Yup. I said it. We all have no money for labs. We often spend our own money for labs. But, what if we spent less and everyone got something out of it? So, even if you have to spend your own money you and the students get something tangible AND practical out of the lab. I'm talking about cooking with chemistry. 

If you are reading this, you have been there, or maybe you are right in the middle of it right now. If so, I'm sorry and I completely understand! At the beginning of my 3rd semester teaching, I was assigned this new curriculum that was going to change the world of math and solve all student problems with learning math. It was going to be a miracle. 

It was a disaster.

But, it wasn't a total loss. I learned about the red folder trick.

There will be a lot of people who disagree with me-and that is okay. Different things work for different teachers. This is how I establish authority and style in my classroom. The number one way to catch and maintain authority in the classroom-is to prank the students on the first day of class.

​Now, hear me out. I've tried it your way.

I'm one of the instructors at our college who helps students with their schedules at orientation. I'm always SO EXCITED when a student brings me a list of their classes. I'm like "Eeeeee! This one knows what they are doing!"

​But, I've been thinking. These students who are getting ready for orientation don't know that we expect them to have looked over our plan of studies, our course catalogues, and the semester schedules to have already picked out their classes. and this is a problem.

So here is the ONE thing I want you to do before you go to college orientation. First go find the "plan of study", "major map", or your college's version of your roadmap to your 2 or 4 year degree. Go to the college's website and find the link that lays out the classes you must have to get a degree. This is what we call a plan of study.

​There is an example of what this looks like here, here, and here. 

​Now that you know what you have to take, schedule out your next THREE semesters at the very least. This will help you fix any scheduling conflicts now. Pay close attention to courses that are ONLY OFFERED IN SPRING, FALL, ODD, or EVEN years.

​That is a thing. I'm not making this up!

In doing that last step you might have needed to go through the course catalogue because you might have seen that you could take MATH 2245 or MATH 1200. Go into the course catalogue and see what you are qualified for or what level of torture you would like to take on. :)

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. 

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?

If your son or daughter is going off to college for the first time, I have no doubt they will tell you all about the laptop, iPad, and smart phone that they absolutely need. While they do need some of those things, this is a list of smaller, very helpful, 100% academic things that help my students.

I am not affiliated with any of these companies or products. I just like what they do.

If your first time college student is going to be taking precalculus, calculus, or beyond, check out Wolfram Alpha. I would purchase their pro for students for $4.75 a month. What is great about it is that it breaks problems down step by step so they can get help even when the tutoring center is closed.

If you don't purchase the pro version, still go check it out because it can help you in Biology 1107K by helping you compute homozygote frequency using the Hardy-Weinburg equation. 

​Still not impressed? They can also help you write electron configurations for your Chemistry 1211. Yes! Seriously.

​That is all in addition to the math help they can offer you. It's a really great tool to have in your back pocket!

The first MAJOR hurdle students come to in chemistry is when they have to start writing chemical formulas when given a chemical name. They seem to do better if you give them a chemical formula and have them write a name, but give them a name and they seem to have a harder time. 

​I think it is because students are just really uncomfortable with subscripts at this point in their chemistry knowledge.

Draw it out for them using circles for the cations and anions. Explain that if you have to draw more than one circle for each cation or anion then you would use a subscript. Two cations would equal a 2 subscript, 3 cations would equal a 3 subscript etc.

​When you start out explaining how to name compounds you probably use HCl or NaCl or something like that because they each have opposing charges of one and (1+) and (1-) equals zero, right?

In theory, I only help with the chemistry labs this semester. But, I or one of my tutors, teach a recitation for Gen. Chem 1 or Gen Chem 2 every other week. They have been learning how to balance chemical equations and it just wasn't clicking for them. So, at this week's recitation I explained the concept of having the same amount of each type of chemical on the left as you do on the right.

But, they kept making the same mistake. They were just slapping on 2's for coefficients where there should have been a subscript to balance the charge on the molecule. 
​

Chemistry is hard. I mean really, it is one of those sciences you can't see without lots of expensive equipment. So, I began trying to make chemistry(and other sciences and math!) more real to my students.