Carbon chemistry

In-person teacher professional development courses from the Royal Society of Chemistry

The focus throughout this course is on developing an understanding of simple carbon chemistry using molecular models to help reinforce the link between teaching and learning activities and the underlying chemistry. The strengths and limitations of the models will be assessed in order to avoid further misconceptions at a later stage.

Pre-16 courses (only) 

Learning objectives

Participants will learn about:

  • the sequence of key ideas that students need in order to understand carbon chemistry
  • a range of contexts for teaching carbon chemistry
  • strategies and activities to support the teaching and learning of the alkanes, alkenes, alcohols and carboxylic acids

Learning outcomes

Participants will be able to:

  • design a sequence of learning to support the development of key ideas in carbon chemistry
  • apply a range of different contexts to teaching key aspects of carbon chemistry at pre-16 level
  • apply models to help students represent structures of carbon compounds and explain the factors that lead to variation in the physical properties

Each course is tailored to specific needs, so objectives and outcomes may vary slightly from those given here.

Science classroom

Classroom resources

Activities from our Carbon Chemistry professional development course for teachers

Graphene sheets model , Nanotechnology

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