Chemistry: First-Time - CHEM. 1240
About the Workshop
This workshop is designed for beginning AP® Chemistry teachers and is limited to participants who have taught AP® Chemistry for three or fewer years or will be teaching it for the first time in the upcoming year. The workshop will focus on the “nuts and bolts” of creating and/or strengthening an AP® chemistry course. With the redesigned curriculum in mind, we will discuss pacing, topic selection and sequence, the writing and submission of a syllabus, the nature of and the preparation for the AP® test, course mechanics and textbook selection. In addition, the new curriculum stresses the “guided inquiry” (GI) approach to laboratory work. You will perform 8-10 GI labs from various sources during the week. You will complete a write-up for each and be exposed to questions that are driven by the data or involve error analysis—both of which are common forms of questions on the current AP® test. This workshop will assume a basic knowledge of AP® Chemistry topics, but will cover topics that need further review as identified by a participant survey prior to the workshop. Last year, those topics were electrochemistry, spectroscopy, kinetics and acid-base chemistry. There is homework assigned each night of the Institute, but no project is required after the course ends on Thursday, June 29th. Our goal is to provide you with a suitcase full of AP® chemistry that you can quickly unpack in the coming year.
Register for the June 2018 Chemistry: First Time workshop online.
About the Instructor
David Hostage
David Hostage has been teaching science at the secondary level since 1976. Since coming to Taft School in 1984, he has taught all levels of chemistry and other sciences as required. He has been Head of the Science Department for two different terms. An active participant in the AP® Chemistry community, he has taught the AP® course since 1986 and has led workshops across the continent in the subject for teachers since 1988. He has been a Reader, Table Leader, and Question Leader at the grading of the AP® exam since the early 1990s. For four years he was a member of the Test Development Committee for the subject and he continues to write examination questions for the program. Mr. Hostage is the author of a laboratory manual (Laboratory Investigations: AP Chemistry, Peoples Education) and a test review/preparation book (Multiple-choice & Constructed-response Questions in Preparation for the AP Chemistry Examination, D&S Marketing Systems) for AP® Chemistry. For many years he was director of the Taft Educational Center, a large professional development institute for teachers from around the world.