One of the tasks that teachers of chemistry face is accurate assessment. It is fairly easy to test whether a student has learned a set of facts. Students' problems with calculations are also fairly easy to uncover; in fact, deficiencies in this area are often glaringly obvious. Testing understanding of chemical principles is more difficult. Students can repeat what they have heard or read without truly understanding the principles that underlie chemical phenomena. Misunderstandings may not be uncovered until the student has to apply his knowledge to a different area, often months after a topic has been completed. At this point, the wrong ideas have become entrenched and are more difficult to correct. Chemical demonstrations or short, hands-on, activities can be used to check understanding and correct misconceptions long before the end-of-unit test. A five minutes demo quiz at the beginning or the end of class need not take much time to set up or to grade, and can be a valuable addition to your testing strategies. Students may find such demonstrations more interesting than conventional testing techniques, too. In this presentation a number of useful, short, and inexpensive demonstrations will be shown in the areas of density, atomic structure, stoichiometry, gas laws, molecular structure, solutions, equilibrium, kinetics, acids and bases, etc. These demos can produce interesting, thought provoking questions. Participants will be encouraged to contribute ideas on how principles are best tested.
Back to Symposia: Chemical Education - Research in High School/Project-based Learning
Back to The 33rd Northeast Regional Meeting (July 14-17, 2005)