Hexagonal speech bubbles

Research-informed tips for using dialogic teaching

2025-03-10T05:17:00+00:00By

Use extended periods of talk between students to improve the quality of their responses in chemistry

Education in Chemistry

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Ideas

Two toy cars with some spare wheels

5 ways to teach excess and limiting reagents to 14–16s

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Tips for helping learners get to grips with this tricky part of quantitative chemistry

A cartoon of a student wearing a lab coat using an artist's paintbrush and easel to solve a mathematical equation on a black board

Success with GUESS for solving equation-based problems

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Help your 11–16 students calculate answers independently and effectively with this acronym

Cartoon of a person sturggling to separate two objects shaped like an 8 and a 9

Teaching tips to tackle maths anxiety

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Help your students develop their numeracy confidence with these back-to-basics steps

Exciting demos

A beaker with liquid and metal wires is hooked up via clips to drive a spinning fan on a motor

Demonstrate electrochemistry with a gravity cell

A dish with a mottled pattern of a milky cream liquid in a clear brown liquid

Experiment with surface tension and convection currents

A glass dish with sweets around the edge whose colours have bled into the middle

Dissolve coloured sweets to create a rainbow

A conical flask of yellow liquid bubbles with a heavy white smoke

Demonstrations with dry ice

A hand using scissor-handle tweezers to hold a piece of paper that is on fire but not burning

Non-burning paper: investigate the fire triangle and conditions for combustion

  • Demonstrate electrochemistry with a gravity cell

  • Experiment with surface tension and convection currents

  • Dissolve coloured sweets to create a rainbow

  • Demonstrations with dry ice

  • Non-burning paper: investigate the fire triangle and conditions for combustion

The Science Teaching Survey 2025

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Evidence-based teaching

A close up of someone turning down a dial of a bear's face

How metacognition improves student engagement and outcomes

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Two strategies to improve learners’ thinking about thinking when solving chemistry problems

A teacher in a computer lab with some students looking at a acid-base simulation on the computer screens

How PhET simulations help students with abstract concepts

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Use digital resources to improve students’ chemistry learning outcomes

Cartoon of students in a lab

Celebrate curiosity, creativity and co-operation in your chemistry lessons

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They’re key to learners identifying positively with chemistry and achieving success

Opinion

A disruptive student is told off by a teacher at the end of class

Why detentions don’t work

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Attention rather than detention is the way to foster positive behaviour in students

Cartoons representing different challenges of teaching

And the survey says …

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The Science Teaching Survey tells us what it’s like to be an educator today, and helps the RSC Education team provide effective support to you and influence policymakers

A high school student in detention dreams about the football practice they are missing

Why detentions work

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Because they deter negative behaviours and paralyse peer pressure

How to teach ...

The electron shell diagrams for the elements from hydrogen to calcium

How to teach atomic structure at 14–16

Two people unable to shake hands because they are offering mirror image hands

Teaching isomerism at post-16

A series of diagrams showing how a balloon traps gas from a chemical reaction and the weight of the reactants is the same as the weight of the products

Teaching conservation of mass at 14–16

A coloured X-ray of a fridge showing the food and drinks inside and the cooling mechanism at the back

How to teach Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution curves at post-16

The molecular structures of diamond, graphite, graphene, fullerene and a nanotube

How to teach structure and bonding of carbon at 14–16

  • How to teach atomic structure at 14–16

  • Teaching isomerism at post-16

  • Teaching conservation of mass at 14–16

  • How to teach Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution curves at post-16

  • How to teach structure and bonding of carbon at 14–16

News & analysis

A diamond

Breakthrough method produces flexible diamond films

New method shows promise for mass producing ultrathin diamond films for use in the electronic industry

A planner explains a new chemistry curriculum in the form of a blueprint

The changing post-16 landscape

Following a review of post-16 qualifications in England, the options are changing and AAQs loom on the horizon for science teachers and learners 

Using a magnifying glass to look at very small pieces of plastic on a beach

Sustainable foam can remove 99.9% of microplastics

Could squid shells and cotton hold the key to cleaning up microplastic pollution?

Chicken breasts cooking in an air fryer

Air fryers significantly reduce cooking pollution

Study highlights the impact of cooking methods on indoor air quality

Latest issue

March 2025
Step into spring with maths, isomerism, electrochemistry and more …

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