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Title of the Experience

Didactic game to repeat the material

Name of the teacher

Monika Pawluś

Country where it took place

Poland

School typology

Lower Secondary School

Thematic Area

Chemistry

Experience typology

Teaching in class

Type of contact

Direct

Description of the Experience

For the students of the first grade of lower secondary school the inner structure of matter is one of the most difficult areas of chemistry. Students are introduced to topics related to the construction of the atom, the construction of the periodic table of chemical elements, chemical bonds, and identifying chemical formulas and writing equations of chemical reactions. They learn about the two most important chemical laws: the Proust's Law and the law of conservation of mass, and solve tasks related to the stoichiometric calculations. When the time comes to repeat the material of this area and take the test, students often say: “it is difficult”.
To make the repetitive lesson more attractive I conducted it in the form of a didactic game. At first, each student drew a lot, assigning her/her to a given group. Each group was given a piece of paper and markers.The game is based on the rule that the leader of the group choses question for specified number of points from a given thematic area. The more points one can gain the more difficult the question is. The themes included: atomic structure, the periodic table of chemical elements, chemical bonds and chemical reaction equations. Time assigned for the answer is 1 minute. If the answer was correct, group received a certain number of points in the form of electrons drawn on pieces of paper. The group with highest number of electrons won the competition. After the game, participants were assessed. At the end of the lesson, each student had individual task to find an element in the periodic table, which contained as many electrons as the student received during the didactic game, and then draw a model of an atom of that element.
After the lesson students were very happy. They said they really liked the lesson. It enabled them to repeat difficult material in a pleasant way.

Comments on this Teachers Experience

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Date: 2014.11.09

Posted by Katarína Javorová (Slovakia)

Didactic game has a great potential in the learning process. Through the game pupils can learn the knowledge, repeat the knowledge and yet do not even realize that they are learning. Many times they are surprised how much they know from Chemistry whereby they have a feeling that they are not good at it or that they do not or cannot understand it. Various competitions, quizzes, such as Millionaire and others, pupils know from TV or from home and they are very happy to play it. So why not to let them play it in the school? I have the experience with games on lessons of Chemistry. I give my pupils different crosswords, puzzles, riddles to solve; we play chemical bingo, dominoes, memory games.... My pupils like to play the games during the lessons so much that they even invented their own game called ChemistryPoly, it is something like Monopoly only for practicing chemical symbols and chemical formulas of inorganic compounds, properties of substances and safety in the chemical laboratory. They are playing the game even during breaks and they always add something new. Cards - tasks and questions, according to what subject matter we have discussed during the lessons. I have only good experiences with the games and I recommend each teacher to play it with his/her students.

Date: 2014.10.29

Posted by Cristina farzi (Romania)

Games are always a friendly way to introduce or to practice difficult concepts. Students get engage body and soul in the subject matter and in doing so they learn and also achieve the great feeling of satisfaction when learning.

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