F E B R U A R Y

N E W S L E T T E R

Chemistry
What We Are Doing
This month we are currently finishing the chapter on periodic trends. In this chapter I also included an introduction to chemical bonding. I did this in order to make the next chapter a little bit shorter. The exam for the chapter on periodic trends will be during the week of February 17th. As an introduction to the chemical bonding chapter, the students will be making crystals and attaching them to pipe cleaners so that they are chemically bonded. This will be a good start to how bonding works. With bonding, we will be going over ionic, covalent, and hydrogen bonding. We will also be going over polar and nonpolar solutions and why they mix or do not mix when put together.

What To Look For

In preparation for the test on periodic trends, the students should be going over their notes they took on their Periodic Tables along with the notes from class. My notebook is available for students if they missed a day or simply need to catch up. I will be telling the students in class that this is one of the harder tests of the school year. It encompasses a good bit of material and they should start studying a week in advance in order to chunk the material to make it more manageable to study. If they do this they will be successful on the test. If they have understood all of this material the next chapter on bonding should be fairly simple. This chapter they will rely less on vocabulary and more on building concepts. The concepts will be easy to build as long as they keep up with them. Overall, I dont foresee any major issues in this chapter. As always, if you have any questions you may email me at jcomunale@forbesroad.com or call me at 412-373-8100 x284.

James Comunale