[SinkingTako]

I just graduated from high school, and recently one of my teachers asked if I'd like to be a chemistry trainer for the 10th Grade students next year starting from January (of course!). I'm tasked to prepare them for a junior chemistry olympiad which will take place in May next year. There will be about 30 students, 3 hours lesson time per week (consecutively), I will have to cover the whole of the high school chemistry syllabus. Currently the students should have a okay-ish level of understanding in chemistry (like structure of atoms, the basic principles of bonding, kinetics, acid/base reactions, but no organic chemistry or equilibrium calculations kind of stuff).

So I would like to ask if anyone has tips on how to make lessons engaging? I've attended such trainings in the past, and most of the time the trainer will just ramble on and on feeding a lot of content, while the students will get sleepy either because (1) they don't understand anything, or (2) it's just too boring to sit there and listen. In this case I know that sustaining interest is very important, because my school is an all-girls school and not many kids are interested in the sciences (not stereotyping, really just a fact). I hope that they will not just do well for the competition but also end up liking chemistry as a subject. Yet there is a lot of content to cover in a very short period of time so I think the balance will be quite hard to find.

I've thought of stuff like asking them to do questions in class and present their answers on the board, form groups and get them to compete and be study buddies after school (most likely may not work due to the school culture), using molecular models/get some chemicals into class as live demo, very mainstream stuff.

Any ideas?

To Professors/Lecturers: how do you teach your lectures that worked for students?

Thanks so much in advance!

[kriggy]

Show them experiments - you know, changes in color etc.. This works most of the time