In her 38 years of teaching chemistry and AP® Chemistry, Laura Slocum knows exactly what her students prefer. In our latest Norton Learning Blog post, Laura shares how Chemistry: An Atoms-Focused Approach, which emphasizes visual learning and couples perfectly with modeling instruction, keeps her students engaged and curious.
Category: High School Disciplines
Research as Recursive Conversations: Using “They Say / I Say” in Your AP® Seminar
As a first-year AP® Seminar teacher, I was really nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to offer my students all the support they needed. But, since my students had access to “They Say / I Say,” I felt as if I had a mentor teacher with me at all times
Why You Should Engage Students with Primary Sources in Your ELA Classroom
Rebecca Newland is a high school librarian who spent 15 years as a high school English teacher before switching, which has been more fun than she could have imagined.
Maps, Primary Sources, and Practice Questions: Effectively Prepping for AP® World History
Daniel Hood is a high school history teacher at a private school in Southwest Virginia where he teaches AP® World History, AP® European History, and AP® Comparative Government. I love maps. Maybe it’s because of all the high fantasy novels I read as a young adult, which would have been incomplete without the map inside the first few pages that brought the whole fantasy world into sharper relief. Or it might have been …
Chemistry for Humans: Why the Right Textbook Matters
I have never encountered a student with strong opinions about whether they learn kinetics before or after thermodynamics, or which theory best explains expanded-octet structures, or whether quantum mechanics should occur early or late in the text. Fortunately, there are still many ways in which the viewpoints of instructors and students align perfectly. I’d like to share a few of those human-centric areas of agreement that can be supported by an effective textbook.
Teaching Students to Think Like Historians: Making Secondary Sources a Primary Focus in the U.S. History Classroom
According to AP® instructor Craig Nicoletti, students must be taught more than how to memorize information. In our latest Norton Learning Blog post, AP® instructor Nicoletti encourages his students to “think like historians” by synthesizing historical information, constructing arguments about the past, and recalling specific historical details.
Behind the Scenes of INSECTOPOLIS: A Q&A with Author Peter Kuper
The Norton Learning Blog team recently sat down with award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper to discuss how he channeled his love of insects into his newest graphic novel, Insectopolis. Kuper shares how COVID-19 inspired his work, why humans should care about insects now more than ever, and how this title might just inspire a future generation of scientists and artists.
Exhibiting in the Humanities: How Showcasing Student Work Can Transform History and English Classrooms
Craig Nicoletti is an AP U.S. History teacher and Humanities Program Chair at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis.
Five Tips for Navigating Your First Dual Credit Course
Morgan Cline is a 2025 graduate of Teays Valley High School in Ashville, Ohio, currently studying aviation and music education at The Ohio State University. Imagine starting your first year of college. New school, new friends, new living arrangements, potentially a new city to call home, new activities—new everything. For many, this is the biggest …
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Storying the Classroom: Why ELA Is the Perfect Place for Ethnic Studies
Since the fall of 2021, I’ve taught a class called English 12 Ethnic Cultures, a course designed specifically to incorporate Ethnic Studies principles into English Language Arts. After doing this work for some time, I am convinced that the Language Arts classroom is a perfect place for this kind of work. English teachers are natural storytellers, and our classrooms can be the place where students’ own stories emerge.