Congratulations! You’re teaching chemistry next year and now it’s time to plan your high school chemistry curriculum. Well my first go at this was kind of a wreck, so let me share what I’ve learned along the way of truly perfecting my high school chemistry curriculum and truly loving the process of all the planning.
Start with the Big Picture in Mind
Let’s take a minute to think about what your students need to know by the end of the year. The best way to do this is to check out your standards or your final exam. Starting from here, you can kind of reverse engineer all of the things your students will need to know.
December of my first year of teaching I was about ready to give up. But I printed out my standards and skills (over 200 of them…) literally cut them up with a scissor and organized them. I tried to group them the best I could to decide what to teach together. In other words, I used the groupings of standards to create units of study.
But I know that not everybody has the *pleasure* of having such itemized standards. (I’m talking to you NGSS!) Keep reading. I have some help for you!
On a side note, I sort of (read: entirely) hate the NGSS standards. If you actually take the time to read them, there is no mention of IUPAC nomenclature or balancing chemical reactions… Also there’s no redox which is upsetting to me, because I love it. But my bet is you’re kind of glad about that one.
How to Organize Standards into Units
Honestly, it’s not that easy. It’s going to take quite a bit of trial and error. It might be a few years before you feel like you’ve got it right. Knowing that a solution is actually a mixture can go in your Matter Unit or your Solutions Unit. For things like this, I just teach them twice… The first time, you may teach a “gentle” version, and the second time you go more in depth. Or vice versa.
It’s all about Unit Plans
So you take your standards and kind of organize them into units to build your high school chemistry curriculum. But you can’t just say “standards 4-9 are part of Unit 3 on Periodic Table.” You then have to decide HOW you’ll execute teaching those standards. I have a FREE RESOURCE that outlines the units and their big ideas/major concepts. And I’ve already sequenced those big ideas!
So if you take a look at the Atomic Theory for instance, it begins with structure and subatomic particles, moves into isotopes and then finally electron excitation. For some of us that feels kind of obvious, but when you get to other units, it can be a bit tougher.
With this document, you can assign your standards to those big ideas. This is especially helpful if you’re working with just a few standards that are pretty nondescript.
I don’t want to say that my unit outline is perfect because honestly, that would depend on your particular situation. I think it’s pretty amazing, but you may need to tailor it a little, or maybe quite a bit.
Getting Your Units in Order
There are plenty of opinions on what units should be taught when. And the thing is, chemistry can really be broken into three major chunks. “Micro” chemistry, “macro” chemistry (applied) and how we communicate between the two (Reactions and Stoichiometry). Within those three chunks you can more or less organize however you like. This is why there is so much discussion on how to plan a high school chemistry curriculum. There’s no single way to do it!
Some things are obvious. Like you should teach periodic table before bonding. But will you put organic chemistry on its own, or as part of your bonding unit? (I think they’re separate – but that’s me.) Same with atomic and nuclear. (Again, I think they should be separate.) Again, my curriculum outline will help with this!
Lesson Planning *Can* be Easy (If you prepare yourself)
With some STELLAR unit plans, writing your lesson plans will be really easy. I know that writing lesson plans isn’t all that easy. But when you know exactly what’s coming and how many lessons between the start of a unit and the test, you’ll feel a lot better about lesson planning.
If you start with a few defined lesson plan templates (based on specific activities) all you’ll need to do is plug in your standards and a bit of your teaching protocol.
I’ve found that the 5E’s template is my favorite to plan a high school chemistry curriculum. We’re not actually scripting our lessons – you don’t need that much information in a plan. Plus it works with science really well. And it’s quick to plan. After plugging in the pieces of your unit plan into your lesson plan, you only need to fill in 5 portions of your lesson plan. Truly the unit plan is the hard part.
Your Class Will Run Like a Well Oiled Machine
The less frazzled and more organized you are, the more time you’ll have for running your classroom. Like I mentioned, having only a few types of lesson plans. That means you’ll have only a few types of lessons. I always start with a demo or question of the day (Engage). Then we talk about it (Explore). Next I lecture some chemistry for about ten minutes with questions sprinkled in (Explain).
Then we (Elaborate) and practice using the knowledge we just learned. This is the variation in the lesson plan. If there’s really only ten options, your lesson plans are a breeze. You have ten templates and choose which works best for that day. But also your students will know exactly what to expect. It’s only one of ten things! In my classroom, this is pixel art, a worksheet, task cards, some group work, a lab, a card sort, whiteboards, Blooket, or a race or game. There’s a few others too. This doesn’t stop me from trying something new!
Finally, we (Evaluate) with some “Show What You Know” questions that are embedded into each and every one of my lessons. My students always self assess these things. (Girl, I don’t have time for exit tickets! Plus these kids are BIG now, they will need this skill.)
Sometimes we do the Show What You Know before the practice section. It depends on the particular lesson. This gives me an opportunity to sit with the kids that really need the help.
Learn to Love the Process
Take notes! Especially things that went well, went poorly and questions students ask. You can tailor your curriculum with ease if write things down. My students keep notes in interactive notebooks and so do I, so I typically write notes IN that notebook! Then when I’m planning my lessons, I look over last year’s INB. It helps tremendously! I‘ve already done the thinking, now I just implement.
You probably became a teacher because you love to learn. You loved school and you want to make it fun for students. Part of that process is switching things up and learning more about you as a teacher. With a solid foundation to your high school chemistry curriculum, you can truly love to learn the process. I mean, you’re a chemistry teacher. Some part of your brain really loves problem solving. You’re wired for this. Make sure you request the chemistry curriculum outline to be sent to you. It’s totally free and will give you a great starting place to plan your high school chemistry curriculum.
