my name is TIM Herzog. I'm an associate professor of Chemistry at Weber State University. I teach prep Chemistry, which is a class in which we prepare students for general Chemistry. TIM frequently uses phet simulations in his classroom, we've asked him to share with us how he facilitates his prep chemistry class using the balancing chemical equation simulation. So I use a teaching style called which stands for process oriented guided inquiry learning. So in Portugal I have my students working in groups and in those groups they are given information and they process that information to develop their own concept. So instead of me kind of feeding them all of the information directly and just trying to put it directly into their heads. I try to have them develop the concepts on their own and I feel like by doing that they're able to have a richer and deeper understanding of the content in my class, I usually have groups of three students and each student has a defined role. Just remind you guys about the roles. So your manager is the person in the aisle. Their job is to control the group and make sure that everybody is moving forward. The person in the middle is going to be the computer operator and riff. So you'll be the person who kind of controls the computer. And also you're going to do this reflected, report the person on the middle, so the person closest to the middle here and closest to the outside there will be the recorder and spokesperson. So your job is to keep record the group consensus answers for all the questions you do. And then when we report back to the class, you'll do that too. Structures each class around the guided inquiry activity in this class. He is using the balancing chemical equations, activity, which you can find on the fat website. Tim starts class with a real world example of combustion in a car engine. Students begin the activity by opening the balancing chemical equations, phet simulation and exploring. Then tim facilitates the class as they work through a series of questions. These questions are designed to guide students in developing their understanding. Here's how tIM facilitates his class during this activity today we're going to talk about balancing chemical equations. Okay, So if I know what molecules react with each other, I need to figure out what ratios they react in. Right? For example, if you're going to build a car engine, you've got to reactant, you've got gasoline and oxygen, right? And so if I want to decide how big of a fuel pump I need for that or how big of an air intake or how to make that burn the most efficiently in the gas, I need to be able to figure out what ratio of each of those reaction components we have. So, when students are exploiting the simulation in the very beginning, I'm walking around to make sure that everybody's got the simulation up and running. Here's a group. When they first start using the simulation, we add some nitrogen here, notice how they quickly begin exploring the simulation. I don't know are we getting because if you're balancing It after about eight or 10 minutes of playtime with the simulation, I'll pass out an activity or we'll start the students on an activity. Alright guys, so we're going to pass out an activity now real quick. And what I want you guys to do is write your name or not, your name, sorry, your group number and your role on each page. Page one and page three of this activity. Okay With. So when students are working in an activity, I'll walk around and just look at everybody's page as I walk by and just see where they are. Usually when about 70 or 80% of the classes close, I'll give them a one or two minute warning. Like in a minute or two we are going to have a clicker question about page two. And so make sure that you've got all those questions answered as tim walks around the room. He looks for science that each group is working well. And if any groups have gotten stuck, You guys try to finish up page two in about two more minutes. If you're done with that keep moving forward. So the groups that are working well are really obvious. They're talking there. They're looking at each other, they're looking at that recorders piece of paper and they're moving forward through the activity. They're not, you know, sometimes they're arguing. Which is really, I like my favorite thing is when they're saying no, this is what it is or no, that's what it is. That's you know, then you I will not do anything in those cases. I'll just let them go. Some groups are very quiet though and working well and they're just talking to each other very quietly and and moving through the activity. But you can really tell when the groups are working well just and you know, and the best thing to do is just leave him alone. So if groups are stuck on content, it's pretty easy to tell because they're one. Sometimes they'll stop talking. They'll, you know, you walk by twice in a row and they're in the same place or they're raised their hand. The best cases when they raise their hand and then I can, they can get them to ask the question that they're stuck with is the best scenario because the asking of the question is a really important part of getting understanding. I'll ask them questions to get them think about the pieces of information that they need to put this concept together to try to help them to maybe think about it a different way. That thing is a molecule, right? So so blue. What are the blue dots in this class circle. TIM uses teacher talk group work, whole class discussions clicker questions and students share outs. I like to have the class kind of more diverse in terms of the way we spend our time so to have some time spent in group work sometime with you know me talking about the concepts and then also sometimes with students kind of thinking about a clicker question when I'm having a whole class discussion. One of the methods that I use is just calling a particular group spokesperson to say what's your answer to this particular question. Sometimes I'll ask him a follow up question after that and so we can pretty quickly go through three or four questions if there's if there's agreement on those answers here's a balanced equation. So look at all these conversion factors and select all of them. That would be correct. Ones that would when we're talking about this chemical reaction when we're doing that chemical reaction which of these conversion factors would be valid? So the best clicker questions are ones that not everybody gets right. Why didn't you guys like B. So then right at the moment that they're trying to understand what's going on, I can address that that idea and really help them understand you know what was going on? Right? So that's why I was just curious the people who didn't select it. What was it about it that you didn't like about it? Yeah. Okay. So so if I if I say I'm reacting this much C three H eight then I say how much oxygen do I need other times. I'll have students come up to the presenter and write their answer down. Or we can take the students actual paper and just put it under the presenter and we can talk about talk about their answers and and see what's going on actually. Can you write it on the right on here just write it write on this paper. One of the things I like to do at the end of class is have a couple of summary slides that just kind of reinforce whatever the key topics were that day. So just diagram or a picture or a table or a few bullet points that I can talk about to really try to wrap up what happened. Tim wraps up the class with a brief summary to reinforce the key concepts of the day. So whatever we have in our balanced equation there's one C. Three H eight. So that needs to be the numerator or the denominator anytime we use C. Three H eight and then we'll have four H two Os. So we're always going to have four H 20. Okay does that make sense in this video? We've shown you how tim uses phet simulations as part of guided inquiry activities. He starts class with a real world example and then allow students to explore a simulation. Students then use the simulation as they work through a guided inquiry activity Tim facilitates the class by roaming the room, answering questions and discussing with groups. He also uses other techniques, like clicker questions, and students share outs to encourage discussions, address misunderstandings and allow students to share what they have learned. TIM wraps up the class with a brief summary to reinforce the key concepts of the day.
