This is a course that I have definitely made improvements on over the three times I have taught it at Canadian College Italy.  It is laid out by the Ontario curriculum and units include:

 

• Matter, Chemical Trends, and Chemical Bonding,

• Chemical Reactions,

• Quantities in Chemical Reactions,

• Solutions and Solubility, and

• Gases and Atmospheric Chemistry.

 

Although many students take this course out of interest, there are always several who are less inclined towards science and are taking it only to fulfill a credit requirement.  To engage these students, I work hard to bring in connections to the real world, particularly envrionmental concerns dealing with water and air pollution.  The last three units are also quite heavy on math, so I try hard to break it down as simply as possible and provide a lot of opportunity for practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

YouTube Project: This is a straightforward project that I run throughout the semester with one or two students presenting every week. Each student finds a chemistry-related YouTube video that interests them in some way and presents it to the class and then leads a discussion.  My secret goal with the YouTube project is to have them explore a variety of videos until they find an area of chemistry that interests them.  Last year, I had a ton of interesting topics presented including chemical warfare in WWII, bioluminescence, the Big Crunch theory, and the chemistry of the brain on drugs.   

 

Games Day: I have put a lot of effort into finding or creating chemistry games.  Early in the semester I have a day where students rotate through stations and play chemisty card games, periodic table of elements battleship, and we finish it off with Element Bingo and a class Sporcle competition.

 

Reactions Lab: This is a common lab activity that is very effective in helping students distinguish between different types of chemical reactions. It also allows them to use tools such as the activity series and solubility product rules to decipher/explain what is happening.  

 

Quantities Video Project: This unit is very heavy on math, so I developed this project to add some variety. In groups, students are each assigned a topic that will be explored throughout the unit.  They need to teach it to themselves (or ask for some help from me, of course) and then create an short video to introduce the topic to the class by connecting it to the real world.                    to see last year's videos!    

 

Stoichiometry Cookies: To introduce the concept of stoichiometry (adjusting amounts of reactants to create a certain amount of desired poduct), we make a class batch of "stoichiometry cookies" and share them with the school.  Students need to determine how much of each ingredient are required to create a given number of cookies.  A delicious teaching tool!

 

Popcorn Lab: This is a lab activity that fits into the Gases and Atmospheric Chemistry unit. Students use popcorn, flasks, hot plates, measuring tools, and the PV = nRT equation to determine the pressure required to make one kernel of popcorn pop.