Introduction
When taken out of context, the standard high school chemistry curriculum can be seen as an obscure chain of unrelated factoids. Approaching chemistry in this manner presents several challenges for both the student and the teacher alike. By the time that students reach chemistry in their junior year in high school, this class is yet another item competing for their attention. The teacher must balance adhering to the mandated curriculum, staying true to the intent of the material and, most importantly, motivating the students to invest the energy required to learn. In a course that is designed primarily for students that intend to continue their studies at the college level, connecting a concept to their future studies in college or describing the impact of a poor grade on their GPA is often adequate motivation. However, in a vocational high school chemistry class where many students have no desire to attend college, the latter argument is insufficient. Although many students attending a vocational high school are not motivated by grades, a vocationally focused chemistry teacher can motivate students by relating content to the students' chosen vocations and topics important to youth culture.
This curriculum unit will address several standards-based curriculum components by situating them within the context of a topic that has been receiving significant attention in the popular media, the need for alternative energy sources. Although the theme of the unit is centered on alternative energy sources, it is intended to address content required in the chemistry curriculum, including atomic inventory, classification of matter, balancing equations, naming covalent compounds, moles, stoichiometry and heat capacity. Chemistry at our high school is taught over 16 weeks of 90-minute block periods, and the activities in this unit are expected to be carried out over the course of the first 8 weeks of the course. The 90-minute block period affords me the luxury of being able to integrate hands-on and minds-on activities into each of my class periods. It is recommended that teachers of eleventh graders switch teaching methods about every twenty minutes to maintain student engagement. Therefore, the activities in this unit are more like mini-lessons and need not be restricted to 90-minute block periods, but could be easily adapted to fit the more traditional 45-minute class schedule. In addition, the lessons presented in this unit are not intended to serve as the sole reinforcement for the chemistry content covered, but to serve as a unifying theme throughout a course that is commonly characterized by content that appears unrelated and irrelevant to students.
Although this unit was constructed with my high school chemistry class in mind, the rudimentary nature of some of the content and the intentional focus on the integration of several science content areas makes it easily adaptable to other high school courses such as Earth science, biology, or environmental science. For example, within our district, students are also asked to balance simple equations in tenth grade biology class. However, when they reach my eleventh grade chemistry class, they behave as if my class is their first exposure to these concepts. Therefore, an overlap of concepts should work well to reinforce content across grade levels.
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