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Brennan Koch
Jun 27, 20232 min read
10 Highlights from AP Chemistry Summer Institute 2023 (APSI) Day 1
I am attending an AP Chemistry summer institute for the next few days. I will post a few highlights and valuable links so you can glean...
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Brennan Koch
May 26, 20234 min read
Improve next year with a checklist review of this year.
We did it! We made it to the end of the school year. Now it’s time to dive into a summer that will last approximately eight seconds,...
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Brennan Koch
May 19, 20234 min read
How to write a great final: 10 Do's and Don'ts
It’s that time of the year! Final-writing season. Writing a good, fair, time-sensitive final can be a challenge. I’ve written some...
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Brennan Koch
May 12, 20233 min read
Write the best labs ever by failing forward.
Has this ever happened to you? You come up with a great idea for a lab. You can see how much the kids will learn by applying the...
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Brennan Koch
May 5, 20234 min read
Review the most important topic in chemistry.
Let’s play a guessing game on the most important thing to review at the end of chemistry. Significant figures? No. Stoichiometry? Not...
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Brennan Koch
Apr 11, 20232 min read
How a highlighter changed my labs forever
You’ve had this question before. “Should I have weighed my filter paper before I started filtering?” Duh. Of course, you should have. ...
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Brennan Koch
Mar 31, 20234 min read
7 Catchy Phrases to Communicate Effectively with Your Chemistry Students
MFEO. Teachers and catch-phrases are just that; Made For Each Other. And yes, I’m a male in my mid-forties who just quoted “Sleepless...
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Brennan Koch
Mar 17, 20235 min read
Stop writing questions. Students learn more when they do the asking.
You write amazing questions. You create practice problems for your student that are deep and engaging. By writing all the questions, you...
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Brennan Koch
Mar 10, 20235 min read
A Simple Method to Ask Better Questions Today
“Fine.” It’s the worst answer to a teacher’s question. Let me interpret “fine” for you. It could be “this is the best day of my life”...
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Brennan Koch
Mar 3, 20233 min read
Teach Limiting Reagent More Effectively with a Lab You Are Already Using
Don’t you love it when this happens? It’s the 'aha' moment. And it’s one that you set them up for all along. My students discovered...
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Brennan Koch
Feb 24, 20235 min read
5 Ways to Grow Your Students by Making Them Get Creative
You have this student in your class. She is perfect. She rarely misses questions on tests. Everything is by the book. Well, I gave...
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Brennan Koch
Feb 17, 20236 min read
3 Words That Can Connect You To Your Students
I made a girl cry in chemistry yesterday. Actually, the world made her cry, I just happened to be the final straw. But in that...
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Brennan Koch
Feb 11, 20234 min read
Use confidence to build confidence in chemistry.
Chemistry is hard. That is why we love it. If it was easy, it would be called “English”. Kidding, I’m kidding. Save the hate mail. But...
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Brennan Koch
Feb 4, 20236 min read
This 10-second strategy drill improves your students' performance.
You have seen this while grading a free response question. The student started off so strong. The were carefully labeling their units,...
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Brennan Koch
Jan 27, 20235 min read
6 Tips to make naming compounds less confounding.
I remember grading the naming test a few years ago. The student started out decently. But the longer she went, the more convoluted the...
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Brennan Koch
Jan 20, 20236 min read
Turn your worksheets into games to make your classroom come alive.
Can you picture the eye-roll that inevitably comes when you start across the room with a stack of worksheets? I hate it. Don't the kids...
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Brennan Koch
Jan 13, 20234 min read
What to do when your lab fails.
We've all been there. You've spent hours preparing, thinking through, mixing chemicals, laying out labware, explaining to students. All...
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Brennan Koch
Jan 8, 20235 min read
Help students spend less time on multiple choice questions. With smiley faces.
We have all seen it. The kid that twists everything up in their mind. The one we root for. They circled the right answer. Erased it,...
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Brennan Koch
Dec 20, 20223 min read
How to teach periodic trends without being boring.
Some topics are a little dry. No matter how important they are or how intrigued you are, the students just don't connect. I will share...
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Brennan Koch
Dec 5, 20222 min read
Help students stop making idiodic stoichiometry mistakes with one step.
It only sounds judgmental because it is. Idiot mistakes. You know the ones. They are given real world stoichiometry problems and they...
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