We decided to take a step back from the chemistry textbook treadmill today.  After a brief review of the Lesson 11 worksheet to help address some confusion students had about how to approach their work yesterday (whiteboard notes shown below), students assembled into groups of four to tackle the “Families of Elements” activity.  For their work, students divided up the reading for the activity, with each student responding to two of the questions in the accompanying worksheet.  After sharing answers as a group, students applied their enhanced understanding of the periodic table to a card sort activity.  Students grouped various attributes attributable to specific columns or sections of the periodic table, further reinforcing the key ideas we have learned thus far.