Sometimes, turning an activity into a teacher demonstration and having students complete a mini lab report based on their observations is the better instructional choice. You can still ask students to make predictions, record data, analyze results, and draw conclusions without putting a set of chemicals and equipment at every lab station.

So how do you decide? Here are the biggest things I consider when choosing between a full student lab and a teacher demonstration.

How Much Time Do You Have?

Student labs take time. And I’m not just talking about the actual procedure. You have to distribute materials, explain the setup, get everyone into groups, answer the same question at six different lab tables, clean everything up, and inevitably deal with the group that is somehow still on Step 3 when everyone else is washing their glassware.

Rinse and repeat for the rest of your classes for the day. 

A 10-minute procedure can easily consume most of a class period. If students need the hands-on experience, that time is absolutely worth it. But sometimes the goal of the activity is simply for students to observe a chemical phenomenon and interpret what happened.

In that case, a teacher demo can be much more efficient. You might be able to complete the experiment in 10 minutes, then give students another 10-15 minutes to finish a mini lab report. They still practice making observations, analyzing evidence, and connecting what they saw to chemistry concepts, but you haven’t sacrificed an entire class period.

How Much Material Will the Lab Use?

This is a BIG one in chemistry! Especially if you’re working in a non-lab room. 

A demonstration performed once at the front of the room might require 10 mL of a solution. Turn that same procedure into a lab for eight groups and suddenly you’re preparing 80 mL, plus extra because someone will spill something, contaminate a dropper, or enthusiastically pour four times as much as they were supposed to. Again, rinse and repeat for the rest of your classes for the day.

For inexpensive materials, that might not matter. For expensive chemicals, specialized equipment, or materials that are annoying to prepare, it absolutely does matter. Before turning an experiment into a student lab, ask yourself whether students actually gain something important from physically performing the procedure with their own hands. 

If the learning comes primarily from what happens, rather than from doing the technique, a demonstration may make more sense.

How Safe Is the Procedure?

Obviously, safety should always be a consideration in the chemistry classroom. There are plenty of experiments that can be performed safely by a trained chemistry teacher but become significantly riskier when 30 teenagers are performing them simultaneously.

Consider things like:

• Open flames or high temperatures
• Concentrated acids or bases
• Toxic or irritating chemicals
• Side reactions that may occur in a waste beaker
• Reactions that produce fumes
• Pressurized systems
• Procedures requiring especially careful handling
• Reactions that can become dangerous if students use the wrong quantity

This doesn’t mean students should never work with anything more dangerous than baking soda. Part of learning chemistry is learning to work safely in a laboratory. But the risk needs to be justified by the educational benefit.

If students need practice using a Bunsen burner, then using the burner themselves matters. If the burner is simply being used to heat something so students can observe the resulting reaction, they may not need to be the ones holding it. Or maybe a swap to a hot plate is better! There are times when the correct answer for safety is a lab procedure modification, and times where it’s best for the teacher to do the demo.

There are times where even I don’t like the materials a lab requires for safety reason. (I’m thinking about the classic: Group 1 Reactivity Trend.) YouTube videos are also an amazing alternative to traditional labs or even demos when the materials call for it.

Is the Lab Teaching a Skill or Demonstrating a Concept?

This may be the most important question. Some labs are valuable because students need to learn how to do something: light a burner, tare a balance, filter a mixture, create a standard, run multiple trials, read a burette… the list goes on. Those should usually be student labs. 

Other labs are valuable because students need to see something happen. Maybe you’re demonstrating conservation of mass, showing an especially dramatic reaction, comparing reaction rates, or giving students evidence they will use to identify an unknown. In those cases, physically pouring the chemicals themselves may add very little to the learning objective. That’s a great opportunity for a demonstration.

How Complicated Is the Setup and Cleanup?

Sometimes a lab isn’t difficult for students at all. It’s difficult for you. If a student lab requires you to prepare eight identical setups, label dozens of containers, portion chemicals, organize specialized equipment, and then clean everything afterward, consider whether that preparation is worth the instructional payoff.

One teacher demonstration might give students almost the exact same academic experience with a fraction of the prep. And teacher time counts, too. You don’t earn bonus points for spending your entire planning period filling 32 tiny cups with 2 grams of the same chemical when one demonstration would accomplish your objective just as effectively.

Now at some point, taking on a TA, might save you the time and give you an opportunity to turn demos into labs. I’ve never had that privilege, but it’s something to consider! 

Making Teacher Demos More Than a Show

The biggest danger with teacher demonstrations is allowing students to become passive observers. Don’t just say, “Watch this!” Give them something to do with what they’re watching.

I like the idea of having students complete a mini lab report. Depending on the experiment, students might record:

Purpose or Question: What are we trying to determine, observe or learn?

Prediction: What do you think will happen?

Observations/Data: What did you actually see?

Analysis: What does the evidence tell us?

Conclusion: How does this demonstration connect to the chemistry concept we’re studying?

You can even have students create a data table before the demonstration or require them to sketch the setup. Now the demonstration isn’t just entertainment. Students are still practicing scientific thinking without every student physically conducting the experiment. You get to be your student’s lab partner!

You Need Both

Student labs and teacher demonstrations don’t have to compete with each other. Students absolutely need hands-on laboratory experience in chemistry. They need to learn how to measure, manipulate equipment, follow procedures, troubleshoot mistakes, work safely, and collect their own data.

But hands-on doesn’t automatically mean better. Sometimes the best use of a class period is letting students perform the experiment themselves. Other times, the safest, fastest, cheapest, and most effective option is to perform the experiment once and let students focus on analyzing what happened.

The real question you need to ask yourself is: “what do my students actually need to get out of this experience?” Once you know the answer to that, deciding between a student lab and a teacher demo becomes a whole lot easier.

PS: If you need it, I have two free lists of demos that I like to use in my classroom. Here’s some for Intermolecular Forces, and a list for Kinetics & Equilibrium.

The post Student Lab or Teacher Demo? How to Decide Which Is Right for Your Chemistry Class appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

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.

A few items came home with me, but not many. At the time, I truly believed I was done teaching. Now, every once in a while, I think about what I’d do if someone handed me the keys to a chemistry classroom tomorrow. Back to school season makes me very nostalgic! 

I’d basically be starting from scratch, so I think about what KELSEY would need to get started again. It may surprise you, as the self proclaimed Glitter Queen, but it’s not a fancy classroom theme, color-coordinated bins, or a giant Amazon haul. The internet can make it seem like you need thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies before students ever walk through the door. The truth is, you don’t.

Most of the expensive classroom necessities should come from your science department or your school budget. As teachers, we shouldn’t feel pressured to furnish our classrooms out of our own pockets. If I had to start over tomorrow, these are the ten things I’d make sure were in my classroom on Day 1. 

1. A Complete Chemistry Curriculum

This one probably isn’t a surprise. The biggest source of stress for me wasn’t decorating my room or finding the perfect storage containers. It was figuring out what I was teaching tomorrow. Teaching now, versus being 23 years old means my life is very different. Every minute spent in the school building where I’m unpaid is stealing time from my family. I assure you, I wouldn’t be planning after the bell!

A complete curriculum gives you a roadmap for the entire year. Instead of spending every evening hunting down worksheets from five different websites, you can spend your time actually helping students learn.

Of course, I’d use the curriculum I created because it’s exactly what I wished I’d had during my own early years in the classroom. But regardless of which curriculum you choose, I’d recommend finding one cohesive resource rather than piecing together hundreds of unrelated activities. It’s a nightmare, and you do so much of it off the clock. 

2. A Lab Manual (and the Supplies to Go With It)

Chemistry without labs just isn’t chemistry. The good news is that beakers, chemicals, goggles, and other lab supplies should almost always come from your department budget, not your personal wallet. What I would personally want to have ready on day one is a well-organized lab manual with labs that fit the sequence of my curriculum. That way I’m not scrambling to reinvent experiments the night before. I’d be making sure my science department had everything I needed!

3. A Teacher Emergency Kit

This might be the least glamorous item on the list, but it might also be the most important.

Mine would include:

• Hairbrush & ponytails
• Mouthwash
• Lip balm
• Headache medicine
• Deodorant
• Chocolate (for those days)
• Extra phone charger
• Phone numbers of all the important people I may need to call if my phone died, my husband, babysitter/daycare etc.
• A complete change of clothes

Let’s be honest… chemistry teachers have a higher chance than most of needing a backup outfit after a lab accident. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but you’ll be really glad it’s there if you do.

4. Student Whiteboards and Dry-Erase Markers

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I love student whiteboards. They’re one of the fastest ways to check understanding, and high school kids still fall for the gimmick. 

Instead of asking, “Does everyone get it?” (and getting a room full of nodding heads), every student has to commit to an answer.

They’re perfect for:

• Predicting products
• Balancing equations
• Lewis structures
• Dimensional analysis
• Quick review games (my favorite way to use them!)

They’re inexpensive (based on how long they should last), reusable, and one of the highest-impact classroom purchases you can make. Your school should be willing to pay for these. Maybe it’s “too expensive” for your classroom, but you can share it with the whole department and “sign them out.” That’s definitely more annoying, but it’ll keep you from coming out of pocket. 

5. Colored Pencils

Not because chemistry needs to be colorful. Because color helps students organize information.

We used colored pencils constantly for:

• Particle diagrams
• Bohr models
• Electron movement
• Periodic trends
• Highlighting important information in notes

Students naturally use color to organize ideas, and chemistry has plenty of abstract concepts that become easier to understand with visual representations. Plus I have a lot of color by number activities that I’ve purchased from TPT over the years. I love them for “chill” days that I find we need sometime in chemistry, or even for sub plans. I’ve link the Crayola Classpack, but at BTS time, it honestly might be cheaper to get 30 packs of colored pencils instead. Watch the prices!

6. A Personal Laminator

I’m very much on team: print it once, laminate once, use it for 10 years. Your school may have a laminator, but they are usually very thin. I like the sturdiness that comes with a personal laminator. It absolutely means coming out of pocket and the sheets can get expensive! But to me, it’s worth it. It’s something that I do while watching Netflix at home in my jammies, so it doesn’t feel like it takes up any time. I laminate things like:

• Task cards
• Gallery walks
• Classroom signs
• Reference materials

7. A Giant Box of Red Pens

I know some schools have moved away from them (I assume green or purple will eventually be the “naughty” color) but I still love using one color for peer grading.

Getting these at back to school will run you just a few dollars, but it’s AMAZING to use in class. It saves you time on grading. Students become less self conscious the more you do it. (It overall reduces stakes in your classwork and helps ensure students care about LEARNING more than they care about the grade.)

When everyone is using the same color, it’s easy to tell what students corrected during class and what they originally wrote. I’d probably buy a box of 50 and never think about red pens again for several years.

8. The “Blue Meanie” Pencil Sharpener

Every teacher has that one oddly specific classroom tool they swear by. Mine is the Blue Meanie X-ACTO pencil sharpener. It sharpens colored pencils beautifully, lasts forever, and somehow survives middle and high school students. I loved my so much it was one of the few things that came home with me. I’d probably bring mine back and buy a new one for my house. Mine has sharpened colored pencils with no problem. A few pens have even made it in there…

9. Composition Books and Glue Sticks

Interactive notebooks completely changed how I organized my chemistry class. Students weren’t juggling loose papers all year. Instead, they built their own reference book one lesson at a time.

Composition books are inexpensive, durable, and stay together much better than spiral notebooks. #teamcompositionbook

And yes…you’re going to need a lot of glue sticks. Ideally, your school would pay for this. If you have a student supply list, I’d require each student to have 8-10 glue sticks for the year. 

10. Good Office Tools

These aren’t exciting purchases. I’m sure your school will give you a stapler and hole punch, but if I didn’t have the “good stuff” I’d probably spring for it myself. It just saves me the frustration, and should hold up for a few years

I’d immediately buy:

• A sturdy Swingline hole punch
• A heavy duty Swingline stapler in a bright, easy to find color
• A quality paper trimmer (I have a plastic guillotine trimmer, but I’d love to upgrade to a wood one)
• Scissors (chain them to the desk 😅)
• A notebook or notepad to keep my “these would have been on a post it and would have fallen on the floor, collected dust, lost their stickiness, and I forgot what it said” notes
• Colored pens for grading, I prefer InkJoy Gels. They’re expensive, but they’re my gift to myself every BTS season

Bonus Items

Paper Storage

If my classroom budget allowed for a few extras, I’d also pick up the paper sized sterilite drawers. (You can usually get these cheap at Walmart or Target at BTS Season). I love these for organizing my Pass Back papers by class. You need some way to organize these papers. Binder clips work pretty well. If I was keeping my budget really tight, I’d just use the lids to copy paper boxes. They work just fine, you can wrap them in pretty paper, or paint them to jazz them up a bit too. I’m sure the art teacher can spare an ounce or two of acrylic paint. 

Rainbow Photo Storage Boxes

If you use task cards, card sorts, or other small activities, these storage boxes are amazing. Usually you can get them at Michael’s with a teacher coupon, or get them on sale. Don’t pay $40 for them. They’re not worth more than $20. 

Everything stays organized, students can grab what they need quickly, and cleanup becomes much easier. I saved mine and keep my garden seeds in them now. 

A Keurig or Electric Kettle

I’ve used the kettle plenty of time to warm up water for a quick demo in chemistry. I also use it for making myself a cup of tea or instant coffee. There are even times I will bring in styrofoam cups and hot cocoa packets for my students. It’s nice to have!

I have my Keurig leftover from my teaching days. It’s been collecting dust. In my area, there’s about 50 of them on FB Marketplace, so it’ll just sit in my closet a bit longer, until somebody I know is looking for one. But if I went back to teaching, you can bet I’d stick that thing in my classroom for a 2PM pick me up! 

I also like to keep a REAL mug in my room, dish soap, and a Teacher Only Food Safe Sponge for keeping my mug clean. If you’re a tea, coffee, or cocoa drinker, if you have the space, you can keep your Teacher Appreciation gifted mugs in your classroom without cluttering your kitchen at home. Plus your students like to see their gifts actually being used! 

What Isn’t on My List

You may have noticed what’s missing. 

• Flexible seating
• “Aesthetic” classroom décor (keep me away from sad beige, bring on the COLOR!)
• Custom bulletin boards (I like handwritten formulas stapled to the board, similar to giant reference table)
• Designer teacher carts (unless you move around the building, that’s a different story)
• LED lights (though I did string leftover Christmas lights in the classroom I had with no windows to make it a bit homier) 

None of those things make students better at chemistry. If those things bring you joy and fit within your budget, that’s wonderful! But don’t feel like you need them before you’re “ready” to teach.

I’d rather have a solid curriculum, engaging labs, organized materials, and a classroom that runs smoothly than the prettiest room on Instagram. The best chemistry classrooms aren’t remembered because they looked perfect. They’re remembered because students learned, asked questions, made mistakes, and discovered that chemistry was actually pretty fun.

And thankfully, that doesn’t require nearly as much stuff as the internet sometimes makes us believe.

The post 10 Things I’d Buy for my Classroom if I Went Back to Teaching Chemistry Tomorrow 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.

Need a lab rubric for your students to write STELLAR lab reports? Sign up with your email.

One of the scariest parts of teaching chemistry isn’t balancing equations or explaining thermodynamics. It’s handing a Bunsen burner to a room full of fifteen year olds for the first time. Every chemistry teacher knows that labs are where some of the best learning happens, but they’re also where students can get hurt if safety isn’t taken seriously. The good news? Lab safety isn’t about making students afraid of the laboratory. It’s about helping them respect it.

Get a Lab Safety Contract

Before students ever complete their first experiment, they should understand the expectations for working safely in your classroom. I always recommend using your district’s approved lab safety contract (or one provided by your science department or chemical hygiene officer) rather than creating one from scratch. If your school isn’t going to supply one for you, I think the one from Flinn Scientific is a pretty good one.

A safety contract does more than check a box. It communicates to students and their parents/guardians that the science lab is a unique learning environment with responsibilities that don’t exist in every classroom.

Teach the Equipment Before the Experiments

Students can’t safely follow lab directions if they don’t know the difference between a beaker and an Erlenmeyer flask. Before my first real lab, we spend time learning the names and purposes of common laboratory equipment. This makes future lab procedures easier to follow and reduces mistakes that could become safety hazards.

Just as importantly, students learn where every piece of safety equipment is located in our classroom:

• Fire extinguisher
• Fire blanket
• Emergency shower
• Eyewash station
• Fume hood
• Sinks (yes this can put out a singed sleeve before rushing to the emergency shower!)

Knowing the equipment is only half the battle. Students also need to know when each piece of equipment is the right choice.

If you need a refresher activity for your students, check out this free word search that tests them on some common chemistry lab equipment.

Every Lab Has Different Risks

Lab safety isn’t a script that students memorize one time at the beginning of the school year. Each new lab investigation brings different hazards. Before every lab, I review the specific risks associated with that activity, and do a dry run of the procedure. This lets me remind them how to use equipment properly and without fear. Students should understand not only what the rules are, but why those rules exist.

One of the best safety investments I ever made was dedicating an entire class period to learning how to use a Bunsen burner. We didn’t rush into an experiment. Students practiced identifying the parts of the burner, inspecting the equipment, positioning the striker correctly, and lighting the flame one at a time while I coached each student individually. That practice paid off for the rest of the year. When students eventually needed a Bunsen burner during an experiment, they weren’t trying to learn chemistry and basic lab skills at the same time. Click here to read more about my Bunsen burner training lab.

Teach Students to Think Through Emergencies

Instead of simply listing safety rules, walk students through realistic scenarios. Ask questions like:

• What would you do if your sleeve caught fire?
• When would you use the fire blanket instead of the safety shower?
• Why might the nearest sink be the fastest solution in one part of the room?

These conversations help students understand that safety isn’t about memorizing procedures. It’s about making good decisions under pressure. I also share real lab accidents and discuss what could have prevented them. The goal isn’t to scare students. It’s to show that most accidents happen when someone ignores procedures or stops paying attention. Most of them are entirely preventable, and others can be made into much smaller problems with quick thinking and action.

My Students Think the Emergency Shower is Always the Answer

One misconception I see every year is that students assume the emergency shower is always the right answer in a lab emergency. It’s understandable. The giant yellow handle is hard to ignore, and for many students it’s the only piece of safety equipment they’ve ever noticed because it certainly stands out in the room.

That’s why I don’t just point out where the safety shower is. We talk through real scenarios. For example, if a student accidentally catches a sleeve on fire while standing next to a sink, running across the room to the emergency shower may actually make the situation worse by giving the fire more time to spread. In that case, getting under the sink immediately or stopping, dropping, and rolling may be the safer choice while classmates grab the fire blanket and I grab the fire extinguisher.

The lesson isn’t that the emergency shower is unimportant. The lesson is that emergency response depends on the situation and the layout of your classroom. Students need to learn to think through emergencies, not simply memorize the location of the safety shower.

Hold Students Accountable

Safety rules only matter if they’re consistently enforced. If a student refuses to wear goggles, ignores directions, or behaves carelessly around chemicals or flames, they don’t participate in the lab. I make a point to KICK THEM OUT. And that’s for everyone’s safety. Let me make myself perfectly clear here. Unsafe behavior doesn’t only endanger the student making poor choices. It puts everyone else in the room at risk. Lab participation is a privilege that comes with responsibility.

Build Trust Before You Build Confidence

By the middle of the school year, I trust my students with equipment that would have terrified them on the first day. That trust isn’t automatic. It’s built through repeated practice, clear expectations, consistent routines, and a classroom culture where safety and accuracy always comes before speed.

Ironically, spending more time teaching safety at the beginning of the year actually makes labs more enjoyable later on. Students get the sense that they can trust themselves when you trust them with this “heavy machinery.” They feel confident because they know what they’re doing. And I can focus on teaching chemistry instead of worrying whether someone is about to make a preventable mistake.

It takes a lot to trust a group of 15 year olds with a Bunsen burner. It takes a lot because 15 year olds on the whole don’t always make the best decisions. Not only that, they don’t always know what the best decision is because they’re just baby chemists. They’re just starting out.

If you need a lab safety activity for your classroom in the first week of school that helps to review lab safety rules before your students know enough chemistry to really get the lab practice, try my mystery activity. Your students answer general lab safety questions and uncover which of the “Mystery Kids” left a chemical puddle on the floor of the chem lab. You can have your students role play the Mystery Kids and really make it even more fun.

Failsafes

I like to keep a few cheapy dollar store hair ties in my classroom for students with long hair. I also have some bobby pins. In a pinch, I’ll let my students go down to the locker room if they have sneakers or a cotton tee shirt in their gym locker that would be more lab appropriate than what they are wearing on lab day. I try not to make a habit of that because it eats up a lot of time, and the gym teachers usually don’t love that. A few classic lab coats can usually take care of most fashion “mishaps” when it comes to the lab.

Final Thoughts

The chemistry lab should be one of the most exciting places in your school, not one of the most stressful. When students understand the purpose behind your safety rules, practice procedures before they need them, and learn to respect the laboratory, they’re free to focus on what really matters: exploring chemistry through hands on investigation. A strong culture of safety isn’t built in a single lesson. It’s built one lab at a time, and practiced all year long.

If you are looking for lab activities for your chemistry classroom, I offer a lab book with over 40 lab activities for high school chemistry students. The labs are pretty simple, most would be considered “green chemistry,” and very few have serious safety or disposal concerns. I wrote most of the labs before I even had a lab room to work with, and kept most of them when I got the lab because I felt they taught everything my students needed. Check it out here.

The post Lab Safety in High School Chemistry: Building a Culture of Trust Before Students Ever Light a Bunsen Burner 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.

And honestly? They are not completely wrong. For most of my teaching career, tests made up a large portion of my students’ grades. (At one school it was as high as 70%). A bad test grade could tank an average, and there was only so much homework or classwork could do to bring it back up. I wanted a chemsitry extra credit system that:

• rewarded effort and positive behavior
• gave students a little bit of control over their grades
• motivated students all year long
• did not require me to keep track of 150 different extra credit totals

That is how my Chem Coins were born.

What Are Chem Coins?

Chem Coins are small laminated paper squares that students can earn throughout the year. I print them, cut them out, laminate them, and then cut them again. They are simple, cheap, and surprisingly powerful. They have values of 1 point or 5 points. Get free printable Chem Coins, here!

Students save up their coins and can use them to add extra credit points to any test. There’s really just one rule. Students may add only up to 20 extra credit points to a given test.

This keeps the system helpful without letting a student turn a 42 into a 100 because they somehow managed to hoard a giant stack of Chem Coins. Twenty points in chemistry is not going to make or break a student’s grade by any means. Chemistry is HARD, remember?

How Students Earn Chem Coins

The best part of this chemistry extra credit system is that you can hand out Chem Coins for almost anything you value in your classroom.

Some of the ways my students earn Chem Coins include:

• asking a thoughtful question
• helping another student
• volunteering an answer
• winning a review game
• participating when the class is dragging
• cleaning up after a lab
• finding a mistake on the board
• being especially kind
• doing me a favor
• showing up on time when I am feeling particularly petty

Basically, if a student does something that makes my classroom a better place to be, they might earn a Chem Coin. Students very quickly become invested in the system. Even students who normally do not care much about points suddenly care very deeply about tiny laminated pieces of paper.

Why I Love This System

There are a lot of extra credit systems out there, but most of them require the teacher to keep track of everything. I knew that if I had to keep a running spreadsheet of every extra point every student earned, I would never keep up with it. And imagine the inquiries? “How many points do I have?” Heck to the no.

With Chem Coins, students are responsible for keeping track of their own points. If they want to save them for the unit test, they keep them. If they want to use them immediately, they can. If they lose them, they’re out of luck. I know that sounds harsh, but honestly, it is the only way I have found to make a system like this manageable. I do not replace lost Chem Coins. Students learn very quickly to keep them in a pencil pouch, folder, or special pocket in their binder. Heck, some even keep them in their wallets!

Yes, My Students Created a Black Market

I would love to tell you that students simply earn Chem Coins through hard work and responsibly save them until test day. But of course, that never goes according to plan. Students trade them, they bargain with the, they offer to do each other’s homework for them. One student was even renting out his headphones for chem coins!

There is absolutely a Chem Coin black market. And honestly? I mostly let it happen. As long as students are not stealing coins, I do not care if they trade a 5 Chem Coins for a bag of chips at lunch. The “buyer” just gave up 5 points for their chemistry score. Clearly there isn’t much else I can do for a kid that is literally giving away test points…

How I Use Chem Coins on Tests

When students take a test, they may turn in Chem Coins with their test to add points to their score.

For example:

• A student who earns a 72 could use 8 points worth of Chem Coins to raise the grade to an 80.
• A student who earns an 85 could use 5 points worth of Chem Coins to raise it to a 90.
• A student who earns a 58 could only use up to 20 points, bringing the grade to a 78.

I have found that this gives students hope without completely removing accountability. They still need to study. They still need to pass the test. But if they have one bad day, one rough unit, or one chemistry concept that just does not click, they know they have a way to soften the blow.

Tips If You Want to Try This

If you are thinking about creating your own version of Chem Coins, here are a few things I recommend:

• Use bright colors so they are hard to fake.
• Consider initialing the backside before laminating for authenticity purposes! Perhaps even drop the school year (2025-2026) so students can’t offload them to next year’s students for a fee.
• Laminate them so they last.
• Make different denominations.
• Decide on your maximum number of points ahead of time.
• Be very clear that lost coins are not replaced.
• Expect students to become strangely obsessed with them.

You may be surprised by how motivating a tiny square of laminated paper can be.

Final Thoughts

Chemistry is hard. Sometimes students need a little bit of grace. My Chem Coin system gives students a chance to recover from a bad test grade while still encouraging participation, kindness, effort, and responsibility all year long. And best of all? I do not have to keep track of a single spreadsheet. Don’t forget to get my printable Chem Coins for free, right here!

The post My Chemistry Extra Credit System: The “Chem Coins” My Students Will Do Anything For appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

These simple chemistry lab activities are low maintenance for you, require minimal chemicals, and still keep students engaged. Whether you’re wrapping up content, reviewing for a final, or just trying to make the last few weeks meaningful, these ideas are fun, hands on, and refreshingly doable. Trust me – I was doing most of them in an old art classroom with makeshift supplies.

And if you find yourself wishing you had more of these kinds of labs throughout the year, check out my Chemistry Lab Manual. It’s full of easy, low-prep labs (with a few classics sprinkled in) that span 15 units of study. You can use it now for end of year review and next school year to keep your sanity intact from day one.

How to Choose a Lab

There’s a few things to consider when building out your calendar and schedule for the last few days of science classes. Especially if you have a final exam to prepare for!

• It’s certainly best to focus on topics that your students struggle with. If your Acid Base unit was a breeze, you certainly don’t want to be spending time doing a titration!
• Consider the passage of time. If your Atomic Unit was 9 months ago, there are some potential gaps simply because it’s been a while. This is probably more true for things like average atomic mass, than it is for atomic structure. Atomic structure is part of nearly every chemistry lesson. Your students probably have a good handle on that. But isotopes may be a concept that’s been forgotten.
• What have you spiraled? Thinking again of isotopes – I review that in my Nuclear Unit. Which, I’m sure you know is the last unit I teach. (That’s because I teach “Chemistry is all about the electrons. Until you get to Nuclear.”) For my students and how I set up my curriculum, this isn’t something I’d spend time on.

If you’re in need of an end of year study guide for your students, look no further. Sign up and have one sent directly to you!

Atomic Candies

History and models of the atom is a very important concept to chemistry. It helps students to know that chemistry is based on indirect observations. Students come to learn that science is a body of knowledge that loads of people have contributed to and built upon over many, many years. But these atomic models aren’t revisited naturally in your content over the school year. After Bohr models and diagrams, the early stuff is easily forgotten. So if your students need a refresher I recommend the Atomic Candies lab at the end of your school year. All you’ll need is some sweet treats!

• A chocolate chip cookie
• A lollipop with a candy center
• A gum ball
• A layered jawbreak or Airheads Extreme (the idea is colorful layers)
• A marshmallow

Decide if you want 1 set of treats per student and how you want to distribute them. I usually sit at my kitchen table with ziplocks and create baggies the night before while watching something fun.

Your students are going to note prominent features of the atomic models and compare them to prominent features of the candies. Like the colored layers in a jawbreaker are kind of like the electron energy levels in a Bohr model! I have some “right” answers, but as long as students can justify their choice of which candy is paired to each model, I accept their answers. (And there’s another lesson in how scientists can back things up and give reasoning to their findings in different ways, and why we need the peer review process.) Get the lab here.

Average Atomic Mass of Candium

Like I mentioned, this is likely a topic your students haven’t seen or worked with for a while. And bringing candy into the classroom is always a win! In this activity, students work with a sample of “candium.” It’s really just three different size object of the same type. So three different sizes of M&Ms, three different sized pasta noodles, or something of the like. You can use coins, dried beans, pretzles… I like to grab movie theater candy boxes and get three different sized things. These function as three isotopes of the same element, “candium” “beanium” “pretzelium.” Your students do some simple math and boom! They’ve just re-learned average atomic mass. Plus, if you set this up “correctly” they can eat their chemical sample at the end of the lab. Get the lab here. Read more about how I set up this lab here.

Rutherford’s Gold Foil

Speaking of those forgotten atomic models, when I was teaching in New York, Rutherford’s experiment was always tested on the state final. So I found that this lab on the gold foil experiment was worth the time. It’s really fun to do. You use your Rutherford model made out of a hula hoop and a styrofoam ball suspended in the middle. Then your students throw alpha particles, (paper balls or ping pong balls) at the model and the class records the data. It’s a great lab to revisit during the year. It’s totally chemical free. Meaning the end of the year is a perfect time for this lab, when you’re running low on supplies. Get the lab here.

Periodic Table Guessing Game

Whether you want to use this lab for periodic table review, or save it for next year, you should click here to get it for free. Essentially, students work from a small pool of elements and have to ask their partner yes or no questions based on properties of elements to guess their partner’s element. It’s a great review of chemical and physical properties as well as periodic table trends. I like to use this lab as Periodic Table Unit review, but it works great at the end of the school year as well.

Removal of Sugar – Hydrate Lab

If your students need some work on their math skills before your final exam, this is a good lab for them at the end of the year. In this lab, you hand our bubble gum. Again, candy wins. Plus all you need in this lab is a balance, so it’s great when everybody starts packing things up at the end of the year. Your students will chew the gum to remove the sugar. They do percent error calculations comparing to the nutritional facts of the gum. It’s the same math your students would do if they dehydrated something like copper II sulfate pentahydrate. But you don’t have to break out all the equipment and chemicals. Get the lab here.

Sand & Salt

If separation of mixtures is needing some help, or perhaps lab procedures, this is a good one. You mix some samples of sand and salt (but make sure you know how much of each.) This lab will require the use of your lab equpiment. You’ll need to have the students dissolve the salt, filter out the sand, and then evaporate the water out, drying the salt. BUT this is a good lab for the end of the school year because it’s kind of laborous. It can help to bring back the review of lab equipment, procedures and safety. You can also stretch this lab out over a day or two if you simply need to chew up the clock. Get the lab here.

Freezing Point Depression Ice Cream

Want to have TONS OF FUN in the last days of your school year? Are you unafraid of messes? Do you have a good relationship with your custodial staff? If you answered “yes” take the time to make ice cream in your classroom. Yes, you need tons of supplies. Yes, it’s mentally and emotionally taxing, but you will have so much fun!

In this lab, ice is sprinkled with salt to dramatically drop the freezing point. A milk and sugar mixture is then slowly frozen and shaken in convert from milk to ice cream. It’s a simple lab in terms of the chemistry of it all. The materials, lab room and mess will certainly be a headache. Hey, if I get to “choose your hard” I’m picking the ice cream lab every time! It’s too fun to miss out on. Get the lab here.

Elephant’s Toothpaste

You can use this lab to review kinetics (catalysts), heat flow (endothermic and exothermic) or even how to run an experiment using multiple trials. In this lab yeast is used as a catalyst to remove oxygen from hydrogen peroxide. That oxygen will foam up dish detergent making a foam. The entire process releases a bunch of heat. It’s a really fun lab for the last days of school. Get the lab here.

Equilibrium Straws

This is the EASIEST lab there is. All you need is some graduated cylinders, water and straws. Water starts in one cylinder (reactants). Straws are used to swap water between two graduated cylinders (forward & reverse reactions) until equilibrium is reached. You can use this to review equilibrium, reversible reactions or even graphing. it’s one of my favorites because it’s just so easy. It really can’t be beat. Get the lab here.

Titration

If you have all your materials, or need to use up some expiring chemicals a titration is classic. This is on the list primarily for the review aspect. I’m not going to explain a titration to you, but here’s the benefits. Review of measurement and estimated digits, significant figures, titration calculations, acid base neutralization reactions, acid base indicators, lab safety and procedures… It’s especially good if you didn’t get to this during the school year, since it is a critical chemistry skill.

Polymerization Slime

Like the ice cream lab this one is a teacher headache that brings tons of smiles that make it worth it. In this lab, students are going to use glue and Borax solution to make slime. The glue is polymerized by the borax (a catalyst). This lab primarily is qualitative observations, which I know not every chemistry teacher loves. Honestly, it’s a way I have programmed into my curriculum for students to have fun. Plus they get to actually see an organic reaction. That’s not the easiest to do in a high school chemistry lab. (Especially in my old art classroom which was not a lab despite what admin tried to claim…) Get the lab here.

Half Life of a Skittle

This is something I would be doing at the end of the school year anyway, because Nuclear is always my last unit. BUT if you’re a rebel and teach Nuclear with or just after Atomic, this is a great end of year lab! Students have a sample of Skittles (or MMs or coins or anything double sided.) This represents atoms of a radioactive element. They shake them for the length of a half life (just a few seconds). Then they pour them out. The ones that are face up are stable and have decayed. The ones that are face down are still “radioactive” and go back to shaking.

If you do your Nuclear Unit at the end of the year, this is a good time for this lab just for the content, of course. But I have my students graph the decay of their “radioactive” sample. So it’s a good review of graphing if that’s a skill that needs some work! Get the lab here.

Grading End of Year Chemistry Lab Activities

At the end of the school year, attendance can get a little chaotic. Between AP tests, field trips, assemblies, cut days, and students missing class for who knows what, it can feel unfair to grade these labs the same way you would in the middle of the year.

Instead, I like to make these end of year chemistry labs a little more flexible. Depending on the situation, I may let the lab report:

• replace a quiz grade
• replace a low lab grade from earlier in the year
• count as extra credit
• count as a completion grade
• be optional for students who want a chance to improve their grade. (All students are going to DO the lab, but the report itself might be optional)

This takes some of the pressure off students while still encouraging them to participate. It also means that if half your class is gone for AP testing or a field trip, you do not have to stress about creating an entirely separate assignment for the students who are absent. The end of the year is crazy enough.

Personally, my favorite option is to let the lab replace a low lab grade from earlier in the year. Students are often much more motivated when they know they have a chance to improve an old score, and it feels more meaningful than simply handing out extra credit.

Fun or Practical? Choose Both!

You don’t have to choose between fun and practicality when it comes to end of year chemistry labs. These low-prep activities can help reinforce key concepts, help prepare for your final exam, and give students a chance to apply what they’ve learned. All without burning you out in the process! Because I know you’re running on fumes at this point. Having fun in the lab can be just what YOU NEED to make it through the last few weeks of the school year.

If you’re loving these kinds of low maintenance labs, you’ll definitely want to check out my Chemistry Lab Manual. It’s packed with simple, mostly chemical-free activities that are fun for students and easy on you. It covers 15 units of study, so while it’s perfect for wrapping up this year, it’ll also set you up for success all year long next school year. Grab it now, and you’ll be thanking yourself in August! Read more about the lab book here.

The post 12 Easy(ish) End of Year Lab Activities to Reduce the Chaos 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.

As long as you tell your students to think about individual particles during this collision theory lab activity, it can certainly get the point across.  All you’ll need are some glow sticks and some warm and cold water. Those glow sticks must come in at least two different sizes.  I like to get the pendants and then the bracelets.

If you recall, the postulates of Collision Theory are that the reacting particles must collide with proper energy and orientation (effective collision) in order to have a chemical reaction.  And there are a few ways we can increase the number of effective collisions:   

1. Make sure our components are actually going to react with each other. 
2. Increase the temperature.
3. Increase pressure (if we’re working with a gas system)
4. Increase concentration
5. Increase surface area
6. Add a catalyst

Of course, we can’t do all of these at once, nor can we do all of them with glow sticks.  But this is a great activity to get the kids thinking about particles coming in contact with each other in order to react. You can have your students do this on their own, or you can do this as a demo.  It works well either way, I’ve done both. 

Trials for getting the particles to react: 

The first thing I do is crack two glow sticks.  I shake one and not the other. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling that the particles must come in contact in order to react.  The kids can very easily figure this one out. 

Then I take these two glow sticks and set one in hot water and one in cold water. 

While letting this sit for a minute, we crack two other glow sticks.  These two glow sticks are of two different sizes.  This has the kids realize that concentration is a factor in reaction rate.  When there’s more stuff to react, more stuff reacts. 

Then we head back to the warm and cold beakers. We make note of which glow stick is brighter.  After our observations, we swap the two glow sticks. We give them another minute or so, and make observations. I have a really good time lapse of swapping the two glow sticks you can see in the gif below.

Pushing Students to Extend Their Thinking

After the kids learn about the factors that affect solubility, this is really not that difficult of a concept for my students to pick up on.  And in my opinion that makes it a good inquiry activity for teaching collision theory. Many of my students struggle with this stuff. It’s hard for them to come up with rationale as to WHY a phenomena is happening.  Partly I think this is because of the educational blip of 2020.  But I also think that the phenomena teaching model is fairly new in science. Well not new.  But more so, “freshly mainstream.” Some of us having been doing it for a while, but not all of our students have. 

Get a list of my Free Kinetics & Equilibrium Phenomena here. Read more about them in detail in this post.

After the kids have figured out how concentration, contacts and temperature affect reaction rate we synthesize as a class.  Then I make sure to ask them to hypothesize the other factors: surface area, pressure and use of a catalyst.  I’ll then teach a lesson on collision theory and let them know whether they were right or wrong.  I prefer to get it all out on the table, BUT you could hold off. 

I like to use the Elephant’s Toothpaste lab activity to have them learn about catalysts and measure heat flow. We do this lab with my thermodynamics unit, but you very well could do this in your kinetics unit.  Read more about the Elephant’s Toothpaste heat flow lab here.

The post Inquiry Activity for Teaching Collision Theory appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.