Beginning the MOLE Concept!

Welcome back!

It was a shortened week between President's day and a surprising early dismissal.  But that didn't stop us from finishing our electrochemstry unit and diving into our unit on the mole.  Watch how I use an incredibly simple activity to introduce the mole concept with manipulatives. Try it with your classes - you will be amazed how quickly your students will be performing conversions with the mole and ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDING the relationships!

As always, I hope you feel inspired to incorporate more manipulatives and student-centered learning into your classroom!  Have a great week!

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Ms. Razz is an enthusiastic chemistry teacher in New Jersey.  She often counts herself to sleep at night using molecules or by reciting Avogadro's number. (For real.) She believes that every student has the power to learn anything, even chemistry.  After all, she remembers this hustle didn't always come easy to her. She's also a Teachers Pay Teachers seller and you can view and purchase her lessons here.

How I Started My Unit On Electrochemistry

Happy President's day weekend!

I hope you are celebrating with an extra day off, that is if you didn't use too many snow days already!

It was quite an exciting week with an unexpected snow day and some Valentine's day festivities.  We still got to flex our chemistry muscles though - we wrapped up our chemical reactions unit with some station learning and a summative assessment.  We also began our unit on electrochemistry with, of course, a new phenomenon!

This week I'll share some of the stations I used to help my students prepare for their summative assessment and explain how I began my unit on electrochemistry using a fantastic POGIL that incorporates a phenomenon!

As always, I hope you find something valuable to bring back to your classroom this week!  Thank you for watching!

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Ms. Razz is an enthusiastic chemistry teacher in New Jersey.  She often counts herself to sleep at night using molecules or by reciting Avogadro's number. (For real.) She believes that every student has the power to learn anything, even chemistry.  After all, she remembers this hustle didn't always come easy to her. She's also a Teachers Pay Teachers seller and you can view and purchase her lessons here.

A S.M.A.R.T. mid-year reflection

Happy Sunday!

I hope you had a great week with your students.  At last midterms are over and, as you might expect,  I didn't waste any time getting back into the full swing of things.

I did, however, start off the second semester differently than I have in the past.  Reflection has always been a big part of my classroom culture, but I thought I would switch things up a bit and have my students focus on goal setting for the second semester.  I thought this would be a valuable exercise because I've been writing my own goals down, and have had much success working toward and achieving those goals.  To my surprise, this isn't a coincidence.  After doing some research, I found that writing your goals down can actually help you make strides to achieve them!  I then thought: this would be a great way to support student reflection and help improve their performance.  A win-win in my book!

So I created a digital interactive notebook (DINB) for my chemists to do just that.  The notebook walked them through the goal-setting process and at the very end, they set their own S.M.A.R.T. goals.  I've been very pleased with the goals my students have produced.  I must make sure, though, to revisit these goals throughout the semester so my students can check in on their progress.

This week's vlog includes all the details of my goal-setting digital interactive notebook, an inquiry-based single replacement lab, and how I teach my students to predict products for different reaction types.  As always, I hope you find something valuable to bring back to your classroom!

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Ms. Razz is an enthusiastic chemistry teacher in New Jersey.  She often counts herself to sleep at night using molecules or by reciting Avogadro's number. (For real.) She believes that every student has the power to learn anything, even chemistry.  After all, she remembers this hustle didn't always come easy to her. She's also a Teachers Pay Teachers seller and you can view and purchase her lessons here.