News & Updates

Governing Board elections are open now through April 27!

AACT members now have access to 25 ACS Publications articles each year. We are highlighting one article or activity each month that you might consider downloading through this member benefit. This month we are featuring an AP level “dual” investigation from the February, 2018 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, titled “Studying Intermolecular Forces with a Dual Gas Chromatography and Boiling Point Investigation” by AACT member W. Patrick Cunningham and four members of his 2016-17 Scientific Research and Design class at Johnson High School, San Antonio.

In our last news post, we looked at classroom resources that focused on teaching aqueous solutions. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching thermodynamics. This includes endothermic and exothermic processes, enthalpy, Hess’s Law, entropy, and free energy.

Congratulations to the three Chemistry Teachers of the Year!

We challenged teachers to tell us what they've heard isn't chemistry and we'd show them how it was related to chemistry. Read on to find out the winning answer and how Jenelle Ball, AACT's 2017-2018 Governing Board President, responded.

In our last news post we looked at resources that focused on phase changes and heat transfer. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching aqueous solutions. This includes molarity calculations, solution preparation, dilution, solubility, solubility rules, and colligative properties.

AACT members have access to 50 ACS Publications articles each year. We are highlighting one article or activity each month that you might consider downloading through this member benefit. This month, we are featuring a hands-on student activity from the July 2014 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education titled A Hands-on Activity Incorporating the Threefold Representation on Limiting Reactant by Angélica M. González-Sánchez, Edgardo L. Ortiz-Nieves, and Zuleika Medina.

Nominate yourself for a Governing Board position now until March 27, 2018.

There are many K-8 classroom resources available in the AACT Resource Library, many which connect well with other content areas, so teachers can easily incorporate chemistry lessons into their everyday activities.

In our last news post we looked at resources that focused on the gas laws. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching phase changes and heat transfer. This includes exploring kinetic molecular theory, phase changes, heat capacity calculations, and calorimetry.

Join AACT at the 5th USA Science & Engineering Festival (USASEF), April 6-8, 2018.

AACT launches a new member benefit that allows teacher members to have their students independently watch videos on their personal computers or mobile devices from anywhere.

In our last news post we looked at resources that focused on stoichiometry. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching the gas laws. This includes exploring the relationship between pressure, temperature, volume, and moles of gas both conceptually and mathematically.

AACT members now have access to 50 ACS Publications articles each year. We are highlighting one article or activity each month that you might consider downloading through this new member benefit. This month, we are featuring a hands-on student activity from the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education titled Clip Clues: Discovering Chemical Formulas by Carmen Fies and Diana Mason.

Chemistry: it’s the central science, and honestly, pretty great. But is there anything that *isn’t* chemistry? We’re challenging teachers to explore, 'What in the World Isn’t Chemistry?'.

This past summer AACT hosted an AP Chemistry Content Writing Team to create AP chemistry teaching resources for our High School Classroom Library. The first three lessons, released on October 19, 2017, focused on Big Ideas 4 and 5. This week we are publishing the final three resources from our content team members which each focus on Big Idea 6.

In our last news post we looked at resources that focused on teaching chemical equations. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching stoichiometry. This includes the following topics: setting up stoichiometry calculations, determining limiting and excess reactants, and calculating percent yield.

It might only be January, but AP Chemistry teachers are starting to think about the May exam date and are putting together their review strategies. We recently posted a new classroom lesson plan that will help prepare your students for the AP exam.

In our last news post we looked at resources that focused on writing chemical names and formulas. Now we are moving on to lessons and activities that can be used to support a unit plan for teaching chemical equations.

Lessons, activities, labs, projects, videos, simulations, and animations that could be used to support a unit plan for chemical names and formulas.

From December 5th - December 20th, AACT will highlight an AACT member benefit that's sure to help you teach chemistry with holiday glee.

AACT members now have access to 25 ACS Publications articles each year. This month we are featuring a hands-on student activity from the July 2016 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education titled, Teaching Beer’s Law and Absorption Spectrophotometry with a Smart Phone: A Substantially Simplified Protocol by Thomas S. Kuntzleman and Erik C. Jacobson.

PAEMST are the nation’s highest honors for K-12 STEM teaching and have been awarded to over 4,700 teachers since the program began in 1983.

Thanksgiving has passed and holiday decorations are starting to pop up all around us. Here are a few AACT winter and holiday themed classroom activities that you can use with your students in the coming months. Enjoy the upcoming winter break!

This includes the topics that cover bonding basics, covalent, ionic and metallic bonding and properties, Lewis Structures, molecular geometry, polarity and intermolecular forces.