Teaching Style

Student relationships are the start of everything as a teacher but there is, of course, far more to it. Here you can see artifacts showing my teaching style and overall philosophy on teaching.

Rigor

Creating a classroom culture that expects students to perform to the best of their ability while exercising their critical thinking skills is a major goal I have as a teacher. Challenging students without overwhelming them is important and helps keep them engaged.

Videos of Instruction

Providing detailed, accurate, and clear instruction to students is essential when covering content. Something that I have done regularly over the years is to record my direct instruction and post the videos for students to watch later. This has proven to be an incredibly helpful resource for the students during the course, during their AP Chemistry year, and in many cases I have been told by students that they referenced the videos in their first year chemistry classes in college. To help make it easy for students to access I developed a website that organizes the videos by unit along with all of the material for that unit. I also started a YouTube channel (MrHren) where all of my videos can be watched and accessed by the students. I've included a small sampling of videos from class:

pH Calculations

Mass to Mass Stoichiometry

Orbital Diagrams / Electron Configuration

Covalent Bonding

CALM Online Questions

Over the past 5 years I have integrated an online learning system called CALM (Computer Assisted Learning Model) into my classroom. It is a program developed by Indiana University and offered to high schools and other universities throughout the country. It is very similar to the LON-CAPA system developed at MSU over the past 15 years. Questions can be individually written and coded or chosen from a large bank. I use CALM in my classroom for several reasons:

First, it helps prepare students for the experience they will have at the post-secondary level. Most colleges now include an online homework / assessment component to many of their classes (especially Chemistry and science/math in general). CALM prepares students for that by giving them an authentic experience with a college level online question system.
Second, every CALM question generates a unique value for each student, no two questions are exactly the same. This forces students to do their own work as much as possible while still allowing for collaboration between students.
Finally, CALM allows me to provide an extra challenge to top students that I would not otherwise be able to using more conventional means. Most questions assigned through the system are of a difficulty level that matches the content yet a few questions assigned are at a much higher level of difficulty designed to challenge the top students.

You can see examples of what the interface looks like below. It isn't the flashiest application in terms of appearance but it works very well:

Lab Assessments

As a final example of rigor in the classroom I always include at least one lab during the year which is graded as an assessment and treated as such. I model it after a quantitative analysis class where the student's grade is entirely dependent on their lab results and the product they produce. I've always used the precipitation reaction between potassium nitrate and lead (II) iodide for this lab as it produces very good results and generates a very interesting yellow lead (II) Iodide precipitate which the students enjoy looking at. The students' initial values of their reactants are observed and recorded by me and then from there they calculate the theoretical yield they should get from the reaction. Once that is done they perform the lab as carefully and as accurately as they can. If mistakes are made they are of course given more material as needed but only if they recognize that a mistake was made. This is viewed as a test for the students and is treated as such. Once the reaction is finished their product spends a day in the drying oven to ensure it is completely dry and then it is massed. The students' grades are determined based on the percent yield of their product. Below you can see a short video showing the precipitate formation during the lab:

6-MtP4_3hBiSrPgL.mp4

Discovery

Connecting students to the content in a way that lets them discover some of the big ideas of the course has a huge impact on student learning and ownership of the material.

Engaging Discovery Activities

Using engaging student activities that guide students towards discovering some of the big ideas in the content is one of my major points of focus as a teacher. I always strive to make the content interesting and engaging for the students. The images you see here are a few examples of activities I do throughout the year in this style.

This activity is focused on helping students discover the repetitive trends and properties found on the periodic table. It presents them with about 25 known elements and 9 unknown element cards from specific groups on the periodic table. Each card contains several facts about the elements such as their reactivity with certain compounds, their melting points, density, etc... The students then must arrange the elements like the periodic table and place the unknown elements into their proper locations based on their properties and use the location to identify the elements. It is challenging, with just enough ambiguity between certain properties, to make the students genuinely think. Yet once the repetitive patterns are recognized the answers become quite clear.

Another of my favorite activities to do is illustrated above. This activity is focused on helping students discover the process of writing binary ionic compounds. As this is such an essential skill for chemistry I've always thought there needs to be more focus on it then just telling students to "criss cross" the charges and move on. This activity guides them to that realization by showing them cards of cation and anions with the charges represented by points and slots. They then use the cards to figure out the pattern by which the different elements combine. Eventually polyatomic ion cards are introduced to allow students to further investigate the process. This does a far better job of cementing the idea into their minds of making sure binary ionic compounds are neutral when written by giving them a visual hands on reference. At the end of the activity sheet they are tasked with writing a paragraph explaining their discovery and how it can be applied to all ionic compounds.

Lab Investigations

No chemistry class would be complete without a healthy dose of laboratory investigation. Labs are a great way to generate student interest and hook them. I've employed many labs and demos throughout my career and students have always seemed to take quite a bit out of them. Physically being able to show students or have them that phenomenon we are talking about or have them discover it is the most powerful tool available to a chemistry teacher in my opinion.

AP Chemistry students working on a synthesis lab.

Students looking at the emission spectrum of different gaseous elements.

Students using their spectroscopes to look at the light emitted by the fluorescent bulbs of the rooms. They then proceeded to compare it to the natural sunlight out the windows in the hallway since there were no windows in the classroom.

I even managed to integrate some lab investigation, of a less traditional kind, into my AP Research - Capstone class. Our school purchased a few kits from Breakout EDU and I was the first teacher to give them a shot in the classroom. They are basically an "escape room in a box" type thing and they force students to analyze information and think critically. It forces students to consider if the information they are presented with is credible or not and how they should follow up on that information. It fits the themes of Capstone very well and we really enjoyed doing it.

Communication

Over the past decade there has been an incredible influx of available communication methods with students and parents that a teacher has at their disposal. Throughout my career I have always worked to stay on the cutting edge of communication and use all the means at my disposal to reach parents and students. I think communication is an essential part of a teacher's responsibility to their students and the community as a whole.

Twitter (@MrHren1)

I have always worked hard at communicating in a useful and meaningful way with my students. Many years ago as Twitter was becoming popular amongst the students I made an account. I then started using it as my official means of communicating course announcements and other news related to my classes. The students really responded well to it and it turned out to be a great way to build engagement with the class and generate interest in Chemistry amongst the students. I have continued that trend to this day and the students always respond positively to my use of Twitter. I make sure though, always, to only use this means of communication appropriately. I never use it to communicate individually with students in any way, I do not follow anyone on the account, and I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say on the internet is completely public and permanent.

With that in mind I only post information about class, school related activities, or to comment on discussions had in our class during the day. Using technology to communicate is great but I do completely believe in using it appropriately and properly. Finally, I am aware that not every single student has access to a Twitter account or would like to use a Twitter account due to their parents or otherwise just not wanting to use one. With that in mind I was able to automatically embed all of my Twitter updates directly on the homepage of my school website. That way, if a student doesn't use Twitter but would like to see what I have posted about the class they can simply just go to the class website and see all of the updates there.

YouTube (MrHren)

Another major focus that I've put on communication with students is making sure that all of the material covered in my course is available for them to review at their convenience online through multiple channels. The first and most widely used of those by my students is YouTube. I've maintained an active YouTube channel (MrHren)for my entire career and it has proven to be something the students use and value. Chemistry is absolutely wonderful for this type of thing as many of the things that we cover can be broken down into small chunks which correspond well to short (or sometimes long) review videos.

I've used the different document camera's I've had over the years to record the lessons I've taught during actual class periods. I've uploaded many of these videos to YouTube (over 100 now). Each one covers a different concept, style of problem, or idea that we discuss in class. When students are absent from class they can go and actually watch what was done in class exactly. The students aren't watching some random person on the internet teach them, instead they are watching their classroom teacher explain things to them. It is a powerful tool and one that really helps students not fall behind if they have a health or family issue that causes them to miss class. It also has proven to be used by a great many number of students during test reviews and their study sessions. Many of the videos have been watched by far more than my students and I have really received some great feedback over the years.

Website (Link)

Finally, I maintain a detailed and organized course website. My website is reasonably simple yet it contains all of the information students need to succeed in my chemistry class. The homepage contains automatic news updates from my Twitter account along with a link to the students' CALM online homework. It is organized by unit. Each unit page contains all of the documents related to that unit along with all of the resources used during the class to support the information presented. For each unit I have put together a detailed PDF that contains all written notes or other information presented to the students. In addition, all PowerPoint slides (in Google Slides format) or Prezi's are embedded on their corresponding unit page. In addition, on each unit page I have the appropriate YouTube videos organized and embedded so they are watchable directly on the page for students.

In addition, for my AP Capstone - Research class I have used Google Classroom the past 3 years as my major means of distributing information and collecting assignments.

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