Teaching Inquiry-Based Chemistry: Creating Student-Led Scientific Communities

a must read for chem teachers

The Inquiry-Based model outlined here helps students create their own scientific community and become chemists not simply students filled with chemistry facts.Don't be fooled by the simplicity of the cover and layout this book is filled with loads of resources and lesson plans. I love the soap project and have decided to use it instead of a more traditional science fair this year. I can't wait to see what my students create.

When I bought the book I was hoping for a bunch of labs involving inquiry based chemistry and some key points on how to incorporate inquiry based chemistry in my class. Though the book did give some suggestions on how to implement it, it did not offer a wealth of ready to use activities. I thought it focued too much on how they came up with inquiry chemistry in their class and not enough time on activities and a step by step approach on how to begin a inquiry chemistry curriculum.It wasnt too useful to me but some people may find it useful.

This book is a great primer for any chem teacher that is thinking about going with more inquiry in their classroom. It provides a look into the classroom of the authors who have been doing inquiry based instruction for many years.I would have liked more detail on how and when they include traditional instruction however.

We keep hearing have inquiry-based classes, but I was not shown how to do when going through collage. This book showed me how to do.

Very interesting book for chemistry teachers. As a chemstry teacher I recommend to put in practice the strategies proposed in this book. You will get very good results with your students at high school or college.

I teach high school chemistry in california. I teach both AP level and general level. I've been researching ways to increase the investigative methods for teaching chem to my general students, so I bought this book along with a few others. The authors of this book must work in a school district with a lot smaller class sizes than I have. The point of the book is to have the students go through the scientific method, through the year increasing how much leadership the students have. I have a cap of 36 students to a class, I can't imagine their being enough work for 36 students to do the way they teach their classes. The management side of this book would never work in a large class.That being said, I did used their "Can Lab" in my class recently. I had to change the way I presented it to the students, and I used it with the gas law chapter, but all in all I think it worked out well. I plan to try a couple more of their simplier investigative labs next year. However I will never let my students go about making soap with no direction (that is the opening of the book). The cost of materials would be huge!

This is a good but way too short book about constructivist teaching in the science classroom. For teachers who are not familair with constructivist teaching methods, or don't really understand them, I recommend you read some of the literature or take a course on it first. There is not enough information in this book, I think, for the newbie to constructivist teaching. I would like to see more detail about how the instructors got from September to May, and more detail on how they scheduled time, especially journal time.There are some great tips in here if you do know some things about constructivist teaching. The whole concept of teaching science and inquiry is well explained, and I will gratefully use many of their ideas. The book does a good job of helping teachers link chemistry with everyday life, and takes some of the "academic only" focus away from the laboratory.