How I use HOLY MOL-EE! in my own Classroom

I first began developing these materials years ago when I was teaching full time. Then I moved back home and began private tutoring while working on my emerging "business" of creating chemistry and other academic curricula based on multiple modality learning. After several years, I have now returned to the classroom to teach chemistry full time at a high school just east of Los Angeles. (2007-2008)

I introduced HOLY MOL-EE! materials slowly at first, being new to the school and wanting to test the waters before I jumped in. I could not be more pleased with how HOLY MOL-EE! is working in my own classroom. From as unbiased a point of view as I can give, I find my own materials extremely helpful. There is a wealth of material in the HOLY MOL-EE! package, so much that I cannot even use it all, but the parts I have used have worked very well. And there is plenty of flexibility, too, because I can choose worksheets, activities, songs, dances, slide shows, whatever I think will work for any particular class of students.

My students generally respond positively to the materials and I see the benefit to my students in terms of their learning. What I have determined so far is that I should incorporate my materials more freely in the future. I also see the need for the creation of even more materials to take care of all those little confusions chemistry students have and cannot easily get over.

We have recently studied the gas laws. I started by having the students color and cut out the little variable cards for homework and bring them to school. (Of course, not everyone did that, so I let them take 15 minutes to color and cut them out in class, so we could use them. From this I learned that it is better to have the sets available pre-made for the students, so time is used more effectively in class.) I showed the students the Teaching Slide show "Manipulation of the Gas Law Variables." Then we did the physical activity in which the students moved their own variables around to find the answers to an accompanying worksheet. I was very pleased with how clearly everyone understood and was able to solve the gas law equations. Of course several students did not need this kind of activity, but I see that it worked extremely well, because I did not have to go back and correct even one student in terms of solving for the various gas law variables. The problems came with interpretting the word problems and finding the values and recognizing that "STP" gives you temperature and pressure. But every student was confident in variable manipulation. Generally my students did very well with the gas laws. To help with the "STP" problem, I showed the slide show and played the song, "Gas Volume at STP."

I taught the movements to the song, "Three State Variables," which emphasizes the difference between inverse and direct proportionality in application to Boyle's and Charles' laws. The students liked the song and movements. I showed them the slide show and finally the video. I also taught them the song and movements to "A Variable is Something that Changes." Many seemed to like this song better. It also discusses inverse and direct proportionality in relation to the gas laws. Finally, we did "Rational Gas Laws," which cleary in the video impresses the combined and ideal gas laws upon the minds of the students. I promised one class 5 percentage points on the upcoming gas laws test if they followed the video and did the Gas Laws Dance. Everyone except one student participated. Response afterwards was positive.

I am generally very happy with how my students performed with the gas laws unit.