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Teaching Students About The Periodic Table The Fun Way!

Let’s face it the attention span of students nowadays is quite short. Thanks to technology, social media, and their lifestyle of being glued to their phone or computer most of the time if they are at home. As a Science or Chemistry teacher, it would be a challenge on how to teach your students about the periodic table while reassuring to yourself that they indeed memorize it by heart and will never forget about the elements. So, are you in for a challenge? To give you an overview as to how to you can incorporate fun and make your students learn by heart the elements on the periodic table.

 

First, make use of a table setting type of exercise. Create a grid similar to that of the periodic table and put it on the wall. Make use of fresh magnet material of which you can purchase at craft stores. The exercise involves asking your students to put each of the element to its proper place. You can also do color coding of the elements. The more colorful it is, the more it can be enticing to your students. For sure, they are going to love putting the elements in their proper places. The best part of it all, you can make use of this exercise over and over again even if for next year, and the years to come. You do need to do this one time and be able to teach your students about elements the fun way.

 

Second, what better way to remember the elements through a song. You can make use of a song, and let your students memorize the 92 elements in a fun way. You can be creative and make use of a song that is child-friendly and change the verse with the elements, or you can get ideas from other teachers on how they come up with a song that’s all about the elements found on the periodic table. Now, learning the elements will never be as boring as ever.

 

Third, you can come up with a game. This is somewhat similar to that of the table setting exercise, but it is perfect for older students. You can ask the students as to what element is this – it has an atomic number 1 and has a symbol of H. When your student able to answer that, give a point, or bonus points to the first student who can complete an entire row or column.

 

Always make sure that the techniques you make use of to enable your students to memorize the periodic table should be appropriate for their ages. In this way, it would be much easier for them to memorize the elements by heart, while at the same time having so much fun. As a teacher, you should be on the constant hunt for ways and means to make it much easier for your students to learn. Why? Remember, you are competing with a lot of distractions of their minds such as social media and their gadgets. Also, they do have a short attention span. You want to make sure you can catch their attention fast and still be able to learn.

 

If you want to be more innovative, you could always come up with your strategy. You can mix and match different techniques, or come up with your own, an original. Either way, your goal should be to enable your students to learn the periodic table the fun way. Be able to remember each of them even when they grow up perhaps.