ll need to set up the solutions at least a day beforehand. 

I mean, even if you’ve done this before, this is a fun one! I find that at this point in the year I can rely on my students to clean the lab. It’s especially fun if you allow them to take pictures. 

Periodic Table Guessing Game

You can get this lab for free by entering your email. This lab is certainly more of a game, which is why the kids love it. And you’ll love it because it’s an entirely paper lab. 

The kids have a curated Periodic Table in front of them. They choose an element and list out the properties of that element. Their partner does the same. Then they ask each other questions about their element to try to figure out its identity. They ask things like “would your element be considered to have a high electronegativity value?” “Is your element shiny?” 

Maybe offer a prize to students who win!

Penny Drop

On some of my slower years, I was right around intermoleuclar forces at this time of year. So one of my favorite labs to do before Christmas break is the penny drop lab. Your students may have done this in middle school to understand adhesion and cohesion of water. But to make it “chemistry” they are going to use different substances and compare the strength of their intermolecular forces. 

I usually do this lab with water, some type of oil and rubbing alcohol. I even tried it with salt water and soapy water once. Really those two things just blocked the hydrogen bond and made it tougher for the water to stick to the penny. 

Removal of Sugar from Bubble Gum

Typically I’m teaching reactions or stoichiometry during the month of December. (I often have issues getting through the whole stoichiometry unit before break, so I sometimes break it up. Other times I throw in a mini snowflakes unit after Reactions to prevent from starting Stoichiometry. More on that in a minute.

This lab activity is great for before Christmas break because it’s EASY and solid chemistry.  Instead of removing the water from a hydrated salt, and breaking out the Bunsen burners we use bubble gum!  The students treat the wrapper like the crucible. The gum is the hydrated salt and the sugar is the water. The math is EXACTLY the same, so I love this as a replacement!

Snowflakes Activity Bundle

This bundle of activities available in my TPT store is a great way to spend a few days before Christmas break. I always try to end my units before a break so we can come back to a fresh start. Plus, I hate the thought of them having to recall information from three weeks back AND they turned off their brains for 10+ days. To do this, sometimes I’m left with too many days for a one day activity, but too few days for a unit, even if its a small one, like Reactions. 

Reading Comprehension – Formation of Snowflakes

Over the years I’ve created and collected these chemistry winter activities, and I’ve bundled them up for you! The most academic piece is a reading comprehension activity which focuses on intermolecular forces and how snowflakes are made. It’s think it’s great to review IMFs with your students for ten or so minutes, then let them work on this activity. 

Cutting Scientifically Accurate Snowflakes

The second piece may just fit into the same class period! Included are directions for cutting six-branched scientifically accurate snowflakes. I like to have my students make these to decorate the classroom and the door. Of course, this has potential to leave your classroom an absolute wreck, so offer extra credit to the class that does the best job cleaning up.

Movie Sheets

Yeahhh, it’s that time of year. My students are known for walking into class with an air of confidence and asking “can we watch The Polar Express?” Well I either put on The Princess Bride (just for fun) or Frost the Snowman (with a chemistry question sheet.) With all the years of asking about the Polar Express, I put together a chemistry question sheet for the movie! Then there’s also my tried and true question sheets for Frosty the Snowman and Frosty’s Winter Wonderland. 

Borax Snowflakes Lab

To me, this is a total classic! Making supersaturated solutions of borax and letting a snowflake (or Christmas tree shaped) pipe cleaner sit in the solution as it cools is a blast. While this lab is certainly fun, it’s a perfect lab to do in a high school chemistry class. The kids have to accurately measure the mass and perhaps do some math to make sure the solution will cover up their creation. It’s not too much work for a chemistry activity right before Christmas break, but it is certainly academic!

Spice Up Review

Pause to review. Break out old worksheets and, maybe even things your students have worked on before. But this time, integrate my Magic Answer Checker. This is a Google Sheet where you plug in the answers to your worksheet and send it out to students. It converts any old “boring” worksheet you have into a self checking activity. Plus, I’ve included some games to make this even more fun. Use this as a time to review significant figures, metric conversions, or even nomenclature.

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Relate it to grades and report cards

Taking an average is an elementary math skill.  By the time your students get to you, they should have a pretty good understanding of regular averages. So in my average atomic mass activity, students use what they already know about averages and learn a bit more. 

The idea is that a student is asked to help their teachers to finalize grades for the report card because the grading system went down. 

Practice with Traditional Unweighted Averages

The first task is to determine the test average, quiz average and classwork average for one of the teachers who is behind on grading. This gives the students a chance to do a traditional unweighted average. In each category, each component is weighted equally, so this task is review for students. 

Move into Weighted Averages

Then the students have to determine what the class averages are. This is going to be different in each class based on how the teachers give weight to each category in their class. Each of the teachers have 3 categories with varying weights. It’s a simple way to connect weighted averages to average atomic mass. 

Finally the activity ends with a few chemistry average atomic mass questions for some elements with a few isotopes each. 

When to Use this Activity

The concept of isotopes and average atomic mass goes on for about a week in my classroom.  Students begin by learning about isotopes. I teach one of my guided notes lessons on isotopes and the following day we do an escape room activity. (I’m working on getting this up on TPT eventually…) Then on the third day I teach them average atomic mass. If time allows we would do this activity on the same day, if not, on the fourth day. Then to finish off the school week, we do the  average atomic mass of cadmium lab activity. 

You can check out the lessons and labs in my topic bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers.

I’ll say, the report cards are an amazing real life application! It’s great to help students to understand weighted average and average atomic mass.

The post Helping Students Understand Weighted Average and Average Atomic Mass appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Turn it into a Race

You can either do this as a small group or individually. Think back to second and third grade when we were learning our times tables. Remember those quizzes?! This is the same kind of idea. Obviously this is content specific. Some tasks and concepts work better than others. Have students race to see who finishes first (but make sure the winner has all the correct answers – otherwise this is pretty useless). You can use this large magnetic timer to keep track.

I like to use this strategy for my set of Math with Significant Figures worksheets. There’s 10 worksheets, so it’s nice to throw this back into rotation once a month to make sure your students keep up with their sig figs knowledge.

Silent Partner

This is one of my favorite ways to convert a worksheet into a fun activity. This strategy is especially good for classes that struggle with group work and staying focused. I prefer to use this on days where I’m really not feeling my best, maybe day 0 of a cold when you have that weird “I’m going to sneeze” feeling all day.

Have students partner up, and work on a worksheet together, but with a catch. They’re not allowed to speak.  They have to find other ways to communicate. (This works best if you DON’T let them type on the Chromebooks, but you could use that too, if you like.) 

Break out the Scissors and Glue

Make Task Cards

Print out just one copy of your worksheet and cut out all the questions. Then paste them down to index cards. Boom! You’ve now made task cards! I like to create color coded task cards. Each color would either represent a question type or a difficulty. 

For example, if we were doing titration questions, maybe the pink cards would be 1:1s but green cards would be 2:1. Blue cards might detail the titration lab procedure instead of calculations. 

I frequently turn my task cards into games, which you can read more about in this blog post. These can easily be turned into games, a gallery walk, and more!

Chop Up an Answer Key

Do you have your answer key already made up? Run some photo copies, and chop up the questions and the answers into little cards. Have your students match up the questions with their answers. This works really well with math problems (especially when your Key doesn’t have the solution on it – just the answers). Make sure your students are mindful of units in those final answers. Maybe they write them down in their notebooks, and hold on to the cards for test review in a few weeks? Maybe they glue their answers down on construction paper and turn it in for a grade? The choice is yours!

Row Race or Note Passing

If your students sit in tables or rows, this is a great way to turn your worksheets into something more fun! Set a timer for 30 seconds. The first student in the group works on the sheet for those 30 seconds. When time’s up, the worksheet passes to another student in the group. They get 30 seconds to add to the work, or correct another student’s mistake. You can gamify this as well. The first group to finish or have the most correct answers when you decide time’s up is the winner! I like to have my students write in different colors: pencil, black pen, red pen and blue pen usually work just fine. Then when it’s turned in, I can see which student contributed to the worksheet and in what capacity. 

Collect Pieces

As students complete the questions of a worksheet, they come to you to have their work checked. You can either give them a stamp or a bingo chip for their correct answers. If students work together, you can allow them to pool their stamps or chips. The group with the most wins! I use this in conjunction with task cards most often. I’ve even done a (certainly over the top) activity where students collected feathers and built a Thanksgiving Turkey…

Secret Square

Draw a grid on your board. I’d recommend an 8×8. You can label them A-H and 1-8. Secretly pick a specific box that determines a winner. When students or groups finish a specified number of questions, they get to come to your board and mark a square. By the end of class, announce which was the secret square and give the winner a prize. That could be bonus points, a piece of candy, a homework pass, or even a paperclip. I’ve said it a few times – my high school history teacher gave out paperclips to us and he convinced us it was the highest honor you could ever receive. It worked wonders. The more squares a group fills in, the greater the chance of them finding the Secret Square!

You can do this same thing with student printouts. You can get a freebie of my secret square worksheet by signing up for my email list. Either individually or in groups, students can take turns claiming a square. At the end of class you reveal the secret square! 

Magic Answer Checker Games

I have created a Magic Answer Checker, which I LOVE! It’s a Google sheet where the teacher can plug in the answer key, then hide it. Students then use the Google Sheet to check their answers. I’ve paired this up with 6 games for students to play. (I’ve added two more, so now there’s 8 games!) As they answer questions from your regular ol’ worksheet, they check their answers in the Magic Answer Checker. If they get their answer right, they get to take a turn in one of the games. It’s a really easy way to gamify anything you’re already using in your classroom.

The thing I like most about the Magic Answer Checker is the aspect of self assessment. We do A LOT of self assessing in my chemistry classes. (Chemistry is hard – I like to make sure my students build confidence in low stakes, non graded practice a lot). This is one of many ways to provide that for students. And it sort of tricks them into having fun, too.

Use Game Boards

This one can get expensive. I’ve seen a bunch of REAL board games at the Dollar Tree and I picked up a few REAL board games from Target during Christmas shopping. You can even check out a local thrift store. I mean games for little kids, like Candy Land, Uno, Connect Four, Trouble, Battleship, Chutes and Ladders or a favorite of mine, Pretty Pretty Princess. 

When kids get a question right, they get to take a turn in the game. You can do this by slowly announcing answers, releasing them on your board, creating a Google Form that checks answers for the students, or having students challenge each other. You can use the Magic Answer Checker for this too!

Two students do all questions, but they get to challenge each other. Student A gets to take turns on odd questions, but can challenge the answer of Student B on even questions if their answers don’t match. Have them confer with a neighboring group for the correct answer before coming to you to be the tie breaker.

Turn your worksheet into Finger Lights

Copy and paste your questions into Google Slides. Set the background to black. If it’s not already multiple choice, change that. Each answer should be color coordinated to the color of the finger lights. Turn off the lights in your classroom and have a Glow Party! (Now is a great time to turn on string lights, LEDs or break out that disco ball from your childhood bedroom.) Run through each slide one by one. When you make the call, students turn on the colored light that corresponds with their answer. Now this isn’t great for collecting work, and a formal grade, but it is a heck of a lot of fun! I plan to release more of my finger lights activities on my website shop and in my TPT store.

Being Extra

There are plenty more ways to convert your worksheet into something more fun. You can convert into a digital activity like my Pixel Arts, or Secret Puzzles. There’s also more significant activities like labs or escape rooms that would work too. The idea of this post is to keep things simple. Well, because teaching is hard enough as it is! Start with some of these smaller ideas, and decide what works best for you and your students before diving into a big project. I sell my Pixel Art activities because figuring out how to set that up took me an entire weekend. Like actually a whole day Saturday and then Sunday. My Marie Curie interactive biography was the same way. These things are fun too, but many of us don’t have the time or the will to complete these mega projects! No matter what the activity is, if you show enthusiasm about the activity, I’m sure your students will moan and groan the whole time! 🙃

The post 10 Ways to Convert a Worksheet into a Fun Activity appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

I only want my students to learn SOME OF the element names and symbols. Other than that, I really want them to learn the areas of the periodic table. Like Group 17 are the halogens, and the d-block contains transition metals.

Why is it important? 

Nomenclature. If students aren’t familiar with the element symbols and their names, nomenclature is next to impossible. No, they don’t need to be experts, but they should know a good majority of the representative elements, and the ones in Period 3, and Group 11. I’ve found that these elements come up most when teaching high school chemistry. Most of the others are “weird” and don’t follow the rules we teach in this level of chemistry. You can get the list of elements I recommend for free. Just hand this out to your students!

Quiz it

The primary way I get teenagers to learn anything is by testing or quizzing it. Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in. But for this specific thing, I don’t blame them. It’s largely memorization and that is pretty stinky. I offer some card games to help students study for these quizzes along with the quizzes themselves. You can purchase from my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. 

Post a Periodic Table in Your Classroom

I don’t think you need to have a Periodic Table that contains the names. In fact, I’ve found that most posters DON’T have the names of the elements. Just having them posted in your classroom, with space for you to mention specific elements and give them a location is helpful. If Ni is hanging out with all the transition metals, then students should be able to deduce that Ni is nickel and not nitrogen. This is a less intentional way to learn element names and symbols, but will slowly build knowledge over time.

Explicitly Teach it

I’ve also found that the reference to the groups as “families” can help. I know that’s sort of a dated term but hear me out. Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine… they sound alike for a reason! When my students are tasked with the symbol for Xenon (from hearing me say it, not reading it) the ON in Xenon points them to Group 18, instead of to Zinc (Zn).

Group 11 are the coinage metals. They’re copper, silver and gold – the same materials old coins used to be made of. Little blurbs like this can help your students to learn the elements symbols with ease. 

Practice with It

There are  a few activities I love to use with my students to help them learn the element symbols. The first few involve element name and symbols cards.

Memory

First is memory. Cards with element names and symbols are placed face down in a grid. A pair of students will play together. The first student will flip over any two cards. If the name and symbol match, they get to keep the pair of cards and take another turn. If they don’t match, they put the cards back and the next student gets a turn. This continues until all pairs are found. The students actually really like playing this!

Go Fish

Using those same cards, students can play 2-4 players. They deal 7 cards to each player and place the rest in the center. Students are looking for pairs of names and symbols. On a player’s turn, they ask each other “Do you have S?” or “Do you have bromine?” in order to find the match to a card they hold. Once they get the pair, they place it down. The student with the most pairs when a student’s hand is empty wins.

War

The final game using these cards is War. The deck is split between two players. They roll a die to determine how their cards will go head to head. Each number on the die is assigned one end of the trends: atomic radius, electronegativity and ionization energy. They flip the top card of the deck and see which element wins. If they have a tie or flip a WAR card, they place 3 cards face down and flip the fourth to try again. The winner of the round, takes the cards. Whoever gets the entire deck wins the game. This is my favorite activity for periodic table trends, by far.

Digital Activity

Second activity we like is actually a bit more advanced because it requires students to know a bit about the properties of the elements. (Which I like as we are learning symbols. I don’t ask them to learn element names and symbols until our Periodic Table unit.) 

It’s a periodic table “Who am I?” pixel art. Students read the blurb about the element and put in the symbol to answer the question. The Google  Sheet is self checking, so students will know immediately if they got their answer right or wrong. It’s just another good way to become more familiar with the periodic table. 

The post Help Chemistry Students Learn the Element Names and Symbols appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Labs and Hands On Learning

I think this one is pretty straight forward.  When you have really cool labs it’s easy for kids to get excited about chemistry. Getting to see science in action is critical to make chemistry engaging! When you think about it, chemistry is imaginary. Atoms and molecules are so tiny they’re invisible, so it’s imperative to get the macro moving so students can visualize what’s going on. This certainly can be difficult, especially if you’re new to chemistry, don’t have a ton of supplies or you aren’t confident with students being safe in the lab. I have a ton of blog posts all about labs so check out what you need. 

Tricking Students with Games

Teenagers are looking to have fun. They’re just giant sized kindergarteners. They will compete for stickers, candy, bonus points or even paperclips! (Yes, I’ve done it – it’s like a trophy!) Anything you can do to gamify your practice activities will help to make chemistry engaging for high school students. 

Puzzles

This can be both printable puzzles and digital puzzles. My students actually really love doing crossword puzzles. Since I give vocabulary quizzes, this is great practice for them before they take the quiz, which probably helps with the engagement factor. (Kids are weird. Crosswords are not that fun if you ask me.)

We also have a few secret puzzle activities that we love. They’re done in Google Slides. On each slide is a multiple choice question. Each answer choice has a section of a picture associated with it. If they get the right answer, they will get the correct puzzle piece.  But if wrong, they get the wrong puzzle piece. When the puzzle picture is looking normal, they will know their answer choices are correct. If the puzzle comes out wonky, students will know which questions they need to go back to and fix up. 

Specifically for vocabulary, I give my students joke decipher puzzles. The students are given 10 definitions and have to fill in the corresponding vocabulary terms. Certain letters from their answers will fill in the punch line of a joke. I’ve been adding these to my vocabulary pack available on TPT. Make sure to check out the chemical bonding vocabulary resources, because those are free!

Pixel Art

I personally LOVE these pixel art activities for help to make chemistry engaging. Students work in Google Sheets answering open ended questions with a definitive correct answer. This helps a lot with those pesky math questions. Students plug their answer into the Google Sheet and they are immediately marked correct or incorrect. As they correctly complete the pixel art activity, colored blocks lift away revealing a hidden image. My students absolutely LOVE these activities. They’re always trying to race each other to figure out the animal that’s hidden behind the blocks. I love it because it’s self grading and amazing for self assessment.

Finger Lights

Another crowd pleaser that gets my students engaged in chemistry is finger lights. I prepare slideshows with multiple choice questions. Each answer choice has a color which matches the color of lights that students rubber band to their fingers.  I give students some time to answer these questions and on the count of three, they turn on the correct colored light. 

It’s honestly the EASIEST way to turn boring multiple choice questions into something more engaging. When my principal walks by, he knows Reavy’s class is having a BLAST. 

Warning: your students will try to “accidentally walk away” with your finger lights. They also may just “break” or “disappear.” Watch out!  I pack my up in sets with little sauce containers I got from the dollar store. Students have to return all four lights in the set in order to leave the class when we’re done. And I have to approve all “broken” lights – no tossing without asking. (Just to make sure they’re truly broken and not just disappeared.)

Task Cards

This one is a shocker, right?! Task cards usually are not that fun, but we have quite a few ways that we shake it up and make them exciting. I have this blog post all about how I use task cards. I’ll give you a quick run down. We turn them into games! My task cards are often color coded by question type or difficulty. This means that I can tell my students to answer X number of blue, Y number of green, etc. 

A lot of the time we race to get this done.  Other times we see who can get the most correct answers in a certain amount of time. You could also attach your task cards to a board game. If you get a question right, you can take a turn at the game. Black Friday is my time to buy board games. One year, I got a bunch of them for $4 a piece: Candy Land, Trouble, Chutes and Ladders. I’ve seen smaller versions of these games sold at the Dollar Tree as well. 

Whiteboards

My students LOVE using the whiteboards. I like to do this for Lewis Structures, nomenclature and other chemistry tasks that would otherwise require quite a bit of practice. I got my whiteboards when I first started teaching. They lasted the full six years I was working (in person) and still had a good amount of time left in them. (Granted we only EVER used Expo Brand markers – never knock offs).  When I left Brick and Mortar teaching, I gave my boards to the biology teacher as a hand me down. 

Sometimes just the board itself is engaging enough.  Students work on a question I give them, and hold up the board to be checked when they are done. 

Other times I will put the kids on teams. When they get the right answer they can earn points. For some activities, they can either choose to earn a point or remove a point from another team. Different questions can be worth different numbers of points too! Try rolling a die to determine the number of points a question is worth.

Trashketball

The premise of this game is to shoot a ball (or a ball of paper) into a basket (or the trash). Sometimes for this we use the whiteboards to answer the question. Other times students have to line up and verbally answer a question I give them. They earn points for the correct answer to the question, but also when they score a basket. My students absolutely love this game and ask to play it. One time a student cut up his worksheet, gave it to me and asked me to “ask the questions Trashketball Style.” Talk about a way to make chemistry engaging! This strategy works especially well during March Madness or basketball season. 

Card Sorts

This activity isn’t *that* exciting on its own. It certainly requires an added element of competition or a prize to win. In a card sort, there are small cards that need to be sorted into different categories.  Usually that goes along with the “this or that” of chemistry. Element Compound or MIxture? Acid or Base? I initially had these all on paper, but with the hybrid year, I moved them into Google Slides as well. I have a collection of card sorts you can check out. 

Blooket

This is one of my students’ favorite ways to play online games.  Blooket is kind of like Kahoot, except it’s really been gamified. You can go through other teacher’s question sets or add your own. Then you select a game to play with your questions. My favorite is Gold Quest. For every correct question, students open a treasure chest where they can earn gold or steal from their classmates. It’s a hoot!  If students create an account (I let them decide on this), they can earn points and collect little character icons to play with. I worked very hard to earn the unicorn which I always use when I join my students! You can check out my premade sets and use them with your own students.

Videos

Starting out in an old art classroom I really relied on videos to help with my “chemistry experience.” When you can’t get your hands on an actual Bunsen burner, a video is the next best thing to make chemistry engaging. I also created a YouTube channel to teach every single lesson in my curriculum. This is great for absent students, studying for tests or just hearing the content a second time or in a new way. I also have recorded a few labs! 

Demos

These can be tough, depending on your particular situation. (It was very hard for me in the art classroom, hence me relying on videos.) I try to incorporate demos and phenomena when I can. I have a list of kinetics phenomena and demos you can get for free.  I’m in the process of collecting what I know (and doing a bit of research where I’m lacking) and adding my lists to my curriculum. I will say, these are MUCH easier to do in the second semester during applied chemistry. The first semester, (micro chemistry) atomic, periodic table and bonding are mostly covered by labs in my classroom. 

The post 11 Ways to Make Chemistry More Engaging for High School Students appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Define in Your Own Terms/Words

Chemistry definitions are REALLY tough to understand. Electronegativity first off, sounds like a made up word. And then the definition: the attraction of electrons in a bond? Well what does that even mean?! Especially since most of us teach that term during the periodic table unit BEFORE we teach bonding. 

I like to redefine most chemistry terms in my own words. Electronegativity is “the tug of war over shared electrons.” Vapor pressure is “the willingness to evaporate and become a gas.”  Redefining terms helps students to understand what they actually mean in real life terms. 

I also like to have the students define the tough vocabulary terms in their own words. I like to do this as a Do Now or Bell Ringer activity.  It’s a great warm up for the kids. But there’s one more amazing part. You get to listen to what the students THINK this word means, and you can make corrections before the mistakes are really deep and difficult to fix. 

You can read more about how I choose my vocabulary terms in this post.

Turn and Teach

This is a WAY better version of turn and talk. We all know the chaos that quickly arises when kids are asked to talk to each other. Especially when the verbiage is “talk.”  I first read about this strategy in Whole Brain Teaching. I’m not sure I’d recommend many of the strategies to high school chemistry teachers, but the turn and teach is gold. Students turn to a partner. One is the student, and the other is the teacher. The teacher obviously teaches what they JUST LEARNED to the student. They’ll swap roles throughout the class. This forces kids to put chemistry into their own words, and to hear the content a second time. 

The book talks about teaching for five minutes, then do the turn and teach, then you teach again, and then the kids turn and teach swapping roles. It can get to be a lot if you do this often. I try to strategically pick this strategy for concepts that are tougher (like redox) or for vocabulary terms.  In fact, the first time I used this strategy was in redox – voltaic cells specifically. One of my students turned to me during class and said, “[expletive] this is actually working.” Language aside, I was excited to hear this, especially after getting an eye roll about it!

Be Annoying

EVERY time a chemistry vocabulary term comes up, make your students define it.  When you do solutions and have to reteach what an ionic compound is – ask a student. When you do acids and bases, and reteach bonding, ask a student to redefine. I really love the idea of being intentionally annoying.  I mean, who doesn’t love to annoy teenagers?!  But in all seriousness, they say you have to see an ad 7 times before you buy something that YOU WANT.  How many times will my students (who don’t always want to buy chemistry) have to hear a definition before it sticks? It’s a very easy way to build in vocabulary practice in your chemistry lessons, while hitting the mark on asking questions.

Vocabulary Homework and Quizzes

At the beginning of a unit I give students a list of vocabulary terms for that unit. In fact, they’ll get that list as soon as they are done with a unit test. While their classmates are still testing, they flip to the back of their notebooks to their glossary and start handwriting terms and definitions. One, it keeps the class quiet while we’re testing, and two it’s a decently easy homework assignment. I love it for chemistry vocabulary practice. It’s also great for special needs students and English language learners to get a preview of terms before moving into learning.

They have to handwrite because typing and printing is not at all the same for their brains. I spent hours putting together a glossary that was printable for my chemistry students, and then getting it to fit in their chemistry interactive notebooks. Worth it.

I give 3 to 5 days to write all the terms and definitions, depending on how many there are.  Then students must line up at my desk and show me their notebook. I give them a grade and immediately drop it in my gradebook.  It’s an easy 100 for them, which I love, but it also helps them to prepare for their vocabulary quiz. 

I give matching quizzes to my students with 10 selected terms from their lists. No retakes on these, since it just becomes a guessing game. But this whole system helps to keep my students far more accountable and on top of actually learning the language of chemistry. It’s an easy way to force my students to get some chemistry vocabulary practice.

Use a Vocabulary Game

Like I mentioned, kids need consistent vocabulary practice in chemistry in order to ACTUALLY learn the terms. The class content on its own is super hard, but it’s even harder if you don’t understand the language of chemistry. To help with that, I like to give my students loads of practice during class time.  Right now, I use a lot of devices to practice vocabulary with my students. We fit these in when my lessons are just a little too short, students finish something early, or I’m out and they have a substitute. 

We use crosswords, joke decipher puzzles, flash cards and dominoes. Crosswords are pretty straight forward, so I’ll describe the other three. 

Joke Deciphers

The joke decipher puzzles are one of my favorites! Students are given a very corny chemistry joke and 10 definitions. They fill in the correct vocabulary term and certain letters will be transcribed to the bottom of the page to get the punchline of the joke. Honestly, they kind of hate these, but that’s because the jokes are so bad. But it’s not a chemistry joke if it’s not a dad joke, right? 

Flash Cards Game

The flash cards have the term on the front and the definition on the back. We turn them into a game! For the game, I only print the fronts of the flash cards, so they don’t have definitions. Pairs of students take turns. The first will draw a card and say anything but the vocabulary term to get the second student to guess the term.  So if the term is electron, they’ll say something like “it’s negative” “it’s in an atom” “it’s a subatomic particle.”  We time this for one minute, then the students swap roles.  Whichever pair of students gets the most terms correct in their collective two minutes wins. 

You could also print the vocabulary terms and definitions on different sheets of paper, (not front and back). Then you can line them face down in a grid and play memory! This is more of a solo activity, unless you have students take turns flipping pairs of cards. We don’t use this one that often, simply because it requires me to have two sets of flash cards (some with definitions and some without). Certainly a great thing to have students do at home, or an activity set aside for those few students who consistently finish up their classwork quickly.

Dominoes

These are printed on paper and then cut out. I’ve made little paper dominoes with terms on one half and definitions on the other half of the domino. Students line them up, typically racing the clock.  This is not that fun on it’s own, but I like to have students race the clock, or do this in a row race. To do that, the four students in a row (or at a lab bench) will line up and take turns at the task. Once a student’s turn is over, they go to the back of the line to wait for their classmates to take their turn.  During a student’s turn, they may place a new domino or fix an already placed domino. This is a lot more fun when you make the students play without talking. That’s just my secret teacher tip to you. 

You can buy my ENTIRE vocabulary pack here! It includes two versions of my glossary and 15 of everything! Vocab lists, quizzes, dominoes, flash cards, joke deciphers, and flash cards. It’s everything you need for a whole year of chemistry vocabulary practice for your students.

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