Liza Basden is a chemistry teacher in Illinois that I connected with earlier this year. Periodically, we’ll share resources with one another for labs or other activities that we run in our classes. Last week, I was browsing for a lab to run with students on the different types of chemical reactions when Liza sent me some awesome pictures from her own class:
@bennettscience Inspired by your How Big is a Mol activity to find more ways for my Ss to express their creativity pic.twitter.com/86J2ljP
—Liza Basden (@lbasden) February 1, 2013
` <https://twitter.com/LBasden/status/297358080230952960>`__
I really like the fact that she pulls in inquiry to get the students thinking about similarities and differences in the chemical equations before the students begin to categorize them as single replacement, double replacement, etc. It forces the students to make connections between various chemical equations that are really quite obvious when we sit down to compare. Plus, asking them to draw out a representation of the reaction pushes critical thinking and analysis of what they’re learning, which increases retention and understanding.
She was kind enough to share the prep materials and the student papers and has given me permission to share these materials with anyone that may want to use them in their class.
If you end up using this activity, we’d love to see some photos of your student’s work shared either here in the comments or shared Twitter.
All photos in this post are from Liza Basden, used with permission.