The Chemistry Club Tutoring System A Briefing

I. Introduction and Purpose

The Chemistry Club has had a long history of teaching and tutoring students. It was founded when a Chemistry course was not offered, providing an education in Chemistry to interested students. It evolved into a club dedicated to helping both struggling students enrolled in Chemistry and AP Biology, Physics, and Environmental Science students who need refreshers of the Chemistry they learned many years past. In the best interests of the students, it is crucial that the Club revives the tutoring system. The tutoring system usually takes two parts: tutoring of students who struggle with previous material and teaching of excelling students who wish to study new topics.

II.

Organization
A. Meeting Times and Location The group will presumably meet regularly in Room 303, during lunch and advisory. A teacher will be present during the meetings to monitor the tutoring and ensure the safety of students. Club officers will also be present to ensure the smooth running of the process and clarify any questions students may have. B. Role of Students Upon arrival, students will be split into two groups: students needing tutoring and tutors. The groups will each form a line. A club officer will then proceed in pairing up students and tutors. For example, a student may have trouble understanding the 20 types of chemical reactions. He or she will be paired with a tutor who has demonstrated comprehension in the topic of chemical reactions. The group will subsequently find an area within or outside the room where they can focus and work. At the end of lunch and advisory, students and tutors will report back to club officers, who will then record the names of the student-tutor pairs. The names will later be submitted to the tutors teacher, who may decide to offer extra credit. The club will also maintain a list of tutors and the number of times they tutored other students for consideration of club prizes and leadership opportunities. C. Role of Club Officers Club officers will facilitate the tutoring sessions by periodically checking in with different tutoring groups and ensuring that the information presented are accurate. They may choose to give oral pop quizzes to groups to ensure that the student being

tutored is beginning to understand the topic. In addition, club officers will create lecture notes and worksheets related to the topics being tutored. Tutors will have the opportunity to use these worksheets and lecture notes to help their students in the comprehension of the respective topics.

III.

Recruitment
A. Students Needing Tutoring With reference to students current grades, it is likely that many students need help understanding the materials currently being taught. These topics may include electron configurations and chemical reactions, the two most recent topics. Students will be notified in class of the establishment of the Chemistry Club Tutoring System and will be encouraged to participate in the system to receive help. Students who wish to come to advisory sessions will need to submit their names to the teacher and receive an advisory pass to come to the tutoring session. B. Peer Tutors Students will also be allowed to sign up as tutors for topics in which they display expertise. They must then come to a tutor training session (offered one day each week, if necessary), where they will display to a club officer their understanding of the topic through informal oral presentations. Trained tutors will then be allowed to tutor their peers. Students receiving tutoring will be automatically qualified as tutors after they display their new understanding of the topic to a club officer. C. Former Students Students from previous years who have already taken Chemistry will also be invited to help current Chemistry students. These students will also need to clear their qualifications with a club officer before proceeding with tutoring.

IV.

Training of Tutors
Students will need to be trained before they are allowed to tutor other students. They will demonstrate to a club officer their comprehension of the subjects and their ability to explain it to a confused student. Tutors will be encouraged to use examples to demonstrate a concept to a student rather than simply directly providing the relevant equations and theorems. Students trained for tutoring will in turn be allowed to train other students for tutoring.

V.

New Material
A. Integration with Classes Students enrolled in Chemistry with Ms. Carlock have yet to cover Nuclear Chemistry, Lewis Structures, Organic Chemistry, Thermodynamics, Acids and Bases, Reaction Rates, and Equilibrium. The State requires all the topics to be covered in a Chemistry course. In past years, the Chemistry Club has worked with the classes in presenting a series of projects to teach specific Chemistry concepts to students. Such projects usually take place concurrently with the tutoring, and warrant extra credit to participants. Two possible topics for such projects are Nuclear Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. These topics are both isolated from the rest of the curriculum (Inorganic Chemistry) and can thus be successfully taught separately. B. Organic Chemistry By tradition, the Organic Chemistry unit for both AP Chemistry and regular Chemistry is taught outside of class time. On a selected date, AP Chemistry students and selected regular Chemistry students will be given an Organic Chemistry lecture after school. During the lecture, students will fill out three pages of lecture notes, which they will use as a reference to teach other students. During lunches after the initial lecture, students who have received lecture would become teachers and be paired up with students who wish to learn Organic Chemistry. The teachers will, over three lunch sessions, teach Organic Chemistry from their lecture notes (one page per session), and help their students fill out their own set of lecture notes. After a student has completed three lecture sessions, they will also be qualified to teach Organic Chemistry to other students. Members of the Chemistry Club will serve to facilitate the tutoring sessions. They will pair students up with qualified teachers and periodically check in with tutor groups to ensure the accuracy of information presented. They will also record the names of the tutor pairs. Usually, extra credit is given to any regular Chemistry student who successfully completes the three tutor sessions. AP Chemistry students are only given extra credit for teaching. This year, club officers may take a more active role in the Organic Chemistry project. They may redesign the three-page lecture notes to be more concise and clear. Club officers may also recruit former students to give the initial lecture. The Organic Chemistry project usually takes place in May and June.

C. Nuclear Chemistry Nuclear Chemistry, too, is mostly unrelated to the rest of the Chemistry curriculum. The topic is often skipped over completely in regular Chemistry (or covered in late May) and left for self-study in AP Chemistry. To cover more topics in the regular Chemistry curriculum and boost the grades of AP Chemistry students, it is reasonable to propose a project similar to the traditional Organic Chemistry project, though shorter (Nuclear Chemistry is a much shorter and easily comprehensible chapter). Club officers will compose lecture notes (2 pages should be sufficient) and allow AP Chemistry students to complete them using the Hein textbook. These students will in turn be paired up during lunch tutoring sessions with regular Chemistry students who wish to learn Nuclear Chemistry. Other procedures will be similar to those of the Organic Chemistry project. It seems reasonable for this project to take place in April.

VI.

Conclusion
Many students currently enrolled in Chemistry are struggling and will continue to do so unless action is taken. The Chemistry Club Tutoring System will act to clarify students current concerns; the Organic Chemistry and Nuclear Chemistry projects will rescue students grades with extra credit and allow the covering of the full Chemistry curriculum as required by the State of California without disturbing students class time learning. These approaches will allow students to finally gain a full experience of a Chemistry course.