9/27/2023 0 Comments Desmos activity card sortThis wasn’t necessary but I thought it was useful for quickly comparing the organizational scheme generated by students with the correct groupings. Once I was familiar with how the activity would function, I noticed the option of creating an answer key. I loved the simple user experience that Desmos has created for this kind of activity.ĭisplay of the cards randomly placed throughout the screen Groups of cards can even be collapsed for more available screen space or expanded to improve visibility. Cards can be moved around the screen, enlarged, and grouped together by dragging one card over another. Once the cards were made, I clicked the student preview button and was pleased to see that I could manipulate the cards with ease just like I would if they were physically in front of me. It’s worth mentioning that you can also make cards containing math, text, or even graphs. To do this, I had to screenshot each molecule from my original document that contained the cards and upload each image to a specific card on Desmos. Using the Desmos activity builder, I was able to recreate this activity in less than thirty minutes and could easily share it with my students by integrating it with our LMS (Schoology). Converting the Activity to an Online Version Ultimately, students finish up the activity by answering a small set of questions asking them to identify basic nomenclature rules such as what certain prefixes mean, indicating the number of bonds, and terminology for functional groups. Some make the connections right away and finish within 15 minutes while others struggle to make the same connections between structure and name. Considering they have no prior knowledge of organic nomenclature, it’s interesting to watch their approach toward organizing. For each functional group, there are four cards-11 groups of four. A variety of molecules with different functional groups are within the cards like alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, carboxylic acids, alcohols, esters, etc. Normally, pairs of students are given 44 cards, each containing a structure and name, and asked to identify any patterns in name or structure and organize the cards into groups based on these patterns. Regardless of whether you teach organic, I wanted to share my experience with this resource because of its applicability to a variety of chemistry topics and usefulness for whatever learning environment you find yourself in next year. It was really easy to make and I loved that I didn’t have to once again sacrifice an engaging learning activity due to the restrictions of the learning environment. However, I was thrilled when I came across the activity building feature within Desmos and realized it offered the ability to create a custom card sorting activity. This year, since our organic unit happened to fall within our duration of distance learning, I had planned to cut out the activity for obvious reasons. The activity offers a simple way to help students notice patterns and make connections so that they have some amount of prior knowledge that can be recalled by the time we start naming and drawing different molecules. For the past few years, we have started our organic unit with a card sorting activity meant to introduce students to the relationship between the structure of a molecule and its name.
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