Due to the change in date we only had 3 participants in the April ChemChat, but Kirsten and I met a new person and had a great conversation not only about Electrochemistry but also got to know one another.

   May's LAB SAFETY ChemChat was a hit, with 19 attendees getting a lot of very thoughtful and useful information from Jim Kaufman at the Laboratory Safety Institution. This is a great resource both for proactive work keeping yourself and your students and staff safe and also for help when you have a problem. You can contact them at labsafety.org

   Note that there IS a June 8th ChemChat (see "Events") but none in July.

My apologies on not holding the April ChemChat on April 20th.

It has now been rescheduled to April 27th (same time of 4:00-5:00 pm).

The April ChemChat will be held April 20th, the third Thursday in the month, and not April 13th.

10 participants shared resources and ideas on teaching thermodynamics and thermochemistry on March 9th. The conversation ranged from what AP students need and find problematic vs. what beginning chem students need to vocabulary mismatches in the high school to college transition.

You will find a recording of the Zoom meeting - including the chat (which has some good resources) here.

You will find a google.drive folder with additional resources posted by the participants here.

The next ChemChat will be Thursday, April 20th from 4-5 pm. The topic is ELECTROCHEMISTRY.

Eight teachers from California to Rhode Island joined in a discussion of "Solutions, Acids and Bases" on 2/9. We shared out ideas for demos and labs and lamented the impact of lack of time in covering a topic we all enjoy and see around us daily.

Click here to go to the google.drive folder where we shared documents.

Click here to watch and here the video of our ChemChat, including links and documents posted in the ZOOM chat.

Our next online ChemChat will be Thursday, March 9th, from 4-5 pm EST. The topic will be THERMOCHEMISTRY.

On 12/8 we had a wonderful discussion of the particular challenges teaching chemistry to English language learners. Click here to see the ZOOM recording, including some great resources in the chat. Although our group was small (10 people) it was far-ranging, including teachers not only  from Maine to Maryland to Michigan but also from Milan (yes, Italy!) and S. Korea. As host, I am always grateful for the opportunity to have honest discussions with colleagues from such a wide range of teaching situations and perspectives.

Thank you to our presenters Dr. Mackenzie Stetzer, Dr. Mila Kryjevskaia and Dr. Beth Lindsey for two evening presentations on Dual Processing. We learned about intuitive vs. rational reasoning and the reasoning pathways students take while solving problems. We also learned about two techniques for helping students see their own thinking and help teachers see how students think. We experienced "logic chains" and "paired questions with salient distractors" for ourselves on the 2nd night, and had extra insights from college chem teachers Dr. Mitchell Bruce and Dr. Alexey Leontyev.

Stay tuned: there will be a double evening followup in the spring for our fall participants to practice these techniques and share their design and implementation experiences. Dates have not been set yet.

Here are the links to recordings of DAY 1 and DAY 2.

THANK YOU to the 18 participants in this month's ChemChat on "sustainable demos". We had high school and college folks from Maine to Virginia and a lively conversation.

Here is the link to the google.drive folder containing shared work.

Here is the link to the recorded video.

Here is a thought-provoking article about science education from Chemistry World

https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/do-science-courses-need-hands-on-labs-to-be-effective/4016216.article

THANK YOU to all who participated in our August ChemChat. We brainstormed some topics for this year's roundtables, and plan to do more of this in September. Topics currently being planned are 

• SEL: implementing social and emotional learning within a chem curriculum
• DEMOS: how to include meaningful but easy-to-sustain demonstrations
• NGSS: how are folks implementing this?
• READING: how to bring outside readings into the classroom in ways that are meaningful to students but not time-intensive for teachers
• ASSESSMENTS: streamlining assessments; assessing skills
• DIFFERENTIATION: how to implement differentiation without burning the teacher time candle at both ends

We wish everyone a joyful and peace-filled start to their school year.

"Chem-Chats" will run every 2nd Thursday from 4:00-5:00 pm (EST).