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Chemistry Course Perspective
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by John Hnatow
Teacher and Chairperson of the Science Department
Emmaus High School
Emmaus, Pennsylvania
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| | Please note: The official College Board® Course Description is available below in "See also."
The Best Course in the School
AP Chemistry is designed to offer a rigorous and challenging course that covers the chemistry and chemical principles typical of college and university general chemistry courses. Students learn the usefulness and relevance of chemistry in both their intended areas of study and in the everyday world. In my mind, this is the best course in the school, and I am lucky to work with the brightest and most highly motivated students our school has to offer.
My prerequisites include a preparatory chemistry course and completion of or concurrent enrollment in a physics course. After I meet with all students and parents in the late spring, I assign summer homework. This consists of a review of the following topics from our first-year chemistry course: nomenclature, atomic structure, types of reactions, and stoichiometry. All answers are e-mailed to me over the course of the summer. Complete mathematical solutions are checked during the first week of school. Homework is assigned, collected, and graded for every unit. I grade the homework in a unique way that saves me a lot of time, yet holds my students accountable for learning and for reinforcement of content and skills. That is, on a 20-point scale, five points are allotted for completion of the assignment and only three questions are checked at five points each. Students do not know which three questions I will check, and I give partial credit when mistakes are made. These assignments are given on the first day of the unit, and are collected, on average, one to one-and-a-half weeks into the unit. I also regularly assign homework from the Web site of the chemistry department at California State University, maintained by George Wiger (a link is provided under "See also"). The advantage of this Internet assignment is the instant feedback that is available to students. Question number four on the free-response section of the AP Exam has asked students to choose five out of eight reactions to predict. The average score on this question has never been higher than 50 percent, so I require my students to practice reaction prediction as much as possible.
In my class, roundtable presentations and discussions guide most of the class time. It is very rare for me to spend an entire period lecturing about a topic or skills needed. I assign questions and problems several days in advance, and students come to my class with prepared problems to present. During the presentations, the rest of the class and I probe for a deeper understanding of the chemistry involved. I enjoy the sharing that takes place during these roundtable discussions. The presentations count as homework grades, and a rubric is established and presented to my students early in the school year. Topics I strongly emphasize during the roundtable presentations are reaction prediction, oxidizing and reducing agents, the behavior of weak and strong acids and bases, and principles of bonding.
In AP Chemistry, I am more of a guide and a coach than a "Sage on the Stage." Through my approach, students learn how to organize the vast body of chemical reactions and descriptive chemistry into categories and formats for easy study. Suggestions are made about the best ways to learn various concepts and solve problems with, and sometimes without, calculators. Students are regularly exposed to the types of kinetics and equilibrium problem skills and concepts needed for success on the AP Chemistry Exam. Principles of equilibrium theory as well as calculations required for gaseous and solution equilibriums are emphasized. Also, at least once a week, I base an entire lesson on a demonstration I perform at the beginning of the class period.
Throughout the year, AP testing techniques and skills needed for success on the exam are discussed and examined. Students also review questions from past AP Exams. The pacing of material and labs is very critical to student success in this course. The content must be covered by the middle to the end of April, and in-class review of all topics and labs covered is necessary for at least one week prior to the exam. During the review time, I assign and students present the last five years of free-response exam questions in our roundtable setting. This is a perfect opportunity to not only review content but also to point out students' misconceptions. My students also work through each unit of questions from Peter Demmin's Multiple-Choice Questions in Preparation for the AP Chemistry Examination (4th ed., New York: D & S Marketing Systems). I supply them with all of the answers, and we only discuss those questions with which they have difficulties. It is important for students to be aware of the fact that calculators may only be used on the first two free-response questions of the exam. It is also quite important for students to realize that bulleted or outlined responses to essay questions are totally acceptable and that concise, accurate answers are the best.
The laboratory program consists of college-level labs, and the majority of students receive lab credits as well as credit and advanced placement after the exam. Students spend at least one 90-minute block of time per week in the laboratory environment. Many labs are completed over several days, whether the meeting time is a single or a double block of time. Much of a qualitative analysis scheme is integrated throughout the year. Students create spreadsheets for each lab assignment, and class data is available for discussion and statistical treatment. Lab reports are quite sophisticated, with error analysis and improvement suggestions expected in conclusions. Students are required to keep a lab journal, and they are encouraged to save all of their lab reports and turn them in to the college of their choice for possible lab credit.
Testing is kept to a minimum, with students taking only three or at the most four exams per semester, and the required semester one and semester two exams consist of a combination of American Chemical Society (ACS) and Olympiad Exam questions. My tests are weighted at 60 percent of the grade; labs and homework are each respectively weighted at 20 percent of the grade. Just like at the AP Reading, I deduct a maximum of one point once per question for a mathematical error and a maximum of one point once per question when the final answer contains a number of significant figures more than one different from the appropriate number.
After the May exam, students work on more labs -- such as IR spectrophotometry identification, product analysis, and synthesis labs -- to build up their lab portfolios.
AP Chemistry teachers should visit AP Central™ to obtain printable files of AP Chemistry Updates, references like the AP Chemistry Course Description (the "Acorn" book), sample free-response questions and scoring standards, as well as a link to join an AP Chemistry discussion group.
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