Welcome to our new unit on the periodic table and the elements. I apologize for being behind here--nothing to blame except my absent-mindedness. Our newest unit is starting well. Students made flashcards and did two homework assignments so far. The flashcards are on the 25 elements that I want students to memorize. They need to know names and symbols. Knowing atomic number is optional. We took a practice quiz in the O section and they did pretty well.
The 27th, today, is actually my birthday. Colleen Duran of the S section bought me a cake, which was so nice, and we ate it together, all 30+ of us. Yum. Mrs. Nolan cut the cake up into the appropriate number of pieces, which was amazing using her plastic knife.
So, what are we learning right now? Isotopes and atomic mass, atomic numbers, protons, neutrons, electrons. It is mostly new, so I consider it a tough unit. On day 4 I showed students how Hydrogen has three isotopes, each only different because of how many neutrons they have. We looked at how the atomic mass is an average while the mass number is a whole number (the number of protons plus neutrons).
Tomorrow, the 28th, is the big vocab test 1. There is a practice test online--lets home many, many students are using it to get ready.
Sweet justice.
