Chemistry Help for teachers
If you teach A-level Chemistry, you're welcome to use Chemistry Help with your classes. Link directly to an activity, put it on Teams or your VLE, use it during a lesson, or suggest it for independent practice.
Chemistry Help covers AQA and OCR A, including AS content. Most resources work without an account.
Useful starting points
Tell me what would be useful
Teacher requests are useful because you see the gaps from the classroom side. Report a problem, request a resource or suggest a feature.
Please don't include student names or other pupil personal information.
Teacher FAQ
Who is behind Chemistry Help?
Chemistry Help is made and maintained by Dr T Smith, a chemistry teacher and tutor with more than 20 years' classroom experience.
I build the resources around the chemistry students actually need, including the misconceptions and mistakes that repeatedly cause problems at A-level.
Is Chemistry Help free?
Yes. Chemistry Help is free for students and teachers.
There are no paid student accounts. Signing in to My Chemistry is free too.
Which courses do you cover?
Chemistry Help covers AQA A-level Chemistry and OCR A Chemistry A, including AS / Year 12 and Year 13 / full A-level content.
Students choose their exam board, and board-specific differences stay in the relevant questions and guidance.
Do students need an account?
No. Students can use most Chemistry Help activities without signing in.
If they want to save their work, they can sign in to My Chemistry with Google. My Chemistry then keeps their scores, missed questions and progress so they can pick up where they left off on another visit or device.
Google handles the sign-in, so students don't need another Chemistry Help password. The site may occasionally suggest saving progress, but students can carry on practising without an account.
What if my school blocks Google sign-in?
School-managed Google Workspace accounts can require administrator approval before students use a third-party sign-in, particularly for accounts belonging to under-18s.
If My Chemistry is blocked, your Google Workspace administrator can approve access. Students can still use the public Chemistry Help resources without signing in.
Can I link directly to an activity?
Yes. Please do.
You can send students straight to a calculation exercise, quiz, practical task or topic page.
You're also welcome to put links on Teams, Google Classroom, your school VLE or your own lesson resources.
Can I use Chemistry Help during lessons?
Yes. Display an activity on the board, let students work through it independently, use it for retrieval practice or send it away for homework and revision.
How do you decide what goes into the questions?
I write the resources for the current AQA and OCR A specifications.
My teaching experience, public exam-board guidance and the mistakes students make all influence what I add and where I put more practice. I also use feedback from students and teachers to decide what needs improving or building next.
How do you check the chemistry?
I remain responsible for what goes live on Chemistry Help.
I use a range of tools to help me build, check and test the site, but I make the decisions about the chemistry and the final resource.
If something is wrong or unclear, please tell me.
I think I've found an error. What should I do?
Please tell me.
Choose Spotted a problem on the teacher feedback form and send the page or question if you can. Chemistry errors and misleading questions take priority.
Can I request a resource?
Yes. Teacher requests are particularly useful because you know where students get stuck and which bits of the course are awkward to find good practice for.
Choose Resource request and tell me the board, year and topic if they're relevant.
I can't promise to build every suggestion, but repeated requests will strongly influence what I work on next.
Can I suggest a feature too?
Yes. Choose Feature idea on the same form.
It could be a change to an existing activity or something new that would make Chemistry Help more useful with a class.
How does Chemistry Help handle student data?
Chemistry Help is built to comply with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, with privacy and data minimisation built into the service.
Students can use most public resources without an account. Chemistry Help does not use advertising trackers or sell student data. Anonymous site statistics are first-party and aggregate.
If a student signs in, My Chemistry stores the account and learning information needed to save their progress. Google Sign-In supplies basic identity information for the account; it does not give Chemistry Help access to Gmail, Google Drive or Calendar.
Read the Chemistry Help privacy and statistics page and the My Chemistry privacy notice for the details.
Can I set Chemistry Help as homework?
Yes. You can already send students a direct link to any public activity.
I'm also working on proper homework links. The first version is likely to let you set an activity and see useful class-level information such as how many students completed it, overall scores and which questions caused the most difficulty.
If there's something you'd particularly want from a homework system, please put it on the teacher wishlist above.
Can I see an individual student's score?
Not at the moment. Chemistry Help doesn't currently have teacher accounts or class lists.
Students can see and save their own progress through My Chemistry.
If I add named student results later, I'll build the privacy and school-data controls that go with them.
Do I need your permission to share Chemistry Help?
No. You're welcome to share links to the public resources with students or colleagues.
If your school has its own process for approving external websites, this page and the privacy information should give whoever carries out that check a useful starting point.
Can I tell other teachers about it?
Please do.
Chemistry Help is free, so recommendations are one of the most useful ways you can support it. If a resource saves you some preparation time or works well with a class, mentioning it to another chemistry teacher genuinely helps.
And if several teachers tell me the same thing is missing, there's a fair chance I'll build it.