5 Chemistry Coloring Worksheets You Can Actually Learn From

6/20/2018

The Problem:Students don't like learning 60% of the time

I've created this line of worksheets called "Color & Learn." I tried to take ideas in chemistry and a few in math and make them more simple by color coding topics in chemistry. All cations are yellow, anions are blue, metals are gray, nonmetals are red, polyatomic ions are also blue because they behave the same as anions...etc. Check out my ideas below.

#1 Color and Learn: Intro to Cations and Anions

Students understand the idea of cations and anions right away, but somehow the idea seeps out of their brains while they sleep and they've completely forgotten where we look to figure out where cations and anions are. (Hint: Is the element on the right or left side of the periodic table?)I like this worksheet because you can just look at it to grade it and you can spot an error really quickly. Who doesn't like easy to grade homework?

#2 Color and Learn: Intro to Ionic and Covalent Compounds

This worksheet is very similar to the last one as far as the easy grading and that students understand it quickly and then forget. Students look at each element on the page and decide if it is a metal, nonmetal, or metalloid. Then, they color the worksheet. The instructions let them know that if a compound is multicolored it is ionic and if it is red it is covalent.

#3 Color and Learn: Balancing Chemical Equations

I have a whole blog post on this one that you can check out here. The short story is that students tend to confuse subscripts and coefficients. So, I started drawing everything out on the board in different colors. That helped, but they really understood balancing chemical equations well when I drew everything out AND had them start this worksheet in class and finish it for homework.

Pssst! There is a free version if you'd like to try out the one page version instead of the 3 page version.

#4 Color and Learn: Color By Solubility

This is probably one of my most popular worksheets. It is a picture with chemical compounds in each section. Students color soluble compounds one color, insoluble compounds another color, and compounds that are ALWAYS soluble another color. I like this worksheet because it is a fun way to review solubility rules. Oh and it does contain a solubility rules sheet, but you are more than welcome to use your own!

#5 Color and Learn: Quantum Numbers made simple

I think this is one of the most difficult topics to grasp in chemistry. I really wanted students to understand what an orbital was in the 3D sense, so I made a coloring sheet. That wasn't enough though because I knew students struggled with the difference in orbitals, shells, and subshells. So, I added a coloring/worksheet on that. It's really great. It has a whole electronic diagram drawn out and then labeled and it asks students to find orbitals and color them or label them. It really brings quantum numbers to life!

What coloring worksheets do you like? Have you found any ones that are helpful? Leave the links in the comments.

These can be purchased separately by clicking on the photo, or you can purchase all 5 worksheets(8 pages+8pages of keys+1 page teaching instructions + 1 differentiated worksheet) at my TpT store CoScine.