% composition

I use a lot of analogy's when I teach. As English has a 4 year high school requirement in my state I assume my students write a lot of papers. I ask them what makes up a composition, a written paper. They describe for me the parts, then I say % composition in Chemistry is similar. It is the part over the whole.
We do calculation with given masses of elements (use conservation of mass to find total mass of compound). We also solve for each element when a formula is given. Use molar mass and assume 100 gram of compound used.
I use a lot of analogy's in class I think it helps them connect things to information they already know.

So how big is a mole really?

A mole, 6.02 and 10 to the 23 is a very large number 6,020,000,000,000,000,000,000
A good method I have found to help students understand how big this value is and how small an atom it to measure a mole of different substances and put them into individual plastic bags. That way they can use kinesthetic learning and see and feel the size of a mole.
They also can correlate a larger atomic mass will be a larger volume or heaver amount of material.
Very helpful when teaching molar mass.

How do you grade homework

Grading Chemistry homework can be unending. I have gone to posting the answers in class the next day and having students grade it themselves. The good students make corrections if they made errors. Some students I need to check on individually. I think getting a quick feedback is more important and valuable to them. What do you do?

How do you get student to understand moles

The first day of the unit I put up a group of name: dozen, peck, gaggle, pair, bushel, school, etc.
Before I go ask them what they have in common I frequently have to define some of them, such as a peck and bushel. (this year many thought peck was pack(of wolves)
Usually they come up with they are have something to do with measurement.
When we are using this unit of moles in Chemistry they often get confused. With starting like this I am able to go back to a dozen. They then remind themselves a mole stands for a number the way a dozen stands for 12.
(mole - 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd)

Why do I need to know this?

"Why do we need to know this?" How many times have you asked yourself that. Well some times you need to know information, even if you are not scheduled to be on a trivia game show!
With the speed of information increasing increasing so quickly how do you know what to remember? I read that the amount of information doubles every 18 months! So are our brains growing bigger to hold all these new facts? Or is this the reason our financial world is all Topsy turfy recently? Do we have too much information upon which to make decisions?
I always say I made the best decision with the information I had at the moment.
We now with a little looking you can have access to huge amount of information via the Internet.
Will we now become a society that can't make a decision or remian 'knowledge is power'. Those with access to the Internet get all the power.
Let me know what your thoughts.

First Time

Well here we go. Heard about this, have been reading all about blogging. Now I am doing it!