Transform your chemistry lessons from abstract concepts into engrossing learning experiences that help high school students understand what happens in the world. You can do it with Model-Based Inquiry in Chemistry: Three-Dimensional Instructional Units for Grades 9-12. This book provides a framework to help you engage your students in constructing, critiquing, revising, and testing models to explain real-life phenomena.
Model-Based Inquiry in Chemistry is divided into two parts.
Section 1 introduces model-based inquiry (MBI) and its four stages: eliciting ideas about a particular phenomenon, negotiating ideas and evidence through tasks, building consensus, and establishing credibility.
Section 2 contains four complete MBI chemistry units. They cover matter and energy; naming, reactions, and acids and bases; energy transfer and periodic trends; and nuclear chemistry. The teacher and student materials provide the background, examples, and guidance you need to lead students to their final evidence-based explanations of the phenomena that anchor each unit. Each unit is written toward the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), but the book is useful even if you teach in a non-NGSS state.
The authors--experts in model-based teaching and learning--also wrote the NSTA Press book
Model-Based Inquiry in Biology. Having tested each chemistry unit at least three times in actual classrooms, they include practical tips to help you implement the units smoothly. Use
Model-Based Inquiry in Chemistry to shift the emphasis of your chemistry lessons away from "we need to learn about this topic in order to do well in class" to "we need to figure out why or how something happens." It's an ideal way to bring chemistry to life.
Gray, Ron: - Ron Gray is an associate professor of science education in the Department of STEM Education and co-director of the Center for Science Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University. His work focuses on providing secondary science teachers the tools to design and implement learning experiences for their students that are effective and authentic to the discipline. Much of this work has been centered on model-based inquiry and the integration of scientific practices in a supportive and structured way. He is also interested in the history of science and science studies which, taken together, help to provide a background for understanding what "authentic" scientific practice in the K-12 context might look like. Framing this work are the ideas of practice-based teacher education and ambitious science teaching. In addition to his research and work with science teachers, Ron is interested in conservation education. While a middle school science teacher, he worked in the summer as the education coordinator of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. That experience led to work with other international conservation organizations and, more recently, with Earth Expeditions. Through Earth Expeditions he has facilitated field courses in conservation hot spots around the world including Namibia, Trinidad and Tobago, and, most recently, Malaysian Borneo. Before coming to NAU he coordinated a graduate licensure program in mathematics and science education at Oregon State University where he received my doctorate in science education in 2009. Previously, he was a middle school science teacher in Salem, Oregon, and in South Central Los Angeles. Before he became a teacher he conducted research in pharmacology at Oregon Health Sciences University, immunology at the Scripps Research Institute, and ecology in the Chiricahua National Monument of southern Arizona.
