Teaching Strategies

Topic Strategy Title Description
Hands Analogy

Get students to recognise the importance of functional groups: Start with hydrocarbons, and talk about skeletal structure and say we can ignore the hydrogens, they are kind of like your skin, but the functional groups are the things that do things, so they’re your hands. The functional groups...

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Cartoons

Use little cartoons to show different representations of functional groups, but point out that they are not the reality.

Pop Quizzes

Throw in pop quizzes when you discuss a concept and then give an example and give them a few minutes to work through that example. That's moving towards a partially flipped classroom context. Also use worksheets to give an increased level of formalisation to it.

Models to Demonstrate Core Mechanism

Use model kits for third year pericyclic reactions: It's visual and it's used every lesson because everything uses the same rule. That's the message to get to them - that you’re not teaching four new things. It's all the same rules. They just move slightly differently. So they see the same...

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Electron Auction Analogy

When talking about curly arrows and electrons moving, talk about reactions as a trading port for electrons - electron auction - in terms of trying to understand who has got electrons and who wants them.

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