New Adventures... and Challenges

Since the school year ended in May, I have accepted a teaching position in a different district.  I loved my old school, but the chance arose to move to a school where I would have more room for professional growth.  I couldn't turn down the opportunity.  Although I'm not going to lie, in this first administrative week before classes, I have had moments where I have seriously questioned my decision!  I increase my stress-level by about ten thousand!

My new school has many absolutely amazing attributes.  There is a strong history of academic excellence here.  My colleagues and I truly work as a collaborative team.  While I have yet to meet the students, I hear terrific things about them, specifically their academic motivation.  I'll have the opportunity to teach a lot more upper level students, and possibly upper level electives (which were almost non-existent at my old school).  And have I mentioned that I finally have a classroom of my own again?

The main challenge is that I have something I've never had before:  a pacing guide.  It is giving me heart palpitations.  Not only does it not jive with the modeling curriculum, but it does not jive with my overall style of teaching.  The more I try to lesson plan using the dang thing, the more hostile I become towards it.

What the pacing guide feels like to me

On the pacing guide, things I've never covered in depth are given numerous days.  Things I've spent a good bit of time on are barely touched upon.  The guide has us flying through the curriculum, then spending what I feel is an excessive amount of time on review.  My students have always done exceptionally well on the Chemistry EOC, so in my opinion, I was giving them the knowledge that they needed.  While there's always room for improvement, such a dramatic and forced change to my own pedagogy style scares me.  Am I still going to be an effective teacher?

The fast pace also leaves little time for labs and activities.  I hate that.  Students don't learn science by reading and hearing about it.  I refuse to give up labs and hands-on activities.  I also refuse to give up inquiry and critical thinking, although with this pace, I don't see how I'm going to have time to think, let alone my students!

I may just keep this blog going as I experiment with trying to adapt MI pedagogy to a district-implemented pacing guide.  We'll see what happens...

Reflections on my year of Modeling Instruction

It's the last day of school for the students!  One thing I love about teaching in Tennessee is getting done school before Memorial Day... although we pay for it when teachers have to report back at the end of July!

Let's talk about my experience with the Chemistry Modeling Curriculum:

The Good

• Scope & Sequence:  While it needs some further tweaking to better match my state standards, I still find the scope and sequence far superior to the traditional textbook order.
• Motivation:  My students, for the most part, worked well for me all semester.  While they may have not been quite like the eager students I had for biology, I still did not have the typical complete shutdowns that I so frequently see with standard level students.
• Curriculum:  I felt the majority of worksheets, assessments, and activities were really strong.  There's a difference between having the students do a fill-in-the-blank textbook worksheet and actually having them draw out their thought process on paper.  The latter describes the modeling curriculum assessments.
• Emphasis on Particles:  I loved the constant connection back to particles.  Don't get me wrong, many still struggled conceptually with the particulate nature of matter... but I really believe they struggled less than usual.
• Energy Bar Charts:  I also grew to love the energy bar charts.  I feel like that is a great way to have students thinking about energy and endothermic/exothermic processes.  I hated them at first, but I honestly think they help even me better understand energy transfer.
• Improved Understanding:  The students who "got it" seemed to really get it.  In both biology and chemistry I had students achieving some of the highest individual EOC scores I've ever had in my career.
• Understanding of Labs:  I still love the "lab first" style of pedagogy, as the students are making constant connections back to the phenomena they see in the laboratory.  Also, I feel like doing the labs first improves their observation making and conclusion forming skills, since they don't truly "know" what they are supposed to be seeing from the get go.

Improvements To Be Made

• Engagement:  My biggest criticism of the chemistry modeling curriculum is that it is not very engaging for your average, low-performing chemistry student.  There are some great, engaging labs in the curriculum-- like the exploding can, the mass & change lab, describing chemical reactions, etc.  But then there was this lull from the 2nd half of unit 1 through about unit 6 were there is nothing but demos or overly complicated/dull labs and complicated worksheets.   Also, the videos and "discussions" were not well planned for the average teenager who doesn't give a darn about school or chemistry.
• Difficulty Level:  I also thought a lot of the curriculum was too advanced for the average standard chemistry student:  the vocabulary, the numeracy skills expected, the prior knowledge assumed, etc.  I'm all for having high expectations and challenging students, but at the same time, you have to meet the students at their ability.  The lesson plans read like they were written for an AP chem class, not a class full of ELL students or kids coming out of resource math.  There were a lot of the notes, articles, and activities that I just could not use.  Interestingly, I actually had the opposite problem with the bio curriculum.  I thought it was just right for standard students, but too easy for honors.
• Math Pedagogy:  The factor/label method used with the PVTn and BCA charts still makes zero sense to me.  I didn't teach it, because to me, it seemed more confusing to teach someone who already struggles with math a totally new way to solve equations as opposed to reinforcing what they already know.
• Achievement Gap:  This was a big one.  The modeling curriculum created an achievement gap with both my biology and chemistry students.  My brightest students thrived, while the lowest performing students just could not "get it."  The low performing students appeared to do worse than they would have with traditional instruction.  Some of these students who struggled are good students who do their work and try, they just have very weak critical thinking and conceptual skills.  While the EOC class averages were still good, I had an increased number of EOC failures with the modeling curriculum, which is a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed.
• Scope & Sequence:  While I like the scope and sequence, there are definitely some revisions that need to be made to work with a block-scheduled, single semester, EOC-based chemistry course.  For example, I just did not like unit 1.  Something about the way it was arranged made simple topics incredibly difficult.  I think I damaged my rapport with many students right off the bat in unit 1.  And then I had to cram a lot of incredibly important standards into my "unit 8," since those topics are not covered in the modeling curriculum until units 10-14.  While I thought these topics worked well together at the end, I do need better pacing so I'm not flying through such critical topics with so little time.  And then there's the fact that my students didn't even touch a periodic table into over halfway through the semester.  There were points at this semester when I felt like my students were doing more physics than chemistry, which only bothered me because of our limited amount of time.
• Absences:  At my school, standard-level juniors just don't come to school very much.  They have cars, they have jobs, they are involved in extracurricular activities of all types, good and bad.  It is SO hard to "make up" an inquiry-based lesson.
• Pacing/Sticking with "The Model":  Pacing issues caused me to more or less abandon the modeling curriculum for quite a few topics.

With all of this said, I still find Modeling Instruction far superior to traditional instruction.  I had wonderful evaluations by my administrators this year.  I found that the majority of the time, the days flew by for both me and my students.  I LOVED the biology curriculum and can't imagine ever going back to teaching biology the "traditional" way.  I feel like with a little tweaking, I can make the chemistry curriculum work wonders for my classes.  I can undoubtedly say that learning modeling instruction has made me a better teacher.

I really want to take a Level II workshop this summer, but there aren't any in my area.  I do have great intentions of taking some time to improve the curriculum for me next year.

One thing I'd like to do is go through the textbooks for biology and chemistry and align the chapters/sections to the modeling curriculum, since the obviously go in drastically different orders.  I want to do this for a few reasons.  Firstly, it will make my life easier for absent students.  "Go read pages 20-25, and 141-144" is a whole lot easier than handing them a stack of random notes created in class.  Secondly, I truly believe that textbook reading is a skill needed for college readiness.  We barely got to read this semester in chemistry and I think my students are worse for it.  Lastly, I feel like having the textbook connection may help some of my low performing students.  I've noticed with most of these students, they take beautiful notes... but they just can't make the connections from them.  Since so many of the low performing students have been victims of their education being only rote memorization, maybe referring to bold face words and chapters in the textbook will help them out.

Another thing I'd like to do this summer is to create a thorough PowerPoint for each unit that can be posted on my website.  Last year, I posted all of my notes on my website in advance so students could print them out if they so desired.  I ended up not liking that, because students would follow along on their technology devices instead of taking notes in class-- a good skill, but they weren't making the connections and recalling as well had they written it down.  But, I do like students to have the ability to refer back to the PowerPoint in case they missed anything.  I did not use PowerPoints consistently for every unit, and still don't really plan to do so, but I'd like to have them prepared.

I'm still not sure what else would be best to help my low performing students who fall into the achievement gap.  Graphic organizers?  Vocab lists?  The chemistry curriculum has these pretty cool list of topics covered for each unit, but I found the wording on the lists a bit advanced for my students.  I definitely plan to brainstorm more for next year!  At this point in my career, I feel very blessed to be at a public school that has not yet mandated canned curriculum.  It gives me the freedom to constantly improve my teaching skills!

Chemistry EOC and CCI Results

I think I've earned all of the above after this semester.  It was dreadful.  But I want to reiterate, it was not the chemistry modeling curriculum I found dreadful.  Rather, it was the combination of a lousy group of especially unmotivated students, attempting new curriculum, and a number of other factors out of my control.

I'm not going to lie, I was truly worried about my students' EOC scores.  As I have said before, a large portion of our annual teaching evaluation comes from student growth on their state exams.  Across the board, my students were not showing the strong mastery I usually see.

The EOC results:

Spring 2015 - Modeling Curriculum

58 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  83.5

Median Score:  84

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  96

Failures:  3

2013-2014 - Traditional Instruction

79 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  84.0

Median Score:  83

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  94

Failures:  3

As you can see, the differences are minuscule.  My class average was half a point lower, but my median was a point higher than last year.  My lowest scores were the same, but my highest scores were higher.  I think it's worth noting, last year's junior class was collectively one of the highest performing groups of students we've ever had at this school.  Overall, they were a bright and motivated bunch.  This year's juniors are collectively considered to be the polar opposites of their preceding class.  I only say that to illustrate why I'm not kicking myself over the half point drop in class average.

What I am kicking myself about is the failures.  I had the same number of failures this year, but with less students.  It works out to a 5% failure rate this school year vs. a 4% failure rate last school year.  If that wasn't bad enough, 2 of those 3 failures were complete surprises to me.  I had targeted a list of about 8 students whom I was seriously concerned about.  Of those 8, only 1 failed, which I had unfortunately anticipated.  But my other 2 failures were students with B and C averages in class.  They performed well on my assessments and the practice EOC.  I am dumbfounded as to why neither passed.  While neither were child prodigies, I had zero indication that they were at risk of failure.  One student actually scored higher on her practice EOC than the actual EOC, and she's not one who I would suspect of even cheating.  Consider me stumped.

I gave the Chemistry Concepts Inventory as my final exam.  This is a hard test geared towards college level students, so I don't base their "grade" off their score.  Instead, I give it to them as a pre-test/post-test and they earn a 100 on the final if they show improvement (I don't tell them their pre-test scores).

I plugged their data into another homemade Excel data tracker, hoping to identify some trends on where my students are weakest and strongest:

Pre-test data... with unit/topics listed at the top for each question.  Blue indicates something I felt was strongly covered.  Yellow were students who I had no data on because they transferred into my class late.

Post-test data, including the difference in score.  The student with a -8 was absent and didn't take the post-test yet.  The -3 difference on another student is correct, though.  The #VALUE indicate students who I didn't have data on or were exempt from the post-test due to school activities.

The data:

Pre-Test

54 students

Average Score:  5.6 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  11 out of 22

Lowest Score:  0 out of 22

Post-Test

52 students

Average Score:  6.8 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  12 out of 22 (not the same student who had the highest pre-test score)

Lowest Score:  1 out of 22

Average Gain:  1.2

Highest Gain:  6

Number of Students with Gains:  35

Number of Students with No Change:  10

Number of Students with Regression:  7

One student (whom I've had severe behavioral/disciplinary issues with all year) actually scored 6 points worse on the post-test than the pre-test.  Lovely.

I tried to track the questions for strongest/weakest topics and patterns on what students answered correctly and incorrectly, but the data was all over the place.  I couldn't identify many real patterns.  Overall, I think the majority of my students were completely guessing both times they took this test.  The students who had no change didn't even answer the same questions correctly both times.  

The only two questions where I saw a noticeable change in results were questions #7 and #8, which were related questions.  Question #7 is true or false about matter being destroyed when a match burns.  Question #8 is the reason for the answer in question #7.  75% of students answered those questions correctly on the post-test, as compared to 46% and 52% on the pre-test.  Nice gains, although I have to shake my head about the 25% who still managed to answer those questions wrong...

Flame Test Fun

Filling the time between the end of course exam and finals is always a challenge.  I have been using this week to catch up on a few of my favorite labs that didn't quite fit in with the modeling curriculum.  Today, we did flame tests.

I'm not sure if flame tests are included in the later units of the modeling curriculum.  The level 1 chemistry modeling workshop only goes through the core units and doesn't cover the current model of the atom.  I had to rush through the model of the atom so quickly before the EOC that I barely looked at the lesson plans for those later units.  But I was sorry we didn't get to this lab, since it is always a hit with the students.

I usually do it as an "identify the unknown" lab:  I give the students a list of ionic compounds and the color flame that each compound produces.  Then I give them about 6 very benign "unknowns" to identify (in the numbered weighing dishes in the picture).  I put a beaker of wooden splints soaked in DI water at the table and just have them dip a splint into a compound and hold it in the flame.  The burners don't get quite as crusty using the wooden splints as they do when using wire loops, and the disposable splits prevent cross contamination.  This method seems to produce the best colors for me, safely, with minimal prep and minimal wastage of chemicals.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking we might make rock salt ice cream.  In the past, I've done it with ice/rock salt and I've done it with dry ice.  The dry ice is fun, but it can be a pain to deal with since I have to pick it up on my way to school.  And one year I had a student manage to somehow get a piece of dry ice down their sock and irritate their skin.  I'm not even kidding!

EOC Prep

This Thursday is my student's EOC.  They are not even remotely ready.

Friday I had my students take our state's only EOC practice test that they have available for Chemistry.  You can see the test HERE.

In the few years we have been implementing the chemistry EOC (it began in 2013), I have always found the actual EOC to be much easier than the practice test.  Which is a good thing, because my students scores are always depressingly dreadful on the practice test.  Their scores end up being okay on the actual EOC.

I really liked how I created a Biology EOC data tracker last semester, so I did the same for chemistry.  I had them complete the test on Scantron, and then entered their scores into an excel spread sheet:

Obviously I left the student names out of the screen shot.  Each question is color-coded by Unit 1-8.  A "0" indicates they answered incorrectly, "1" for a correct answer.

Entering in this manner allows me to not only see the students' raw scores, but also determine their strongest and weakest units:

A group of students raw scores are at the lefthand side of the photo above.  The color coding indicates below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced based on the state's criteria of # of questions correct.   Yellow indicates the student did not complete the entire practice test.  The "curved" is my own curve-- I factored out the questions I felt that I did not sufficiently cover to give the students the ability to answer them correctly.  The red text color is for me to see who was still failing.  To the right, you can see the students performance by unit.  Also, the number of questions that I classified to be from each unit is listed.

Tracking the test in this manner also allows me to see the percent of students who answered each question correctly, so I can see where students are collectively making mistakes:

For example, in the questions shown above, only 13 students or 22% answered question #12 correctly.  Question #12 had students predicting the products of the following reaction:

Al + Cl2 -> _____ (I can't seem to get subscripts to work on Blogger)

Almost all of the students chose "AlCl2" as the answer, because that would be a balanced equation.  So we revisited ionic compounds and how the subscript tells you how many of each atom you need to cancel the charges.

The breakdown of scores is terrifying.  If I wasn't so burned out from this group of students and this semester, I'd be in panic mode.  Although I've hit the point where I just can't care anymore.

The results show that only 9 of my students scored in the "advanced" range.  18 scored in the "proficient" range.  26 were in the "basic" range and while 5 were "below basic," only 2 of those 5 actually finished the test.

I have serious concerns that 3 of my students will not pass the EOC.  Those 3 students all happen to be minorities, which makes me kick myself even harder.  I hate to think that I'm contributing to the "education gap" on paper.  Unfortunately, there is pretty much nothing I can do now.  These students have struggled ALL year.  I've tried to get them to come in for extra help.  I've tried to pull them aside, or group them with a peer tutor.  I've emailed their parents and coaches.  No luck.

The nice thing about data tracking students in this manner is that it allows me to tailor the review material over the past few days.  Instead of making my students review EVERYTHING, we go over the most missed questions in class... then they each have their own set of review material they need to complete.  In reality, I just make a review packet for each unit and the students need to complete the material for each unit that they scored below 75%.

The test is Thursday.  I hopefully will get scores back before the end of the year!

"Unit 8" and venting

I haven't had a lot to update lately because we've been in a furiously of trying to cover the standards before the EOC.

Last week, we did do the Describing Chemical Reactions Lab in Unit 7.  It's a good lab.  It went well.  I took zero pictures.

We sadly got to spend only a block and a half of on stoichiometry.  It wasn't enough, but we have so much more to cover.

We have now entered "Unit 8" which is not the same as Unit 8 in the modeling curriculum.  I've had to create "Unit 8- Models of the Atom" myself for all of those hodge podge of standards that we have yet to cover-- namely protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And unfortunately, we have zero time for inquiry.  It's been a hellacious week of direct teaching so far.  Yesterday we got through Rutherford and Bohr, with drawing Bohr models and determining valence electrons from the Bohr model.  Today, we learned Lewis diagrams and isotopes.  Tomorrow we'll finish up isotopes by talking about nuclear reactions (a HUGE chunk of standards for my state).  Thursday we'll do the quantum model of the atom and e-config (not.enough.time).  Friday we will begin practice testing/review.  Mon-Wed next week will be review days, although I am not guaranteed to that I will see all my students every day because of their other EOCs.  Thursday is our EOC.

Time to freak out?  Um... yeah.

I truly dislike Tennessee's state standards for chemistry.  I have not compared them to other state's standards, but I find them entirely too broad, yet detailed at the same time.  There is no possible way you can teach your average junior EVERYTHING in our chemistry standards to the level of mastery they expect in a single course.  They expect them to understand atomic theory in depth from Democritus thru the quantum model.  They expect them to draw Bohr models and understand, write, and identify electron configuration.  They expect them to know properties of matter, including properties of solutions, colligative properties, molarity, molality-- the later two they need to know how to calculate.  They are supposed to know thermochem and calorimetry-- including solving specific heat problems.  Heat of solvation, heat of reaction, heat of formation, and heat of phase change are all in the standards.  They expect them to understand the kinetic molecular theory of matter and solve gas law problems: combined gas law and ideal gas law.  They need to know about the arrangement of the periodic table.  They need to write the proper and common names of ionic and covalent compounds and understand the bonding.  They need to know polyatomic ions.  They need to be able to balance chemical and nuclear equations.  They need to be able to write net ionics and predict reaction products from the 5 main types of chemical reactions.  They need to know acid/base reactions, they need to use an activity series, they need to do stoichiometry problems.  They need to differentiate between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation and utilize half-lives.  They need to know about heat transfer in both chemical and nuclear reactions.  They need to differentiate between nuclear fission and fusion.  They're supposed to be able to argue the pros and cons of nuclear energy.  And I haven't even gotten to the math standards:  percent composition, percent yield, percent error, graphing, unit conversions, sig figs, accuracy/precision in measurements.  Then there's also inquiry standards and embedded engineering standards.  IT'S TOO MUCH!!!!!!

I have never been able to get through all of the chemistry standards in my entire career.  Most of my co-workers have the same problem.  The few that brag about easily completing all of the standards are the "textbook" teachers-- read a chapter, answer the questions, take a test.  They don't spend time on labs (which "perform and understand laboratory procedures" is indeed one of the inquiry standards).  At the end of the course, the students come away with nothing.

I'm not proud of how this semester has gone, but I still believe I can make the chemistry modeling curriculum work for me and my students with some tweaking.

Unit 7 Chemical Reactions - Rearranging Atoms

If you had spoken to me yesterday, you would have heard how proud I was of my students.  But today is not yesterday, and once again I'm slamming my head against the desk.

We spent Monday through Wednesday on nomenclature and chemical formulas of ionic and covalent (molecular) compounds.  It was a lot of direct teaching, and we completed Unit 6 Worksheets 3 and 4 as assessment.  They worked extremely hard on something I would consider pretty boring and they were showing a strong mastery.

Today, we took a quiz on nomenclature.  I didn't use the AMTA quiz, but rather copied question #10 straight off the AMTA Unit 6 test.  (For the sake of time, I'm combing these last units into one unit test so we have more days for instruction before the EOC) They had to identify formulas or names as ionic or covalent, then write the name and/or formula.

The grades... so horrible... oh my gosh.  I would have NEVER anticipated the grades being so terrible based off what the students produced on worksheets 3 & 4 and our other in-class practice.  Most students couldn't even correctly identify the compounds as ionic or covalent, which we've been doing in class for DAYS.  So it looks like I'll be re-teaching the topic tomorrow.

The other plan for today was to begin Unit 7 by completing the Rearranging Atoms activity.  We do not have time for the nail lab, so I figured this would be a good way to introduce balancing equations.  The plan was to do the Describing Chemical Reactions lab tomorrow, since today's activity seemed very straight forward.  I foolishly assumed we'd be able to complete it in about 45 minutes and be balancing equations successfully for homework.  Ha!

First, the activity begins with 5 background questions that should be 100% review (ignore the copier line):

For some reason, these were the 5 most difficult questions in the world and my students SHUT DOWN instead of trying at all.  This caused me to just get ticked off, since none of these should have been a challenge.  There is zero excuse for them not to be able to answer any of these questions.  I basically let them have it and told them if they can't answer these 5 questions, not only have they shown me they aren't ready to go do chemical reactions in the lab tomorrow, but they don't even deserve to pass the course.  I was pissed.  There was a small standoff in just about every single one of my classes over these questions, and I refused to cave until they answered them and explained their answers.  After 14 weeks of chemistry, I should not have to spoon-feed my juniors answers to review questions that not only have been covered in my course, but were covered extensively in middle school and 9th grade physical science.  Maybe other teachers are content giving them the answers all the time, but the students should realize by now that they can't get away with that in my classroom.  Yet they still throw a temper tantrum any time I expect them to think (if you could even call those questions "thinking"- isn't describing like level 2 on Bloom's taxonomy?) and it's getting really old.

Anyways... after the background questions, students are to use atomic model kits to model the reactants given for a series of chemical reactions.  Students are to then build the products from the reactants.  If they don't have enough atoms or have left over atoms, they need to start over using additional reactants.

Once students find the correct ratio of reactants to products, they are to draw a particle diagram of the reactants and products and put the numbers of molecules of each in the blanks.

My first class just did not understand at all and we ran out of time.  My second class also did not understand at all... so I modeled how to do #1 and 2 at the front of the room.  They were still lost and we ran out of time.  By my third class of the day, some groups were sort of getting it, but many were still lost and surprise surprise, we ran out of time.

What was truly amazing to me was that I kept asking random students if they could guess what we were trying to do to the chemical equation.  Every single one of them said "no."  I figured someone would realize we were just balancing the equations, but nope.

Unit 6 Reflections: Conductivity Activity and Worksheet #1

My endearing students have started leaving chemistry jokes on my board before or after class:

At least not everyone has a bad attitude!

I'm still plugging away at as much of the modeling curriculum as possible, despite being ridiculously far behind.  As I mentioned in my last post, I made a decision to replace the "Sticky Tape Lab" with a simple static electricity activity.  It seemed effective and we were able to replace a lot of the time we would have spent on the sticky tape discussion with some coverage of the periodic table and the ionization trends on the periodic table.

I got it in my head that I really wanted to use the property of conductivity to help students identify the difference between ionic and covalent.  Every year I seem to want to demonstrate conductivity, but my school has never had any conductivity probes.

Some wonderful teachers at my modeling workshop introduced me to the idea of making conductivity probes out of 9v batteries and Christmas lights.  I found a couple ideas about the best way to do this online, then headed to Walmart to see what I could find.

I came up with these:

Homemade conductivity probe

Basically, I bought a strand of $5 Christmas lights and cut a lightbulb out of the strand for each probe.  The length of wire between each bulb is extremely short, so I also used the excess loopback wire and an alligator clip to give more length.  The alligator clips were in the automotive department surprisingly, and cost about $2 for a pack of 6.  The batteries were less than a dollar a piece, and the entire thing is taped to a popsicle stick for ease of use.  I spent around $20 and it took me about an hour to construct a set of 7 for my classes.  If I had more time, I would have had the students make them on their own.  I know a lot of my boys would have really dug that.

Of course, the day we hit this in the curriculum, all of the science labs were being used by other teachers.  So, I grabbed an assortment of substances that would be easy and safe to use in the classroom:

The procedure was to classify the elements as metals, nonmetals, and metalloids and test their conductivity.  Then students classified the compounds as M-NM or NMs only and tested their conductivity dry and then dissolved in H2O.

As usual, my first class of the day nailed it.  I was particularly proud of this group:

We just whiteboarded the data for comparison and verbal conclusions

Their terminology could have been better, but you have to understand that this was a group of 4 extremely low-performing and unmotivated boys who saw the pattern immediately.

After we discussed how M-NM compounds are conductive dissolved in solution, but NM-NM compounds are not, I gave my students Worksheet 1.  We did not have time to even touch the electrolysis of copper chloride lab.

Worksheet 1 is hard.  Ideally, the goal is for students to deduce both the ratios of ionic compounds and the oxidation numbers of each group all via the concept that solid M-NM do not conduct electricity.  That's a lot to discover on their own.  Now, before the conductivity lab, I taught my students about oxidation numbers when I taught them cations and anions.  But they still had to determine why compounds form in certain ratios.  It's a really good worksheet.  And oh my gosh, did my students complain and whine.  But... they figured out how to write binary ionic compounds all on their own and could articulate why.   I'm sure hoping the retain this understanding over the weekend!

I did not plan on going into great depth on the structures of ionic vs. molecular solids, but I did download the Mercury Software.  I like the idea of showing them the difference, but I could not get the software to work correctly for me and just didn't have time to play with it.  Instead, I'm falling back on an old powerpoint and some direct teaching for the differences between the chemical bonds and nomenclature.  I do intend to complete worksheets 3 and 4 next week and Quiz 1, but then I'm moving on.

Kicking off Unit 6

This has been the semester from h*ll.  Have I already said that?  Yeah, I think I have.

Last week was spring break, which was absolutely lovely.  Prior to spring break, we flew through Unit 5 in about 4 days.  The students learned about the mole, they learned how to do conversions with Avogadro's number, and they learned how to do molar mass conversions.  No real labs, and I barely used the modeling curriculum-- just previous year's PowerPoints and grill & drill practice worksheets.  We ran out of time before spring break to do percent composition and empirical formulas.  I will pick them up at some other point in time... IF there is time.  The EOC is in 4 weeks and we have so much to do.

Today we began Unit 6 with a "charge" lab.  I chose not to do the Sticky Tape Lab.  In my modeling workshop, I remembered that lab being extremely time consuming.  We DO NOT have time. Instead, I adapted a lab I have used in the past called "Electrons on the Move," which can be completed in less than 30 minutes.  Obviously I did not call it that this time around-- we referred to it as "The Charges of Matter" lab.

Basically, it's a static electricity lab composed of six stations.  Students rub balloons and plastic objects on fabric and see the attractions and repulsions.

Before the lab, we discussed Democritus and Dalton's atomic theories, then I told them there was another scientist named JJ Thomson who added to the atomic theory based off his work with electrical charges.  We discussed the idea of charges.  Where have we seen positive/negative charges or ends of something in the lab so far (batteries, magnets)?  We discussed how like charges repel, opposite charges attract.  They were told the purpose of the lab was to determine if the objects in the lab had charges.  They were to draw a before and after sketch of each station, then assign charges to the objects.

Each lab group was assigned a single station to whiteboarded a verbal explanation and a diagram, both of the charges and of the particles.

Some examples (missing station 6):

Um... sort of not really

A little better

Not too bad

At least they were thinking about it

As a class, we came to the conclusion that:
1. Matter can have positive, negative, or neutral charges.
2. The charge of matter can change.
3. In the lab, the charge changed without changing the particles.

We didn't go into details on "positive" and "negative" yet.  Most have at ton of misconceptions in that department, but hopefully we'll clear them up tomorrow when we introduce the idea of electrons.

I sent them home with the online notes activity about JJ Thomson's experiments included in the curriculum.  It links students to A Look Inside The Atom to learn about JJ Thomson's cathode ray experiments.  I hope to heck that at least some of them attempt it so we can move on quickly.

Unit 4 Reflections: Worksheet 1 and Electrolysis of Water

Going by the modeling "book" is not working for me lately.

Friday: I expected pure substances vs. mixtures to be a review for my students, especially after the feedback I was receiving in our post-lab discussion.  The topics are covered heavily in physical science. The students usually blow right through it in years past.  I thought it would be a great chance to squeeze in some much needed textbook reading/writing practice, with it being a familiar topic that is not all that difficult to grasp from reading.

Um... no.  That's not how it went with these students.

Friday, in class, they were assigned to read the (very short) unit out of the textbook on classification of matter.  They were then to write me a paragraph classifying the stuff we saw in the lab (salt, sand, iron, salt/sand/iron together, water, sulfur, iron, iron sulfide) as a pure substance or a mixture using vocabulary they read in the text.  I figured after they read about the topic, we'd jump right into Worksheet 1 on Monday.

What they actually did instead of reading-- sit with the book in front of them without flipping a page, then turned in a list of garbage that showed they didn't even as much look at the headings on the pages.  Not cool.  I know it was Friday, but COME ON.

So, I got to spend all of Monday reteaching what they didn't read in the book.  I did it in a PowerPoint that I've used in the past, then finally gave them Woksheet 1.

I've never understood why this is so hard for students:

I used to assign a similar worksheet in years past and my students went into panic mode when they saw it.  After my Modeling Workshop, it occurred to me that I was assuming that students had a conceptual picture of particles when it was something I truly never taught.  This year, since we have been explicitly working in conceptual "particle" mode all year, I didn't anticipate it being nearly as panic inducing.  Wrong again.  *head desk*

So we wasted more time today slooooowly correcting the very wrong answers on Worksheet 1 until it finally seemed like my students had some idea of the difference between elements, compounds, and mixtures.

Onward ho-- next we were supposed to start building towards the Law of Definite Proportions with a demonstration using a Hoffman Apparatus.  My Modeling Workshop was generous enough to provide us all with our very own Hoffman Apparatus!  Unfortunately, they didn't give us a power source.  Never fear, they told us, you can just use a 6V or 9V battery.  Ha.  Hahaha.  Ha. Of course, I procrastinated until the last minute to try this idea and found that while a battery will cause some decomposition, I could not get the reaction to go nearly fast enough to be visually impressive.  Maybe it was just me.

I needed a backup plan.  My first thought was to do the 9V battery/pencil lead electrolysis of water-- but a single set up is way too small for an effective demo.  Plus, I really wanted them to see that it was twice as much hydrogen than oxygen, and actually prove it was hydrogen/oxygen and not just bubbles.

Thanks to Google and YouTube, at the 11th hour I was able to rig up some of these setups using materials I had on hand:

Small plastic container with two push pins through the bottom, 2 test tubes, a 9V battery, and a solution of water with a small amount of sodium biocarbonate

The containers were a little cumbersome to manipulate, but the setup worked well overall.  Between weak batteries and time constraints, we didn't see a perfect 2:1 ratio, but the students clearly saw more gas being formed on the cathode side than on the anode side.  I was able to come around with a flaming splint and demonstrate the hydrogen "pop" to each group.  There wasn't quite enough oxygen to re-ignite a hot splint, but it was enough to at least make the flame visually grow.  We discussed how water vapor would not cause a flame to grow or pop-- too much water vapor may even extinguish a flame.  We also discussed that the container did not feel hot enough to be boiling, so it couldn't be "boiling" water.

I told them that scientists have found that a compound of a substance always has the same ratio of elements.  Water is always 2H:1O.  We then hypothesized the ratios of elements in other familiar compounds, like sodium chloride and glucose.

We were going to watch "Gases and How They Combine," as suggested by the lesson plan.  I watched the video myself on YouTube and it is BORING and dated.  While the demonstrations and explanations are great, I don't see my students paying enough attention to get anything out of it.  I think we'll jump right into Worksheet 2 tomorrow... then on to Dalton's Playhouse.

Despite being dreadfully far behind and feeling like 50% of my students are shut down... I do hope that by the time we get to balancing equations, it should be a non-issue.  That's basically all they are doing in Worksheet 2.

Unit 4 Reflections: Separating A Mixture

I've had to shake things up a lot.  Last week, we had two more snow days and two days where I lost my students to standardized testing.  I basically said to heck with the rest of Unit 3.  We didn't do any of the specific heat calculations.  We quizzed on the types of energy, energy bar charts, heating/cooling curves, and phase diagrams (my addition) and called it a loss.

I'm also shaking up Unit 4 a bit.  For starters, it begins with demos and discussion.  Unless I'm blowing something up, my unmotivated, under engaged juniors don't give a darn about demos.  And I've been struggling all year to get my students to buy in to group discussion-- it does not happen easily.  I truly needed to get them in the lab.  I fell back on the old "Separation of a Mixture" lab, an activity that I usually do at the beginning of the year to introduce them to the concept of experimental design and properties and mixtures.

We started Unit 4 by defining properties, then differentiating between physical and chemical properties.  I then gave them a sample of salt, sand, and iron filings and asked them to develop a plan, using their properties, to separate the three substances.  I offered them a list of available materials to help them out.  Considering I rushed them a bit on their experimental design process, they didn't do too terribly.

Overall, I was really impressed with my student's white boards with the exception of their particle diagrams.  I was very specific for the verbal this time:  I asked them to answer the question, "Why were we able to separate the three substances?"  I was very specific for their math as well, and told them to show me how to calculate the percent composition of the mixture.  I left the graphing and particle diagrams completely open ended, asking them to do what they felt was appropriate.

Most boards looked like this:

Strong answers to the questions, good math, appropriate method of graphing data, dreadful particle diagrams (WTF?), and an overall inability to spell the word "separating."

We addressed the particle diagram issue today.  I hope they got the point-- everyone was utterly braindead today.

Unfortunately, many of my lazy students have caught on that I don't actually grade whiteboards.  So, several groups produced garbage like this:

At least they figured out how to calculate percent composition...

Um... yeah.

I also performed the demonstration of heating iron and sulfur.  This is a demo I had never done before.  I could not get it to react with a hot stirring rod or hot splint.  I ended up using a ring stand, a heavy watch glass, and a bunsen burner.  The odor is horrific and the ignition was not all that impressive to the students.  I think the bunsen burner flame confused them- they just thought it was flammable even though I made a point of showing how far away the flame was from the iron ring.  But, they were able to see that we got a substance with different properties from either of the original two substances.  We left off with a textbook reading about pure substances vs. mixtures.

We'll do worksheet 1 on Monday.  I haven't shown them fractional distillation equipment (we don't even own any), so I suppose I should do that first!  Youtube here we come...

On a side note, my students had to take a district wide benchmark test today.  It was created with traditional pacing in mind, so many of the topics we have not covered.  When I flipped through the test, I figured there were about 11 out of 30 questions that my students should be capable of answering.  I was at least encouraged to see that my students mostly got those 11 questions correct.

Unit 3 Reflections: Icy Hot Lab Results

This is becoming the semester from h*ll.  Seriously.  Between implementing the chemistry modeling curriculum for the first time, the exceptionally unmotivated group of students, and the ridiculous number of interruptions, I'm ready to throw in the towel.

The good news:  my students' data came out better than expected.  Even in my first class, students were able to note a difference in the shape and slope of the heating and cooling curves at different points.

Some of their curves:

The bad news:  everything else.

I think maybe a handful of students at best understood what I think is a pretty easy concept.  A heating/cooling curve will have parts of the line that show little rate of change (flat) because the energy is being used to "break" the forces of attraction between the particles and change the matter into a different phase.

I don't know exactly what it is that I'm doing so terribly wrong, but I cannot get these students to care for the life of me.  I can't even get enough intrinsic respect out of them to try for me.  Two of my students today told me they hate everything about science.  I can't even fathom having the lack of respect to say that to my teacher when I was that age.  And all of this because they were asked to graph some data... which took nearly all of the 90 minutes to do, and do poorly at that.  Not that I told them that last part, but sheesh, look at those graphs-- do they look like work products that should have taken an hour to produce?!?  Notice there isn't a verbal conclusion or a particle diagram on any of them.  Let me just say there was supposed to be each of those as well.

I'm scared for the lab reports.  They are not going to be good.

Today really got me thinking about another teacher from my modeling workshop.  She mentioned that a constant problem she has with "inquiry" type labs, is that the students mess up, take away the wrong idea, and don't care enough to change their thinking.  That's very much what I saw with my students today.  I asked me students how they thought their graphs were going to look-- most said heating ice would be a straight increase, cooling the lauric acid would be a straight decrease.  After they (finally) plotted the data, I asked if that's what they saw.  Yup, they told me.  I asked about the flat areas and the zigzags-- it must have been the hot plate.  Or *maybe* it was human error.  They don't care, the line went up at a point, so they were all correct in their minds.

Can I just get a do-over on this semester?  I think if I had to do it all over again, I'd start WAY easier on this group and build up a better relationship with them.  I set the bar high and was hard on these students from the start, and they have now shut down on me.

Unit 3 Reflections: Icy Hot Lab

Snow days.  Don't get me wrong, I love them... but they sure are making it hard to get through everything before the EOC.  The EOC date does not change no matter how many days we are out.  Yesterday was another snow day.  We picked up today with the Icy Hot Lab, and had to cram it into one day.

I haven't gotten to begin this unit as I would have liked with all the interruptions.  Wednesday I was missing a large portion of my classes due to paperwork for the ACT.  All we really got through was the Energy Reading Study Guide.  We didn't even have enough time to discuss the reading and study guide in class, so I had no idea how much understanding they had of energy.  Not surprisingly, my thinking-phobic, non-conceptual students love assignments where they just have to hunt and peck for the answers.  It was the best "work" I've seen out of them this year.

Today, I put some of the main points from the reading into a PowerPoint-- because I feel like this concept of "energy accounts" is going to be difficult for them.  Or maybe it's just difficult for me.  Anyway, I wanted to try to drive home the idea more before they have to apply it to a graph.

In a perfect world, I would have done the Icy Hot Lab over two days.  In that perfect world, we would have discussed and planned part 1 as a class.  We would have white-boarded and discussed our results from part 1 before going on to part 2.  But... that couldn't happen.  Monday, I have to proctor a state writing assessment.  Tuesday is when the juniors take the ACT.  So we crammed everything into today and will discuss results whenever we can.

I had to make some changes to this lab.  First, we used hot plates instead of ring stands/bunsen burners.  Our ring stands are pretty chintzy and our iron rings are ridiculously tiny-- supporting a beaker of boiling water over a bunsen burner was not going to happen safely.

The world's worst hot plates.  The entire casing gets hotter than the actual burner.

Secondly-- no Vernier.  :(  This is one case where I truly would have preferred collecting data and graphing with Vernier if it were available.  Instead, I had my students manually record the temperature every 15 seconds with digital thermometers.  I have no idea of 15 seconds was an appropriate time interval-- looking over the data, I'm not sure if we're going to see good curves.

There was no shortage of "teacher mistakes" with this lab.  For example, I forgot to have them make a hypothesis of how their curves will look.  Big oops!  I was just so worried we wouldn't have enough time to execute the lab that I completely forgot.  I also forgot to demonstrate how to take accurate temperature readings with my first class of the day.  I realized a couple minutes into the experiment that most groups were just letting the thermometer sit against the bottom of the beaker, giving them artificially high temperatures right from the start.  I was able to prevent this in my later class periods.

Another problem I noticed early in the day was students trying to fudge data-- they had an idea of what they thought should happen, so they kept trying to make the data match that idea (which is going to totally botch their curves).  I didn't get as much time to address this teachable moment as I would have liked, but I did make a point to tell all students to record what the data says even if they believe it may be incorrect.

When it came to the freezing of lauric acid part, the teacher mistakes were still in full force.  Again, I forgot to tell my students in my first class the importance of keeping the lauric acid hot before you begin.  Most of them grabbed the sample and let it sit a few minutes while they got organized.  Their samples were well under 50C when they began recording temperatures, giving very linear data.  By the time I noticed this, the groups were so far into the data recording that there wasn't time to start over.

Test tube of lauric acid cooling and freezing as it sits in a beaker of cold tap water

I just hope we get usable data out of this experiment.  I don't want to create/reinforce existing misconceptions.  Also, students will be writing their first lab report over this lab and I don't want it to be harder than it needs to be.  If the data is erratic, they are going to struggle with their conclusions and questions.

Did someone order a mid-winter vacation?

We were out for, count 'em, ELEVEN days in a row thanks to inclement weather.  For President's Day weekend, the students were supposed to have a 4 day weekend.  Staff was supposed to have an inservice day and parent/teacher conferences on Monday and Tuesday.  What we had instead was a huge snow and ice storm on Sunday night.  The storm was followed by a blast of unseasonably cold arctic air which stayed in place for over a week.  Here in the south, we don't have the resources to remove snow-- it usually just melts the same day.  So everyone was just forced to stay inside and wait for it to melt... and we kept waiting... and waiting... and waiting...

Eleven days later, we're back in school.  On Friday the 13th, students took their Unit 2 test.  I barely made any alterations to the test in the curriculum-- I think I added 2 EOC practice questions, a handful of temp and pressure conversions, and made one of the more difficult problems extra credit.  Results were much better than the Unit 1 test.  Lots of As and Bs and Cs and only a few Fs in each class (although I still have a boatload of students to make it up who were absent last Friday).  I actually had a student tell me today that PVTn problems are her favorite thing she has EVER done in science class.  Seriously?  Even I think that's a little sad.  But hey, I'm happy to finally have some level of engagement in chemistry.

Students have interruptions galore over the next few days, plus there's more snow in the forecast.  As a result, I'm greatly abbreviating Unit 3.  My goals are for the students to understand phase changes and heating/cooling curves, and I'd like to attempt the energy bar charts and a few heat problems, but only if there is time.  Today there was a lot of catch up to do after the long break, so we eased in with the Eureka video on Heat & Temperature and did the Energy & Kinetic Molecular Theory reading/study guide.  Tomorrow-- Icy Hot!

Unit 2 Reflections: Worksheet 3 PVTn Problems

My students... bless their hearts... grr...

Graffiti is beginning to appear on the back of my white boards.  It's mostly your typical, teenage stuff- doodles, smiley faces, although one board had a curse word in marker.  I did not have this problem AT ALL last semester.  I am NOT okay with this.  I'm 99% sure it is happening during our board meetings when they are holding up their boards, and specifically, I'm also 99% sure it's happening in my last class of the day.  In that class, I already catch them trying to hide behind their boards and text, read, sleep...  Instead of addressing the class about the graffiti, I think I'm just going to say from here on out the students need to prop them up at the front of the room.  On a related note, at our workshop, one experienced modeler mentioned that he has hooks hanging from his ceiling to hang the white boards-- if I ever get my own classroom, I'd love to do that.

Anyway- PVTn problems.  I mentioned in my last post, I had zero interest in deploying the "factor" arrow method for solving these problems.  Maybe someday I will change my thinking, but I personally do not see how that is a benefit for them.  Especially not when my students are given the combined gas law on their EOC equation sheet.

I do think the PTVn charts are helpful.  It keeps the students organized, and drawing an arrow for the "effect" helps maintain a connection between their conceptual understanding of particles and the math.

A sample of the PTVn charts on the first page of worksheet 3

I do not think worksheet 3 alone was enough practice and assessment.  In a perfect world, we would have more time to spend on this.  I planned poorly-- I planned for the test tomorrow, thinking we'd complete and check worksheet 3 yesterday.  We didn't check worksheet 3 until today, which cut into out review time.  But we have a 4 day weekend for President's Day/in-service, so delaying the test any longer won't be to our advantage.

Also, I think worksheet 3 is a *bit* overwhelming for low-level standard chemistry students.  There were too many different pressure units right off the bat, including some "minor" conversions.  And by problem #3, they are throwing the STP in there.  I would have liked to have built the students' confidence up with some more straight forward problems before I start switching units or worrying about STP.  If I have such low-performing students next year, I think I will add several easier problems at the beginning.  Also, the problems are boring as all get out.  I'd like to put some "real life" spin on these calculations.

But... after the kid's initial FREAK OUT at having to do some big time algebra with lots of different variables, they didn't seem to have an issue with solving the problems.  I'm curious to see how they handle them on the test tomorrow.

Unit 2 Reflections: PVTn Labs

It's no fail-- my students always surprise me.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse...

I was having some trepidation about how seriously I should pursue calculating the pressure in a manometer flask like so:

It's not a state standard, so I was going to play it by ear as the students completed Worksheet 2.  If they seemed to understand the concept quickly, I'd have them do those problems.  If not, I wasn't going to fight the battle.  Go figure, they mastered the concept in about 30 seconds.

Overall, they did really well with Worksheet 2.  I would say 85% of the class was even successful at the pressure unit conversions at the end with minimal help from me, and I didn't even tell them it was coming.  Granted a good portion of my students still freeze up like a deer in headlights when they see a conversion, but they can do it with some goading.

We ended yesterday with a Boyles Law lab.  The AMTA lesson plans have students performing 3 labs with Vernier equipment:  P & V, P & n, and P & T.  We don't have Vernier equipment at my school, however I personally have a single LabQuest and probes of my own.  I have mixed feelings about having students do too many Vernier labs, regardless of having the equipment or not.  I feel the students often are intimated by the equipment and software, which causes them to miss the entire point of the lab.  At the same time, I've watched many college students continue to struggle with the Vernier labs.  It would be nice to give my students the exposure now so they're more comfortable with Vernier in college.  I don't think there is a "best" answer when it comes to using Vernier with standard high school chemistry students.

Anyways...

My compromise was for students to do a simple Boyles Law lab using pipets and textbooks that I found on Flinn's website:




Then for Avogadro's and Gay-Lussac's Laws, my plan was to use the Vernier equipment and demonstrate the lab the students were supposed to do from the curriculum.

The Boyles Law lab went pretty well-- it was quick and straight forward.  My first two classes of the day figured out the relationship easily for the most part. Most of their boards looked something like this:

By the end of the day, I found there were more and more student procedural mistakes.  The most common was measuring the length of the water instead of the air, giving them an incorrect graph (this one was doubly incorrect):

I was bummed about their verbal conclusion.  And confused about their particle diagram.

The mathematical expression was really hard for them on this one.  I've found here most students just don't understand inverse relationships.  I showed them the concept of P=1/V, but I'm not sure how many took anything away from the discussion.

The Vernier demos were a huge flop.  The kids were bored to tears.  They didn't understand what I was doing, they just blindly copied the graphs on the screen into their lab notebook.  Seriously, there was zero advantage to pulling out the Vernier equipment for a demonstration in this instance.  I might as well have just talked at them for half the period.

What was most helpful, again, was the PHET simulation.

We also did a KMT reading out of the textbook, or tried to.  I wanted them to read thoroughly and write, but we only had about 10 minutes left at the end of the class to do the activity.  It became more of a "scan for the answer" activity, which I hate.

Tomorrow we will tackle PVTn problems using the combined gas law.  While I plan on using the PVTn charts, I'm not teaching the factor/train-track method they showed us in our modeling workshop.  Not happening.  I'd rather the students be able to plug and chug into the equation that they will receive on the back of their periodic table when they take the EOC.

Unit 2 Reflections: Pressure, Straws, and Blow Up A Kid

I'm not sure if today was the best use of our time.  I don't feel like my students have any better "mental image" of pressure after the two activities.

Part of this may be my own misconceptions, but I'm not exactly sure how playing with a drinking straw is a good introduction to the idea of pressure.  The synopsis:  lab groups were given straws and a cup of water to play with and told to develop and white board a "trick" they can do.  Our workshop leader suggested doing this to engage them.  95% of the groups did the putting your finger over the top of the straw trick.  We didn't have any good discussion on suction, except that we are pulling air particles out, which causes other particles to take its place.  We kind of wasted 15 minutes of class time playing with no "ah ha"  moments.

Then we did the "blow up a kid" demo.  For this, you need a trash bag, sealed with duct tape, with 4 straws inserted into the corners:

I thought this would be a huge hit.  It wasn't.  Surprisingly, no one wanted to be "blown up."  No one wanted to blow on the straws.  The brave souls who did volunteer to blow it up told me the air tasted like other people's bad breath (ick).  And most importantly, I don't think it helped our mental picture of pressure any.  Probably half of my students were having a hard time visualizing that it was the air particles colliding with the bag that provided the force to lift the kid off the table.

The PHET Interactive Simulations helped the students better understand how particles cause pressure.  I strongly recommend using it as a visual at very least.

I put some notes/discussion questions into PowerPoint form for pressure, since there were a lot of particulars with the units that the students are supposed to take away from the discussion.  In the PowerPoint, I defined pressure, introduced the 4 common units (psi, Pa, mmHg, and atm) and talked about hand water pumps and Torricelli.  I also had some slides on barometers and manometers.

The goal was for Worksheet 2- Measuring Pressure to be homework, but they weren't even remotely ready to attempt those problems on their own.  Now I'm kind of wanting to skip them myself-- we're so far behind... I'm not sure if calculating pressure in a manometer is the best use of our time and their brain cells.  We might do it as a class on Monday, although then I won't get a good assessment out of it.

Monday, my goal is to do a modified Boyle's Law lab using clamped pipets and textbooks.  We do not have Vernier equipment at my school.  I have one set that was given to me as part of my modeling workshop, so I plan on breaking that out for a demo for Charles' Law and Avogadro's Law.

I really hope I can recoup some lost time during Unit 3-- I plan on slashing a lot of Unit 3's material.  I really just want students to understand the concept of phase change diagrams, heating and cooling curves, and some basic specific heat problems.  I'm hoping we can do that in 5 days maximum.