Pokémon GO for Chemistry Learning (By Dr. Dennis Sheeter, Science Department Chair/Instructor, Honors and AP Chemistry)

This year St. Michael’s offers eight chemistry classes consisting of five on-level, two honors and one AP class.

To accommodate all of our students this year, on-level chemistry is being taught by Dr. Sheeter and Ali Thames. Both instructors bring expert and innovative teaching experiences into their classrooms and teach the same curriculum.

During the past nine years, Dr. Sheeter has been revamping the curriculum with three goals in mind: make chemistry engaging for students, produce better problem solvers, and prepare students for college chemistry. Several of Dr. Sheeter’s alumni have emailed to say that they were not only prepared for their first-year college chemistry courses, but they were leading study groups and pulling off A’s.
Our new Chemistry Teacher, Ali Thames, has incorporated numerous demos this year and a fun new learning activity game called “Element Go.” With unit one under their belts, students in on-level chemistry are starting Unit 2: matter, periodicity and atomic structure. To kick off the unit, they participated in "Element Go" (the chemistry teacher’s version of Pokémon GO). In this scavenger hunt game, students searched and "caught" elements hidden all over the campus. Once found, elements were then combined to evolve into various molecules, network solids or allotropes. In this exercise, students learned some of the ways elements can bond together to form various substances, such as water and methane molecules, and the carbon allotropes of diamond and graphite - to name a few.
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