All High School resources
Book Chapter
In thinking about a title for this chapter, the word periodicity came to mind. I was sure this had some kind of pop culture reference. After discussing this with my wife, we figured I was thinking of synchronicity, which is a reference to music b...
Book Chapter
We now know enough about atoms and how they combine to investigate a number of different chemical reactions. We’ll even be able to represent those reactions with symbols that tell us how many of each kind of atom we begin with and how many of each ...
Book Chapter
The word organic has lots of meanings in everyday life. Organic vegetables are ones grown without pesticides and organic beef comes from cattle that haven’t been given antibiotics. When it comes to chemistry, organic sometimes means something el...
NSTA Press Book
Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 2: 25 More Formative Assessment Probes
If Hollywood filmed this sequel, the studio would call it “Probes II: More Battles Against Misunderstandings.” Like the blockbuster before it, Volume 2 will reveal the surprising misconceptions students bring to the classroom—so you can adjust ...
By Page Keeley, Francis Eberle, Joyce Tugel
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about intensive and extensive properties of matter. The probe is designed to find out which properties students think will change if the amount of material changes and which will sta...
Book Chapter
This first chapter starts off with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and a few other things. It gives a demonstration of the basic differences between memorizing rules and really understanding the process. For those who te...
Book Chapter
Given that the vast majority of people reading this book will never ever have to teach calculus, you might be wondering why in the world the topic is being addressed here. Well, even though you might not teach calculus, chances are that when teachin...
Book Chapter
This chapter deals with fractions and decimals. This is one place where people who are otherwise fine with math jump off the boat and decide it's just too weird to continue. As with everything else, though, it's only a matter of understanding what'...
Book Chapter
This chapter contains basic material related to exponents that is a supplement to Chapters 1 and 2. Keeping with the theme of the first two chapters, there will be a discussion of procedures for which one may know the rules, but might not understand...
Book Chapter
This chapter is all about negative numbers, and how to deal with them. They're not all that difficult to understand, but for some reason people get just a little uptight when they see computations involving negative numbers. I'm guessing that the a...
Book Chapter
Why Do They Have to Gum Everything Up With Those Letters?
Often people who are relatively comfortable doing math with numbers completely freak out when variables (you know, those letters that take the place of numbers) come into the picture. Things start looking much more abstract and complicated. You don...
Book Chapter
All Things Being Equal...Or Not
Now that we've covered at least a few examples of how we get equations from the physical world, it's time to work on solving those equations. Solving an equation means figuring out what values of the unknowns (the variables) will make the equality a...
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Pie are not Round; <i>π</i>²
What would a math book be without a nerdy math joke? Bad joke aside, you might recognize π² as the formula for the area of a circle. And you might infer from that fact that this chapter addresses geometry. Often people think of geometry as a b...