Alicia

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Chemistry
Organic chemistry
Biochemistry

Postgraduate Chemistry student gives chemistry Lessons to high school and uni students

Chemistry
Organic chemistry
Biochemistry

Lesson location

- online

About Alicia

I have a bachelor in physics biochemistry and chemistry and have been graduated with a GPA of 3.94/4, a master in medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry and biomolecules engineering (GPA of 4/4) and currently doing my PhD in medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry.

About the lesson

Teaching involves 4 main components, and I look at all 4 of them to succeed in teaching to engage my students.

What am I teaching?
How am I teaching it?
How are students practicing/reviewing it?
How am I assessing it?
What am I teaching?

I find that most chemistry teachers just follow the book, but this does a major disservice to the students. In my opinion, the goal of high school chemistry is to prepare those who will take chemistry in college. For this reason, I focus on what I call the Big 3: naming compounds (nomenclature), reactions, and chemistry calculations (stoichiometry). A firm foundation in these will set up student up for success. The other units can be taught to the depth needed to build on this foundation.

I also change the depth of my teaching depending on the level of my students. If I have a class that is planning on going onto AP chem, then I will push them harder.

How am I teaching it?

I think that the hardest part of teaching chemistry is bringing the complex down to a level that students can grasp. I love to use illustrations from real life, demos, and hands-on activities whenever I can.

I also give students permission to struggle and to learn. Chemistry is hard and so many students need to learn to be patient with the learning process. They have to be taught to do this, so that is part of the job of teaching chemistry.

It is also important for teachers to understand the high order thinking skills like analysis and synthesis that are involved in learning chemistry. What seems basic and quick to me, takes a lot of steps and thinking for them. We need to give them step-by-step instructions and frameworks to help them through these harder thinking skills.

How are my students practicing/reviewing it?

Chemistry is mostly about learning skills, not facts. Nomenclature, electron configurations, balancing reactions, predicting product, calculating percent yield, etc. are all skills that need to be practiced. One of my coaches says that you will play like you practice. The same goes for chemistry. It is crucial that students are practicing well, so I use class time for them to practice so that I can supervise them, answer questions, and help those who are too shy to ask.

I have also seen teachers who use the book for homework and practice, but then use a different style of questions on the test. I find that this sets up kids to fail. I teach them the way I am going to assess them. I use the same types of questions and the same terminology.

How are you assessing it?

Like the previous point, assess it like you taught it. This extends further in that your tests should reflect what you semester exams will be like. If you exam will be all multiple choice, then your tests should have similar types of questions.

As I stated earlier, I see chemistry as a set of skills to be learned. This is why I use partial credit. I want to reward students for what parts of the skills they have learned. For example, I want to reward them for getting the first two steps of a stoichiometry problem right, even if they mess up the final answer.

Along these lines, I also do not like what I call double jeopardy. In a multi-step problem, it is common for a student to miss the first step, but then do the rest of them correctly. The final answer will be wrong, but I only count off for the missed step. Otherwise I feel like they are being punished twice for the same mistake.

Postgraduate Chemistry student gives chemistry Lessons to high school and uni students

Lesson location

About Alicia

About the lesson

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Postgraduate Chemistry student gives chemistry Lessons to high school and uni students

Lesson location

About Alicia

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

Other tutors in Chemistry

Houssem

Ptashanna

Gianni

Twana

Samuel

Grégory

Florian

Dhirenkumar

BARNABAS

Salah, PhD

Imad

Joe

Harjinder

Pierre-Thomas

Michel

Kian

Docteur Ali

Louise

Marwa

Stéphane

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