A Unique Chemistry Class - True Story

The blog post gets the tag 'True Story' because it is pulled from one of my own memories of school days. In the 8th class (or grade 8), we got upgraded from learning general science (till grade 7) to specific branches of science--physics, biology and chemistry. It was the first time we had three different textbooks in our science curriculum, and hence three different teachers to teach them with three different styles. Our chemistry teacher had completely different way of teaching. Probably, he was the first one to introduce me to the exploratory learning concept.

Our syllabus majorly included introduction to the elements and covered their physical/chemical properties, uses and so on. Our teacher hardly spent time with us in the classroom, may be he didn't believe in reading out the information in the class and making it a dull and boring lecture. Instead, he use to take us to the laboratory, show us the elements and actually allow us to experiment and test their properties under his surveillance. So, I learned that sodium when in contact with water explodes by actually dropping a tiny piece of sodium in water, and knew that hydrocloric acid has irritating pungent odor before my teacher told me so.

Almost all our lectures, throughout the year, were completed in the laboratory and we had hardly felt it as a lecture. Our curious minds and playful hearts just had fiun experimenting and exploring. And in the due course, we had learned so much and so well that our basics in chemistry remained with us, always.

Making Your Child’s First Lesson in Alphabets Easy and Effective: Choosing What to Teach and What not to Teach

What is the first thing your child learns in a school? Aren’t they the Alphabets?

Since learning alphabets is the first major step in a child’s academic process, it is very essential that your child learns these alphabets properly. And it is very essential you teach your child properly using easy to understand examples.
One of the traditional ways of teaching alphabets is associating each alphabet with a real life thing and let the child know what the alphabet stands for. Hence, we introduce the alphabets as ‘A’ for ‘Apple’, ‘B’ for ‘Ball’ and so on.
In this short article, we will discuss this traditional method of teaching the alphabets. The prime aim of the article is to give you an idea about good examples and bad examples of associating a real life object with an alphabet.

Let me explain this point with a scenario.

Ravi and Roma are husband and wife. They have a three year old son. When this enthusiastic couple tried teaching their son his first alphabets, they landed up in a tricky situation. Ravi had purchased a very colourful alphabet book and the couple started teaching their son with the aid of that book. Initially, they had a tough time teaching few letters because their son couldn’t relate to the examples for those letters. The book had associations like ‘I’ for ‘Igloo’, ‘K’ for ‘Kangaroo’, ‘Q’ for ‘Quill’, and ‘X’ for ‘Xylophone’. The child use to frequently ask questions about the unknown pictures even when the parents tried to give different examples.


It is difficult for a three year old child to understand the concepts like igloo and quill. A child at that age will usually perceive an ‘Igloo’ as some form of house or structure and ‘Quill’ as some kind of feather. Though using animal names as examples for alphabets is a good idea, it would be difficult for a child to relate to ‘Kangaroo’ for two reasons: first, the spelling is lengthy for a child learning the alphabets for the first time;

and second, kangaroo is not an animal common to a three year old, except if the child is from a country like Australia. As for ‘Xylophone’, it is difficult even for older children to understand what exactly it is.

The key is to keep the examples simple and short for the child to comprehend their meaning on its own. Thus, the book could have given examples, such as ‘I’ for ‘Ice’, ‘K’ for ‘Kite’, ‘Q’ for ‘Queen’ and ‘X’ for ‘Xmas Tree’.
You can plan your child’s alphabet learning process wherein you gradually increase the difficultly level of examples depending on the child’s progress. For the first few alphabet lessons, you can use, as far as possible, simple three or four lettered easy to comprehend examples depicting things your child comes across in day-to-day life.

A Teacher's Responsibility: Choosing Teaching as a Career

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

To read the article, click the link:
A Teacher's Responsibility: Choosing Teaching as a Career