I got another suggestion in the box. (By the way, at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t expecting many, but I get one every couple of weeks.) It says “Please no diatomic gases partners!”

I have been pleased with this method, because the students have been working in partners with new people, getting there quickly, and I don’t have to touch the sketchy topic of choosing partners for them. They tend to work a little better if they are not working with the people at their tables, and this is good too.

I know that I cannot make everybody happy, and that several (or many) of my students will not like many things I do. What I plan to do, is to reassure them that I won’t use diatomic gas buddies for big things, like labs or long projects, but for short projects or in-class thinking, I will continue to. I will say that my goals are to have a fast way for them to get with partners, and to work with a variety of people. If they have better idea for how I can accomplish this, I would be happy to hear it. (That puts the ball back in their court.)

I honestly don’t have time to fix something that is not broken from my point of view. But I don’t want to ignore their requet.

Today I learned first hand how much time it takes for students to really think about open-ended questions. I had alloted 10-15 minutes to let them get an answer to my question, and it took over 30 for all the classes.

The focus question for the day was: How can we tell how much solute is in a solution?  I had them brainstorm the ways solutions are around us every day (Kool-aid was a very popular example), defined a few words (concentration, dilute, saturated), and talked about how we measure the solute and the solvent (volume, mass, counting), and then asked them to answer the focus question. As the day went on, I got better at presenting this question in a way that made sense. I told them that we needed a quantitative expression that we could use to label a solution, so that when we only needed part of the solution, we could figure out how much solute was in it. I used the example of having a party, and having a gallon of iced tea with 2 cups of sugar in it. I asked them how they could figure out how much sugar is in each cup of iced tea.

The strategies most students used involved making up a problem similar to the example, and solving it, and then trying to generalize from their equation. Most students came up with percent volume as a way of defining concentration. This is quite logical because most of them were thinking about food and cooking, and in America we cook by volume. The next most popular was grams solute/liters solvent, and grams solute/grams solvent (practically molality). One or two groups came up with moles solute/liters solvent.

This was one of the most open-ended things I have asked them to do. I did not let them use their books. I was pleasantly impressed at how well the pairs (we did HOFBrINCl partners) debated and problem solved together. A lot of the pairs spontaneously formed foursomes, and that was fine with me. Most of the groups were thinking algebraically, they were starting to convert their intuition into mathematical expressions, with more or less guidance from me. It was pretty exciting to see.

When they would ask me if their idea was right, I told them to make up a sample problem and see if they could solve it with their expression. I wrote down all the ideas each group came up with, and next week I will show them all to the classes.

I am torn about which way to go next. The reason I am torn is that this technique is big on problem solving and thinking skills, but low on content priority. Molarity is an important tool, but it is not a central concept. Ideally I would spend large amounts of time on questions that are high priority for both. The fast way is to circle the expressions that are molarity and molality, and explain that these are what scientists use, and start with the math. That is basically giving them the right answer. Or, I can commend them on finding an expression that works so well for catering, and give them a simple stoichiometry problem to solve and ask them figure out which units they would use, setting them up to find out molarity on their own. This would take longer, but it is more completely inquiry centered and student led.

All the students got that what is needed is a proportion between the amount of solute and the amount of solvent or solution. They just did not use the most useful units. They do not naturally think in terms of moles. Hopefully that is enough to build on to see the logic of molarity and make it easier to use. I think most of them also experienced how scientists sometimes sit around and make up something that makes sense, and then it becomes standard.

The presentations were pretty good. Most of the students did not go quite far enough with their descriptions of dissolution. I think that is my fault, so I “fixed” it today so they could do their homework. By “fixed” I mean that I tried to do a guided modeling.

Many of my students are extremely nervous about getting up in front of people. Almost all the presentations involved the students just reading the paragraph that the writer had written. Not what I had in mind. Next time, I will be more clear that the presenter should try to present and explain in their own words. Notes are fine, but reading someone else’s work is not the goal. With some of the students it was pretty clear that they did not understand what they were reading.

This was not a bad start. My students have told me that they sometimes work in pairs. It is possible they have never worked in groups of four since entering high school (or earlier). Their reflections were very interesting. There was a certain amount of “everything was perfect,” and “I hate group work,” but many people really reflected. I find that hopeful. They really know nothing about what a good presentation or a good group project means though, they think about it in very simplistic, middle school (by which I mean simple, low standard) terms.

Today was a great day, actually. Everything went so smoothly, and it was so interesting.

A brief outline:

For the Problem of the Day I had the students find their partners on their HOFBrINCl gases partner sheet, which I based off of “Clock Buddies,” an idea I found here.  I used the diatomic gases because it is a chemistry class.

Then we did chalk talk around the question: What does it mean to dissolve? I was operating under the assumption that they all had a pretty good idea, and was trying to build off of what they already know.  I was a little skeptical this would work with sophomores, who tend to be reticent, but it was great. I had between 30-50% participation (which is high for my class), and it was only the first one. I expect that to go up as we do them more often.

Then I did a simple demo putting sugar, baking soda, and hot cocoa mix into cold water, hot water, and hot water that I stirred. I had the students begin two column notes with observations on one side, and explanations on the other. I gave them key words to use in their explanations to help them have molecular discussions (the words were: collisions (with many stars), temperature, motion, molecules, and surface area).

Then they got into pairs and completed the explanation column.

While they did that, I grouped the pairs into fours, and assigned each group a question to work on. I assigned the fours so that I could mix up the groups by ability, and so I could give more basic questions to some groups, and more challenging questions to other groups. The questions were specific examples around the phenomena they had observed. Once they were in their fours, they could double check their explanations, and then start working on the question.

For the question, each member of the group has a job (they got to decide). The four jobs are: writer (produces a paragraph explanation), artist (draws a diagram explaining the phenomena), presenter (will present to the class on Monday), and watchdog (makes sure the group is on task, that everything is coherent, and that the explanations are truly molecular). I will grade them individually and as a group.

I realized during first period that I had planned a project so completely in line with collaborative learning theory it was a little scary.

But it worked. I have never seen them work together so well. I also think this counts as scaffolding and teaching them how to work in groups, so hopefully I am laying the foundation for future collaborative learning.

I’m so proud. I feel like I’ve redeemed the week.