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.
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