Lewis structures, VSEPR theory thoughts

My fourth time through this topic in lecture and lab is yet an other new beginning. I rewrote my handout AGAIN for the third time. My supplementary handout started out as a four-page document, evolved into an eight-page document and has now become a 12-page document. Whewwwww! Challenging. Every time I teach this topic I realize more and more exactly what the students don't understand. The strange thing is that out of the three textbooks I own on chemistry, only one actually explains it thoroughly from the lewis dot models to the VSEPR shapes to the dipole moments/polarity and overall symmetry of each molecule. Is this a new topic? I doubt it. I'm trying to understand why none of the book authors can sufficiently explain it.

Ionic and Covalent Bonding

This week my students did the molecular model lab which is a bummer for them because we are one class period behind in lecture. So- if they didn't take the time to really read chapter 8 thoroughly before lab (most of them probably didn't) then the lab probably went in one ear and out the other.

I'm not sure if it makes more sense to try to explain ionic vs covalent bonding before or after Lewis structures/VSEPR shapes. By learning to use the Lewis Dot model students can predict shapes which influence the overall bonding characteristics of molecules. The larger concepts of ionic vs covalent bonding can be explained without knowledge of Lewis structures, however, the details seem much clearer once the model is explained.