CRISTAL (Chemistry Resources and Instructional Strategies for Teaching All Learners for MS & HS Chemistry)

Authors

Jody Stone, University of Northern Iowa

Files

Grade Level

Grades 9-12, Secondary

Document Type

Activity and Lab

Description

The CRISTAL program was developed for the purpose of (1) increasing the number of quality laboratory experiences carried out in high school chemistry classes (2) providing learning activities designed to stimulate the development of reasoning/problem-solving skills and (3) providing chemistry teachers with ideas and strategies for creating a more student-centered classroom. The intended audience is all students enrolled in high school chemistry, especially those students needing additional motivation for learning chemistry.

The CRISTAL materials include a teacher's resource manual containing over 100 activities. These laboratories are arranged in a learning cycle format involving exploratory and application activities. One or more learning cycles are included on each major concept typically covered in high school chemistry. The learning cycle activities include high interest activities involving everyday experiences and/or interesting problems which students are challenged to solve. The guide supports the teacher in developing a chemistry curriculum which is compatible with any chemistry text. The teacher identifies the concepts to be taught, then uses the guide to select appropriate learning cycle activities to use to help teach those concepts. The guide contains student activity sheets which may be reproduced, as well as teacher notes with suggested teaching strategies on how to implement each CRISTAL activity, sample data, and answers to student questions.

Department

Science Education Program

Disciplines

Chemistry

Comments

Cover image: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Original Date

7-2013

Copyright

©2013 Jody Stone

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Stone, Jody, "CRISTAL (Chemistry Resources and Instructional Strategies for Teaching All Learners for MS & HS Chemistry)" (2013). K-12 Curriculum Supplements. 9.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/k12_supplements/9