About the Book

Bring IntuitivChemistry with you into your senior high school chemistry class!

In Table Manners, you were introduced to a civilized conversation with the Ross Periodic Table. You will love to continue the discussion in Table Talk!

The same three simple concepts you cultivated in Table Manners are now directed at the more difficult problems in senior high school chemistry. The Ross Periodic Table is a pedagogical model of the periodic table - a periodic table designed for learning.

Both books maintain a consistent approach that brings all of these chemical phenomena under your students' intuitive understanding. You will gain a level of fluency that is simply not possible using other approaches. Teachers and parents both know that personal competency is the only reliable foundation upon which to build a student's self-esteem and confidence.

• Compatible with the emerging consensus on the nature of science.
• Works with, not against, students' natural cognitive growth.
• Integrates language with learning

Informed by over thirty years of international research into how students learn science, the IntuitivChemistry books directly challenge the everyday misconceptions that students bring to your classroom.

In six sets of two page exercises, your students will cover these advanced chemistry topics.

1. Oxidation and reduction (which are dynamic processes) and the concept of oxidation states (which are static properties)
2. The essential concepts of redox reactions, including reactions between elemental metals and non-metals, between elemental non-metals and non-metals, and between covalent molecular compounds.
3. Hydrocarbons and other compounds containing oxygen and nitrogen, the oxidation states of the atoms in such molecules, and redox reactions among organic compounds.
4. Electron potential energy, and how it explains the energetics of the combustion of non-metals, metals, and hydrocarbons.
5. Molecular polarity - the dipolarity of water, alcohols, and carbonyl groups
6. What makes non-metal oxides acidic? Why are metal oxides basic? What governs the strength of the oxy-acids?

As in all of the IntuitivScience series, diagrams are the most important mode of learning. We are all visual learners. Every student exercise uses simple diagrams that are easy to learn, diagrams designed to have extraordinary power and depth. The diagrams are based upon the mental models that all of us use to make sense of the world, so they feel "intuitive." And they are tested carefully against demands of good scientific theory. You will use the Ross model of the atom, a simplified version of the atom that "works" the way that young people think.

Parents and teachers, you get one half of the book! Each two-page student activity is accompanied by a two-page teacher / parent guide, so you can help your student proceed.

At the end of each section is a thorough quiz.

About the Author: Jim Ross has more than 34 years experience in secondary science education, both in private and public school systems. For six years he was the Coordinator of Investigative Studies at Nicholson Catholic College, Belleville, ON, where his portfolio included science, math, history, geography, and the social sciences. In 1988, Jim Ross and Mike Lattner founded Ross Lattner Educational Consultants, a small, independent publishing company, to meet the need for high quality curriculum materials in the de-streamed common curriculum. Ross Lattner continues to publish innovative instructional strategies. In 1991, Jim moved to London ON, where he taught at John Paul II and Catholic Central High Schools. During those years, he completed an M.Ed. thesis The Graininess of Everyday Thinking, on the cognitive structure of students' everyday language, and its relationship to their natural reasoning about physical phenomena. From 2001-2005, Jim taught the pedagogy courses in Chemistry, Physics and Intermediate Science at the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario. In that capacity, he was awarded the honour of Teacher of the Year by the the Faculty of Ed. Jim has served as president of the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers, and has been an active member of STAO. He has contributed to the writing of the Ontario senior physics curriculum documents. Entering an active retirement in 2008, Jim contributed to McGraw-Hill Ryerson's Grade 9 and 10 "ON Science" texts. As he continues to study and write, he has been constructing the new approach to chemistry learning and teaching with Edvantage Press, and is an active member of the Edvantage Chemistry Interactive online community.