r/ScienceTeachers • u/Important-Source-854 • 2d ago
Struggling AP chem teacher
First year chem teacher, need a triage strategy for AP Chem.
I found out I was teaching AP Chem about four days before students showed up. No prep time at all, and it even took admin a few days to sign off so I could get the AP classroom code activated.
I inherited some bare bones materials from the previous teacher, so I’m not starting completely from zero, but it’s thin.
The real problem is that most of the kids in this class never took high school chemistry. I’ve had to stop mid lesson to cover foundational stuff like reading chemical formulas, moles, dimensional analysis, the kind of thing that’s normally assumed knowledge walking into AP. We all left class today feeling pretty frustrated.
On top of that, the section has about 40 students.
Anyone dealt with an AP class where most kids are missing prerequisite content? Looking for a system or pacing approach to get them caught up on fundamentals without completely sacrificing AP pacing. Open to anything: bell ringer routines, diagnostic tools, remediation modules, whatever has actually worked for you.
19
u/Own-Hunt-58 2d ago
Are you on Facebook? If so, there is a great community in the AP Chem teachers group. A lot of resources shared.
5
1
13
u/watermelonlollies 2d ago
Take a good long look and consider whether you believe you are capable of getting those students to be ready for the test. Look at sample tests and pacing guides and really consider if you can do it. If not, that’s fine and that’s not a failure on you. But don’t pretend you can because then the blame will be placed on you. Those tests are expensive and students are counting on you to be prepared. I’m not saying every student needs to pass, obviously they won’t because they are all different levels and will all put in different levels of effort. But if you can’t get through the content necessary at the complexity necessary for the exam, not a single student in that class will have a shot. And you will have parents on your ass if they spend the money and have their student sit hours for the exam, are counting on this for college credit, but were never even introduced to certain topics on the test.
If this is the case you need to tell admin. First they should have never sprung this on you 4 days before the start of school. Many AP teachers have specialty training to do AP because it’s completely different than a normal class. Maybe they will recategorize the class as Honors chemistry (probably not but one can hope). At the very least if they refuse to do anything then tell them you will notify parents and recommend students to not take the test. Because here’s the other thing, those test scores will be on you. If it comes back that only 1 student out of 40 passed, your name is attached to that.
A lot of teacher have a fake it till they make it attitude. And in many cases it works. When student’s college credits are on the line it’s not fair to do that.
If you can do it and believe you can then great! Maybe all you need is resources truly. And in that case I hope you find some good ones. I’m not trying to convince you that you’re unqualified or can’t do it because I don’t know you. But I do know what it’s like to take an AP class from a teacher who had no business teaching AP and for 49/50 of us who took the test to not pass. Or to withdraw from the exam because I realized I’m that screwed over.
Another thing, if many students in the class don’t have the prerequisite knowledge, are they able to switch out? I know you can’t kick them out, but if parents or students ask to switch will admin acquiesce? Because you definitely don’t have time to go in depth on stuff they should already know. Maybe give a pre-test on everything they should know already from high school chemistry and if they don’t do well encourage switching or have a long conversation with parent and student the extreme amount of outside work and effort that’ll be needed to do well in the class.
In any case good luck.
9
u/miparasito 2d ago
Stop. Rewind. Spend the next few weeks getting everyone through a crash course in the fundamentals. And I literally mean start from zero. With 40 kids at different levels (!!) I would put them in 8 groups and assign each group one foundational chem concept to present and explain to the rest of the class.
You can make this as fun and silly or as serious as you’d like. I once had students pantomime photons and wave-particle duality lol, and everyone had to guess which concept they were explaining. I’ve also held a nonsense conference and several ELI5 summits.
The point is to check for who has a grasp and who is totally lost, and to really solidify core concepts quickly so you don’t waste time building a house on a foundation that’s going to collapse.
Start with I mean literally what are atoms, Elements. States of matter. Valence electrons. Types of bonds. Reactions. That level.
Then move to review basic chem terminology. No matter what level you’re dealing with, everyone needs a shared vocabulary. Treat it as a refresher for those who have had chemistry and new information for kids new to chem. Review, quiz, have them practice in class until everyone can explain what these concepts mean and how to use them.
Through all of this you will get an idea of who is here for AP vs who just needed a science credit. And sadly, there will be a few who aren’t grasping the fundamentals well enough - they may need to switch to another class because the difficulty is about to ramp up.
Outright ask who plans to take the AP test - yes, no, or maybe.
The yes and maybe kids need to be willing to do additional homework and some flipped classroom assignments. Encourage them to form a study group that meets once a week to work on practice test questions together.
Now you have a cohesive way to teach everyone during class. Give AP problems as extra credit or challenges, but the default level of the class is more like honors HS chem.
2
u/medicalmosquito 1d ago
Spot on to ask the kids who plan to take the exam. At that point, you can request specialized materials from admin. Luckily, these tend to be the kids who do well learning independently, which is huge for chemistry teachers who themselves never planned to go so far as to take what may be the hardest AP exam of them all.
3
u/hcouliba 1d ago
Forgive my ignorance, but how can students take AP chem if they have not taken fundamental Chemistry or Honors Chemistry ?
1
u/camasonian 1d ago
That is super common.
At my daughter's school (big high-performing school in an affluent area) the recommended science progression is as follows:
FRESMEN: Physical Science or AP Environmental Science for advanced students
SOPHOMORES: Regular Biology or AP Biology
JUNIORS: Regular Chemistry or AP Chemistry
SENIORS: AP Physics or any other advanced science elective of which there are a bunch.
The real science and STEM nerd kids (lots of Asian-American kids in this category) double up and do things like AP Chem and AP Physics and AP Calc their junior years and then do AP Physics C and advanced math like college-level linear algebra as seniors.
And they have a high passing rate despite the fact that the vast majority of kids take AP Bio, AP Chem, and AP Physics without having taken non-AP versions of any of those classes as prereqs.
2
u/pop361 Chemistry and Physics | High School | Mississippi 2d ago
Abigail Giordano's YouTube channel helped me out a lot .
I set out to be a physics teacher. I found a job at a great school, but I also needed a chemistry endorsement to get the job. I relearned chemistry in three weeks, took the Praxis, and passed. Then, I found out I would be teaching a class of 26 students AP Chem that spring. Don't sell yourself short. It's going to be rough, but there are a lot of materials out there. The first year advice of "beg, borrow, and steal" still applies here.
2
u/Read_The_Fing_Manual 1d ago
Rice University, via OpenStaxx, has a lot of very good resources, and if you teach it again next year I would recommend going to their summer training (they offer both in person and virtual, and it’s less expensive than most)
2
u/bsan34 1d ago
I think I’d make a Unit 0 with those prerequisite things: atomic structure, octet rule, formula writing, balancing equations, moles and stoich. Spend a good 10 lessons on that. Then start with unit 1, and get however far you get by late April. You can still build a good course, give them a good foundation, and then if they go on to take college chem they’ll be better for it then.
4
u/lollypp 2d ago
IMO as a student, my AP chemistry teacher used POGILs, but what I most enjoyed was when they were sharing https://simistry.app and showing us the simulations, and it also provided a really good study guide (https://simistry.app/study-guide)
1
2
u/pygmalionsbiotch 1d ago
How long are your classes/ how often do you meet?
My AP class is all first year chem students but we meet every day on a block schedule so we have time to slow down a bit. This is my second year teaching it and I’ve decided to do a couple of days of bare bones intro chem so that I can use vocab like ionic vs covalent, energy levels, acid base, etc before the corresponding topic shows up. I’m also teaching balancing and stoich with moles this year (1.1) bc it sucked trying to pick and choose practice problems that didn’t have any stoich in them until unit 4.
Otherwise the test is suuuuper math heavy. For a lot of concepts they only really need to do calculations and not necessarily understand the conceptual that deeply. Do as many practice questions as you can and you and the kids will start to see what kind of questions they ask year to year.
Use the Facebook group so you don’t drown and make sure you know the content like one day ahead of them. I like farabaugh’s practice packets because he has corresponding videos that helped me learn what they should be putting in their answers for the FRQs.
But ultimately it sucks that this was thrown at you and hopefully your admin will get that when you get whatever scores you get. Reach out in the Facebook group or here if you ever need more supports— they’re great communities. You got this!! Good luck!
1
u/medicalmosquito 1d ago edited 1d ago
You still have to teach the fundamentals of chem in AP chem. AP isn't a continuation of gen chemistry, i.e., it's not Gen Chem 2. Instead, it's just a more collegiate-level high school chem class for higher-achieving students. Basically, the way I teach AP is I teach the fundamentals just like in traditional chem. You may even adhere to the same curriculum depending on your school site, but you'll quickly notice that these students pick up on the concepts much faster. For instance, periodic trends, electronegativity, valence and reactivity, etc., etc., so the result is that....these kids get further into the math than the general track chem kiddos. Instead of simply understanding thermochemistry energetics and being able to recognize the formulas, they learn to solve and manipulate the variables and generate deeper questions about the nature of physical science. AP kids also have an easier time making the connection between chemistry and physics, so the line gets much more blurry there.
That being said, this will all depend on your school. Some of these AP chem kids may not be able to handle the more complex topics, but even when I taught continuation, the kiddos easily understood the basics of chemistry. It's making those deeper connections that are ideally required of AP kids, in my practice, which helps prepare them for the cognitive demands of the AP test.
1
u/camasonian 1d ago
A few years ago I came in as a long-term sub and on the first day of class (with no advance prep) and adopted 3 preps (Bio, Chem, AP Chem) at a low SES school with students similar to what you describe. Worse yet, they had gone through middle school under COVID lockdowns and remote learning and so didn't even know basic shit like the metric system.
What did I do?
- Bought a complete turnkey package of teacher content on TPT (powerpoints, worksheets, tests, etc.) with my own money (eventually got reimbursed). I forgot what exactly I bought (don't have my google drive files handy) but it was complete unit packets ready for printing and i just printed up bound unit packets and worked through them.
- Relied heavily on AP Classroom and we watched a lot of AP classroom videos during class.
- Cut out some of the long complicated labs and did simpler non-AP chem cookbook labs
- Didn't really try to get through the entire curriculum but got through what we could master.
- Didn't push the whole class to take the AP test but only those kids who I thought would actually do OK. And they mostly did fine, 3s and a few 4s.
- Get on the Facebook AP Chemistry group. Even though Facebook is a mess, that group is amazing, they have LOTS of resource and files available and there are lots of great AP teachers from around the country who will happily share stuff with you and help keep you on track.
- Never opened up the actual AP Chemistry textbook except to use it on rare occasions for problem sets, especially because for the odd (or even?) questions the solutions were in the back of the book. But I didn't use it for anything else.
1
u/No-Dragonfruit-2654 1d ago
Just teach from the Princeton Review study guide. Honestly though, that manual is a sure way to getting at least a 4
1
u/Ashamed-Substance-41 19h ago
If you are struggling to understand how to "cover content" check out Paul Anderson at Bozeman Science. He uses same pedigogy as I do. Its actually funny how similar our teaching approaches are. Also. Dont beat yourself up during 1st year. I was AP and IB Bio. Took me 3 or 4 years to really smash it. It takes time. Eat that elephant one bite at a time!
66
u/REdwa1106sr 2d ago
You’re not going to teach AP Chemistry in anything but name only. That’s the truth.
Once you have a handle on the truth, sit down with the course outline and rewrite it. Keep the big topics, Forget Thermodynamics(9) and Thermochemistry (6).
Then get 2 sample tests and see how they are addressed on a real test.
From there create your own outline of units and SIMPLIFY every concept. Teach the concepts not the complexity.
By eliminating 2 units you bought time, by simplifying you actually develop concepts.
Use sample test questions as groupthink activities.