RE: Help with putting chemistry concepts into words

I hate to sound, basic but I have been a student and a tutor, and if you
want to get basic understanding from the student, you have to give them that
understanding.  The students tend to give back what they get.  If they are
getting a lot of formulas but not the principles behind them, you won't get
good foundational understanding.

 

Good luck

 

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of scihiteacher
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 6:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [The Chemistry Cluster] Help with putting chemistry concepts into
words

 

  

I've been working with my students on writing and naming ionic compounds.
Everything seemed to going OK, until I gave them what I thought would be a
very easy quiz. I thought wrong. I asked them questions that they had to
write out answers in actual English words. Students who didn't have any
problem writing a formula, couldn't give a written explanation of what they
did or why. One of the questions was simply "Ionic compounds are neutral,
even though they are made of charged particles. Explain how a compound can
become neutral". Yikes! You would have thought that I had asked them to
explain advanced particle physics! How can I help my students move from just
following a set of steps to understanding and communicating what they're
doing? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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