I had big plans for Day 11. We spent most of the class completing the Periodic Table instead. We had to take some time to review the Lesson 8: What Comes Around, Goes Around that was assigned for homework. Student feedback was that it was repetitive. I said that it was supposed to be repetitive. One of the students said she noticed that what we ended up with became what we start with for the next step. Though the students recognized that we began and ended with copper, I’m not really sure that they understood that matter was not created or destroyed (which was the whole focus of the lesson). In looking ahead, they were supposed to understand that Copper solid + Nitric acid was supposed to result in Nitrogen dioxide, copper nitrate, and water. I’m not sure where or how they were supposed to recall all of those chemical formulae.
After this, I went into teaching the periodic table. I’m not sure I agree with teaching the whole periodic table at once. Rather, I would have liked to take some time and go through each of the groups and learn through context. We found Periodic Table Lesson from Layers of Learning. We went through the main elements, annotated our periodic table, colored in the groups, and had students write down some pieces of information about each of the groups. The students seemed to like this activity, but I’m not sure they really knew what or why we were doing it. It’s taking 3-4 classes to learn that each Group has similar properties. One of the exit tickets would ask for an element similar to a named element, and they did not know to look within the same group for the correct answer.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 