Science teachers for grades 6-8 should check out Middle School Chemistry, a resource created by science educators Jim Kessler, Patti Galvan, and Adam M. Boyd of the American Chemical Society. Here, visitors will find an extensive suite of fully developed, standards-aligned lesson plans and accompanying multimedia, all of which can be downloaded for free. Organized into chapters, the lessons cover a variety of introductory chemistry topics: the components and states of matter, how matter changes state, density and mass, the periodic table and atomic structures, the properties of water, and chemical reactions. The inquiry-based lessons are created with student engagement in mind, and some of their hands-on activities involve experiments that students help design as part of their learning experience. Many lessons are also accompanied by a pedagogical video to help teachers with its implementation. Lessons and their activities may be downloaded as PDFs individually or all at once as a single 740-page book, and selected lessons from Middle School Chemistry have also been translated into Spanish. A helpful list of necessary classroom materials, most of which are readily available at grocery or office supply stores, is also provided.
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