After writing my own chemistry curriculum from scratch, and fine tuning over the years, I’ve discovered 8 essentials of a high school chemistry curriculum.
It’s Comprehensive
During my first year of teaching, I was really just copying everything that I had picked up student teaching. I was lucky enough to have had a WHOLE YEAR of student teaching, and a really great cooperating teacher. So I hadn’t really thought about my long term plans and how everything fit together for the whole year. I was kind of just going day by day, planning based off what my cooperating teacher had done the previous school year.
This obviously didn’t work out well for me, because as we were approaching the midterm, I had one class of students that was expected to take the state final exam. And I had to scramble. I mean, I would have been scrambling no matter what, simply because of that particular situation… That’s a long story. But it was about Thanksgiving when I realized that my day by day plan, without the annual plan was going to burn me. And for that reason, I’ll never teach a class without a year long plan ever again!
For help with this, I recommend checking out my free chemistry curriculum outline. Specifically take a look at the pdf file and look at each unit, with big ideas for each one. This explains exactly what is being taught and why. It’ll outline your whole year! Just compare to your standards and go!
It’s Cohesive
Don’t laugh at me, but during my first year, I taught matter very early on, which meant separation of mixtures was one of the first lessons I taught. Chromatography is separation of mixtures based on molecular polarity. But of course, my students didn’t know anything about polarity yet. So I had to describe it as “molecular magnetism.” And I felt like an idiot, when we actually learned intermolecular forces and I had to back track. Partly this was because I had never spent the time to actually plan my course for the year. But also, because I wasn’t thinking about how my lessons and units related to each other.
Now I’m at the point where all of my lessons blend together each day. One very easily leads into the next. There is no backtracking, using “baby terms” before teaching the “big boy, big girl” version of the term. It’s a lot more cohesive now. I credit that to annual planning!
Dig deeper into that free curriculum outline and find the Google Docs link that outlines, literally day by day each of the lessons I teach my students. You’ll be able to see how each one of those units was expanded into daily lessons. I think you’ll really see how cohesive the lessons and units are!
It Incorporates Spiral Review
Speaking of annual planning and cohesive lessons, an essential of every chemistry curriculum is spiral review. My lessons (sort of on their own) incorporate spiral review. Chemistry is a super cool subject in that all the content blends together and can easily build on itself.
For example, I teach electron excitation during my atomic theory unit. Then, I teach electron configuration during the periodic table unit a few weeks later. (I see how some people doing configurations during atomic, that makes sense. But I REALLY lean into the PT for this lesson, so for me and my style pushing it back a bit in the PT unit makes more sense.) ANYWAYS, this means that we get to revisit electron excitation. As we write configurations, we can look for which ones are excited and which are ground state.
When we talk about acids and bases, we recall the difference between ionic and covalent bonding. For high school chemistry (especially with those organic acids) I find it’s best to teach that acids are covalent and bases are ionic as we distinguish them from each other. Consider we do acids and bases in March, but bonding around Thanksgiving, this is a great spiral review! This is sprinkled all over my chemistry curriculum!
Again, checking out that Day-by-Day free curriculum file, I think you’ll see all the ways to spiral in quite easily. In fact, I challenge you to find 10 ways you can spiral based on my curriculum outline!
It Has Weekly Hands on Activity
At the end of the 2023 school year, I asked my email list a few questions about their school year, and nearly every teacher indicated their students loved the labs they did in their chemistry classes. And yes, this can be tougher for some of us than others. I would know, being that my first chemistry classroom was actually an art room. That’s why my very early labs were very simple. Like using cabbage juice as an acid base indicator, making oobleck to study phase of matter and dissolving sugar cubes in water to test the factors that affect solubility.
Since then my lab catalog has gotten more bright and exciting and even includes Bunsen burners! I have a collection of over 40 labs that I like to do with my students (there are some others I sprinkle in as well). With 36 weeks in a school year, this comes down to about 1 lab a week.
It Prepares Students for the Final Exam
I think this one is kind of obvious, but I have to add it. I think that all of us know this, but don’t really know how to do it (or do it well). But I certainly didn’t when I first started. My students were taking a state final exam. The state makes three of them every year and post them online for everyone to access. I certainly did not give my students enough exposure to the questions and types of questions that I should have.
Since then, I instituted bell ringers that showcase five multiple choice questions modeled after the final exam. (This is also a great chance for spiral review). I’m working on making these available to share with you. Get on my email list to get updates on my progress (and some other cool freebies and info!)
Then of course, my tests are a very similar format to the final exam, with about ⅓ of the questions being fill ins, and ⅔ being multiple choice. I make sure to give just the right number of questions, that the test taking pacing (minutes spent per question) is appropriate. I don’t want them to feel rushed at the final exam because I was too generous with them throughout the year.
I have a final exam pack that you can use with your own students if you don’t have a final exam. Or perhaps you’d like to use it for some practice tests before your final exam.
There’s a focus on vocabulary
Chemistry is a language! Not really, but the difference between an atom and molecule, element and compound, acid and base, endothermic and exothermic can make or break a test question! And when you have 35 questions on unit exams, and 75+ questions on your final exam you want to make sure you can get every point that you can.
For this reason, beginning in my second year, I’ve made students do vocabulary assignments. Really, this is the only homework I’ve been a really stickler about. Students must HANDWRITE the term and the definition. Then I give them a vocabulary quiz. It’s just matching, but it helps with accountability.
When you get test questions like, “which of the following can be broken down by chemical means?” you need to know that you’re looking for a compound!
We have plenty of vocabulary activities we use as well to get proper practice. You can read more about them here.
It’s Targeted at all Students
Another first year teacher fail was totally missing the mark on student motivations and interest in chemistry. For all of my career, nearly none of my students actually wanted to take chemistry. Most of them were placed there by eager guidance counselors. I’ve worked over the years to make my lessons more approachable for all kinds of students, an essential of every high school chemistry curriculum.
Chronically absent was my first challenge, which is the reason my “baby notes” exist at all. They became guided notes when I realized students should be writing stuff, not just listening. And now they’re a lot more evolved.
I also try to give a lot of variety in the types of activities that we do in my chemistry class.
It’s Fun
These students you have in your classroom are only going to be 15 going on 16 one time (and hopefully they’ll be sophomores just one time.) And of course, I like to have fun too. For this reason, whenever I can I turn our classroom activities into something fun. When I can’t, I play music or let them work in pairs. In my chemistry class, we love to play Blooket, use the white boards, Be the Teacher, and Trashketball. When we do labs, I try to make them edible, colorful or both. Some crowd favorites are flame test, ice cream and slime.
At least when the class and activities are fun, it feels a lot less like pulling teeth!
If you can’t see yourself writing an entire curriculum, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. You can purchase my entire chemistry curriculum (or Units or individual Lessons). I really love the planning aspect of teaching, but I know many do not. It’s like a giant puzzle of fitting all the standards into a school year, AND making them fit nicely. Give me a Sudoku, a jigsaw or a curriculum project and I’m a happy lady!
