Thoughts of Tim

AP Chemistry Lab Manual

As an AP Chemistry teacher, one of the requirements for class is that we do several laboratory experiments throughout the year. For this school year, I have been focusing on covering material from the text book and fitting in experiments when possible. Now that I have almost made it through my first school year here, I have decided to turn some more of my time toward preparing for laboratory experiments.

As part of this preparation, I am putting together a laboratory manual that I will be using for the next school year. The laboratory manual will contain instructions on how to properly prepare for laboratory experiments, how to record data and how to write lab reports. The manual will also include an appendix that covers a discussion on uncertainty and error. Lastly, and the part that will contain the most content, the manual will include the instruction sheets for all the experiments I plan for us to cover throughout the school year. This is all information I have provided to students in the past, but the laboratory manual will provide a single place students can go to for all the information they need. I hope the lab manual will be a helpful document that I can pass out at the beginning of the school year and that students can work through as we do activities in the laboratory.

Final Quarter

Here at Dakar Academy, the school year is divided into four terms. Currently, we are in the last of the four terms. Spring break began three weeks ago and lasted for two weeks. During that time, I was able to do a lot of preparation for this last term.

In algebra, we are going over topics that usually take a little more time for students to feel comfortable with. As a result, I have decided to go slower throughout this term and spend more time within each lesson. This allows us to spend more time going over questions and feel comfortable with the material.

In physics, the topic we will be covering this term is electromagnetism. In preparation for this topic, I typed up my notes. Up until the end of the third term, I have been using hand written notes for all of my classes. At the beginning of the school year, I decided that, instead of taking the time to type up notes, I would use my time during the first school year to organize and plan lessons. The plan was then to spend the next school year to revise lessons and type them up so I had a good outline for the future. However, spring break was two weeks long and I’m not used to having so much time off, so I decided to go ahead and take the time to type up notes for the last term. I typed up my notes using latex, which I have found very helpful since it handles equations very well and allows me to focus on typing without the distraction of what things look like.

Originally, I was planning on using the notes I typed up only for reference during my lectures; however, on the last day of spring break, I decided that I would give each of the students a copy of the notes. For the first day of class, I found it hard to go through the notes because I kept thinking that, if the students have the notes, then they can simply read the notes for themselves. However, on the second day of class, I tried not to focus on the fact that the students already had a copy of the notes and went through the material as if the students did not have the notes. The reason I decided to hand out the notes is because physics is so broad, it can sometimes be difficult to know what information to focus on or how things relate to each other, so I am hoping the notes will help students see what ideas are important and how to organize physics concepts in their minds.

I have also decided to try to communicate better with parents over during this last term. I want to ensure that parents are aware of the progress their children are making throughout the term. Parents do have the ability to check their children’s grades online and parents are sent progress reports throughout the year so parents usually have a good idea of how their children are doing; however, I am hoping that more frequent communication with parents will not simply notify them of how well their children are doing, but also allow us to make adjustments that may benefit the students.