Experiences

Using previous knowledges of students by teaching topic "Drugs"

Darina Dolešová

Slovakia

Chemistry

Teaching in class

Direct

Curriculum topic: Drugs and drug administration

In the past I taught this curriculum as a lecture for the students. It was uninteresting for them, they were passive and not participating.
The curriculum is not difficult, but my goal was to make them interested in the topic. I wanted them to find out where they meet with different kinds of drugs and medicines and what their practical significance is.
Each of the students has already met with some drug (medicine). Therefore, I decided to give a chance during the lessons to their knowledge and make them involved in explaining the subject matter.
I started the lesson with a conversation about what they can tell about medicines. We explained the difference between the drug and the medicine
At the beginning of the school year, students had the opportunity to choose one of the offered topics that we will discuss during the school year. Their task was handling the topic according to my instructions and follow the given pattern to prepare a PowerPoint presentation. After an introduction to the topic we watched a presentation from the student, who was responsible of preparing this topic. The presentation included basic points:
- Distribution of drugs (raw materials, semi-finished products, drugs)
- State, in which the medication can be administered
- Methods of obtaining or manufacturing of the drugs
- Division of drugs according to their effects (analgesics, antipyretics, ...)
The student talked about the various points in the presentation, presented her pictures of different types of medicaments.
After the students acquired basic information about what goes on in the curriculum topic, they were supposed to think what sicknesses and diseases they have had previously and what kind of drugs they have received for each specific treatment. The task was to correctly classify the drug to the designated medicine groups. In the next section I determined what health problem a person is suffering and students should try to determine what type of medicine the patient would need to take to cure his or her problem. This way we got to the issue of free use of drugs. When can the medicine be used by ourselves and when it is necessary to go to the doctor. We also talked about drug addiction, abuse of drugs such as narcotics and hypnotics, animal testing of the drugs for manufacturing purposes. In the end of the lesson, I read them a story about the discoverer of Penicillin - Alexander Fleming.
I think these types of classes are popular with students. They learn the essence of the curriculum during the class time and know that what they are learning. This way the gained knowledge will be useful in their everyday lives.