Secondary School Featured Articles A Diaper a Day and What’s Going on with Gaviscon? Two Lab Activities Focusing on Chemical Bonding Concepts by Brett Criswell. JCE Classroom Activity: #80. Ions or Molecules? Polymer Gels Can Tell by Brett Criswell. Give Them Money: The Boltzmann Game, a Classroom or Laboratory Activity Modeling Entropy Changes and the Distribution of Energy in Chemical Systems by Robert M. Hanson and Bridget Michalek. Acrostic Puzzles in the Classroom by Dorothy Swain. Translating a Linguistic Understanding of Chemistry to Outcome Achievement and Interdisciplinary Relevance in the Introductory Classroom by Joseph M. Nemeth. Nomenclature Made Practical: Student Discovery of the Nomenclature Rules by Michael C. Wirtz, Joan Kaufmann, and Gary Hawley. Team Building—Problem Solving by Martin Bartholow.

The Journal enables us to share many innovative ideas. For example, the 2005 Pimentel Award address by James Spencer describes the college environment, yet Spencer’s “Great Truths” are nevertheless appropriate in a high school setting. Great Truth #3, “Telling is not teaching. I cannot transfer an idea intact from my head to the head of a learner.” is familiar to many teachers. Intuitively we know that we must engage learners—how to engage them is always the big question. There is general agreement that understanding is constructed dynamically and is facilitated by using active modes of learning. Spencer describes POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning), which provides a model for structuring active learning in a classroom.

There are also many ways to engage students outside the conventional classroom. Silva et al. provide an example of using art to engage students—a beautiful exhibition of award-winning periodic tables created by students. Raddo gives another example of engaging students through art: using comics to teach laboratory safety in an entertaining way. Gordin cites evidence that students gifted in the arts (especially those with musical ability) excel in mathematics and physical sciences. He discusses the contributions of several chemists whose names may be familiar to you, including Borodin, Kekulé, and Mendeleev. Borodin’s contributions to chemistry research may be less than has been supposed; however, in addition to his musical accomplishments, he was very active in paving the way for women to enter the sciences.

Developing new and better collaborative tools appropriate for classroom teachers and students with multiple teaching and learning styles is a difficult assignment, but these articles demonstrate that the JCE can help.

Evolution of the High School Laboratory

Sheppard and Horowitz examine the contributions of academic scientists who helped promote inclusion of laboratory teaching in the high school and college curricula. It is amazing how, in the 1890s, the Committee of Ten, chaired by Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, influenced a dramatic change in the study of chemistry at the high school level. Eliot promoted an entrance exam requirement at Harvard that included chemistry. The exam soon became an accepted standard at many other universities, which in turn influenced teacher preparation and changes in the high school curriculum. Some of the interesting extended outcomes of the Committee’s recommendations were that in a high school chemistry class half the time should be devoted to the laboratory, each student should have his or her own lab set-up, and state funding would be provided only to those schools with appropriate laboratory facilities for teaching chemistry. Don’t we need to bring back the Committee of Ten? Lab is still what makes chemistry special and different from other science courses. We have many safety issues that the other disciplines do not have to face, but we also have some of the most innovative teachers in the world who can meet these challenges.

Views from Many Classrooms

This issue’s Chemistry for Everyone and In the Classroom sections are replete with ideas, especially views from someone else’s classroom. Criswell focuses on ionic and covalent bonding from a discovery point of view using commonly available compounds. (See also his JCE Classroom Activity #80.) The Baurs demonstrate ultrasonic kinetic effects on common beverages. Kinesthetic learners will appreciate the Hanson and Michalek activity that uses the rock–scissors–paper game to introduce the concept of entropy.

Puzzles, poems, and games can engage students and help them develop understanding of basic chemical principles and concepts. This issue has so many outstanding ideas that I cannot highlight all of them, so please see the PDF table of contents and look for the triangles (). These denote articles that Erica Jacobsen and I suggest will help you bring chemistry into your classroom and make connections between where your students are and where you want them to be.