Articles

Filter by:

1 – 25 of 105 Articles

Nuts & Bolts | May 2024 Reflecting on ChatGPT in our Chemistry Classroom
In a follow-up to their September 2023 article, two high school chemistry teachers explore the integration of ChatGPT (a tool for artificial intelligence, or AI) in their classroom. While AI has helped the authors with instructional planning, they have also found challenges with its accuracy and the ways students use it.
Tech Tips | May 2024 Technology Tools that have Reshaped how I Teach Chemistry
A high school chemistry teacher discusses how technology tools have transformed his teaching, enhancing effectiveness and student engagement. He shares how he uses Pear Assessment, Notability, Explain Everything, Google Sheets, ChemQuiz, and Gimkit in his classroom.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2024 It Takes Two: Partner Work in the Chemistry Classroom
A chemistry teacher reflects on his transition from individual to partner worksheets. He shares his journey adopting the “Pass the Paper” and “Turn + Talk” protocols to enhance student collaboration and accountability in his classroom.
Tech Tips | March 2024 Tapping the Potential of Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom
The author explores the advantages and disadvantages of AI in education. He highlights practical applications while encouraging a balanced perspective, thereby leveraging the potential while addressing risks.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2024 Teaching Chemical Kinetics: Traditional or Non-Traditional?
This author describes an alternative sequence for teaching reaction mechanisms. She shares ideas and resources for the classroom, and why her method may benefit student learning.
Nuts & Bolts | November 2023 A Self-Paced, Mastery-Based Chemistry Classroom
The author uses three elements in her classroom: blended instruction, self-paced learning, and mastery-based grading. These components foster students’ ownership of their own learning, helping them find joy in mastering challenging topics and gain confidence in their abilities.
Classroom Commentary | November 2023 Preparing Students for the International Science and Engineering Fair
In this article, the author describes her efforts to prepare students for the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for the first time. She also shares the experience of two students who reached the regional and state levels.
Resource Feature | September 2023 Developing Chemistry Lessons with Student Interest in Mind
The author shares an overview of example chemistry lessons designed to engage low performing students by connecting content with relevant life experiences. Connections to NGSS standards, as well as attention to reading, writing, and mathematics are described as well.
Tech Tips | September 2023 Making the Instructional Videos I Wish I’d Had as a Teacher
A former chemistry teacher shares about the challenges she faced in the past when incorporating videos into her teaching, and how she now uses that perspective in her work as a science video content creator.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2023 ChatGPT in the Chemistry Classroom

Learn how two co-teachers plan to explore and integrate artificial intelligence (AI), specifically ChatGPT, in their science classroom. This article emphasizes that AI should not replace teachers, but rather be used to enhance the learning experience.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2023 Using Notetaking to Help Students Take More Meaningful Notes
In this article the author discusses her journey to transform traditional notetaking in her classroom to a more active, engaging activity for students. She describes several successful strategies that she uses in her middle school science classroom, including group notetaking, processing-based activities, like one-pagers, and combining colors, pictures and text through the sketchnoting approach.
Resource Feature | May 2023 Exploring Social Justice Through a Chemistry Lens
This article details a project that introduces students to the intersection of social justice and chemistry. Over the course of a semester, students study the Flint, Michigan water crisis and discuss the social aspects while exploring the solution chemistry underlying the events.
Nuts & Bolts | March 2023 Enhancing the Lab Experience with Alternative Approaches
In this article, the author discusses the use of both at-home and virtual labs to supplement and support in-class labs. She includes examples of both, and discusses their unique benefits and approaches. She also describes how making and sharing videos of the teacher conducting labs can promote a more engaging make-up experience for absent students. Although many of these approaches were developed for hybrid and remote learning environments, the author has continued using them with in-person teaching to support in-class labs and extend the overall lab experience.
Resource Feature | March 2023 Restoring the Passion for Chemistry: How Collaborating on a Research Project can Inspire both Students and Teachers
In this article, the author shares about her struggle to balance curriculum requirements and pacing with the opportunity to provide real lab experiences for students. Recently, she has experienced science classes dwindling in popularity, particularly since the pandemic. When she had the opportunity to end a particularly difficult school year with a student-led research project, she helped both herself and her students regain a love of learning.
Classroom Commentary | November 2022 Chemical Phenomena in Everyday Life: An Adventure in Writing Across the Curriculum
This article describes a year-long writing project in an upper-level chemistry course that culminates in a Writing Marathon field trip to New York City. The goal of the project was to use student writing about chemical phenomena observed in daily life to make connections to the concepts discussed in class. The author shares that her students enjoyed exploring the city and examining it through their chemistry lens. She found it even more rewarding to watch them apply their knowledge to explain the phenomena around them.
Classroom Commentary | November 2022 Teaching Chimie in Canada

In this article, a Canadian author shares about her experience teaching chemistry in French Immersion, a program aimed at promoting bilingualism in French and English, the country’s two official languages. As she describes, both teaching and learning chemistry en français can be especially difficult, presenting unique challenges. She discusses her experiences as a classroom teacher, extra considerations required to support students in this setting, and the strategies she uses to expand students’ communication skills en français in the context of chimie.
Resource Feature | November 2022 Safely Introducing Students to the Chemistry Lab by Modifying a Classic Investigation
In this article, the author discusses the common objectives of early weeks in first-year high school chemistry, such as safe lab attitudes and techniques, learning SI measurements, and communicating data and conclusions. The lab investigation highlighted in this article can be used to begin achieving all these objectives in an engaging and fun chemical reaction using a heating source with a reduced carbon footprint. The data developed gives an excellent opportunity for students to practice writing results and conclusions in the “claim, evidence, logical connection” manner taught in many secondary schools.
Classroom Commentary | September 2022 Small Stones, Big Mountains
Learning science at middle and high school level should stimulate curiosity and engagement. Many new teachers, and also those who have been teaching for a while, can feel overwhelmed and consequently miss opportunities to help their students truly experience the wonderment and awe of science. This article suggests small modifications in pedagogy that can make a big difference in how students learn science in the classroom, and seeks to inspire teachers to rethink and re-evaluate their pedagogy approach.
Nuts & Bolts | September 2022 Teaching with Project-Based Learning in the High School Chemistry Classroom
In this article, the author describes her interest and recent success with her implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the chemistry classroom. She discusses her experience using PBL and what motivates her to continue using the approach. She also provides an overview of some successful chemistry units that are designed with PBL in mind.
Resource Feature | May 2022 Bringing Materials Chemistry into the Teaching of Bonding
In this article, the author explains how she incorporates topics of materials science into a chemical bonding unit. She shares several teaching resources as examples, including easy-to-use, show-and-tell style demonstrations that have had been effective at introducing students to the exciting field of material science.
Nuts & Bolts | May 2022 Strategies for Equitable Student Collaboration using Jamboard
In this article the author explains how she recently incorporated a Driving Questions Board and Activity Summary Board using Jamboard in her chemistry classroom. She shares about her purpose for shifting her teaching approach in order to integrate these strategies for equitable student collaboration.
Classroom Commentary | May 2022 Real-World Chemistry: Making Chemistry More Relatable for Students
The article describes a teacher’s efforts to help students better understand chemistry by connecting to concepts they encounter in their everyday lives. The author shares some examples from her classroom as well as a lab for readers to try with their own students.
Resource Feature | March 2022 Cleaning Up the Lab
In this article, the author discusses how the pandemic has created what might be an unobvious challenge for science teachers in many schools: a lack of custodial staff to help with keeping the lab space clean. With this in mind, she teaches her students the basics of cleaning up after a lab activity in order to make this behavior a part of their lab routine all year long.
Resource Feature | March 2022 The Online Summer Food Lab
Two teachers at an independent high school share about their inaugural experience designing and teaching a two-week summer mini-course, Chemistry of Cooking. This course, among others, was designed to engage incoming students with academic material, offer an opportunity to explore a topic of interest, and help students get to know each other and their teachers before the start of the school year. The authors were excited that it was also their own opportunity to learn about food chemistry — a new chemistry topic to explore beyond the scope of the usual tenth-grade course curriculum. In this article, they share about planning and designing the course, as well as ideas for how teachers might incorporate aspects of it into a homeschool, virtual, hybrid, or in-person chemistry classroom.
Tech Tips | March 2022 Teaching Chemistry in a Blended Learning Classroom: When to Go Digital and What to Take Offline
In this article, the author discusses the blended chemistry classroom and provides recommendations for three instances when it is best to use digital teaching strategies, and three instances where offline approaches are most effective. Technology is an integral part to modern teaching, as evidenced by the emphasis placed on blended learning in many schools and classrooms. In order to effectively teach chemistry in a blended environment, however, it is crucial to know when technology is a benefit and when to stick with non-digital tools and activities.