Material Detail

Dilys -- I love chemistry -- I thnk it is real life magic. This lesson plan seems like it could help students to understand the magic part of chemistry. I like the way you use real things (lighting a candle) to tie into chemistry related concepts. This would be an example of scaffolding -- using things that the students are already familiar with to create understanding of new concepts. I would be curious to see how you could use technology more to support this lesson. You mention that one of the goals of this lesson is to "get the students talking" about how chemistry is part of real life. I think you might be able to have the student contribute to a class blog, or a wiki, and share associations they make in real life with chemistry related concepts. If they contributed to this blog for a week or two weeks, the whole class would probably come up with some really neat ideas/associations that would keep that conversation going outside of the classroom.