Hello, my name is Verónica Simón and the title of our project is”The Periodic Table”
What you did in your activity?
The main objective of this project was that the students learn about the periodic table and we also wanted to involve them in its creation and design. The project consisted of reproducing a periodic table with dimensions of 20 cm x 15 cm on one of the walls at our school.
In the project, students from different grades worked together. The high school students took the measurements of the wall to decide what size tile to choose, they looked for information on the uses of each of the elements of the table and represented this use by means of a drawing.
The students of 1st and 2nd ESO learned the techniques of painting on tiles with ceramic chalk and also made the drawings that represent the uses of the elements. The students worked on this project in the classes of Art, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and also in the science club.
The project was carried out during the months of February and March and was inaugurated during the science week held between April 8th and 12th of this year.
What resources helped you to implement the activity?
To carry out the project we made use of the financial aid received by the science club, from the Xunta de Galicia. With this money, we could buy more than the 118 tiles that represent each of the elements and several boxes of ceramic chalk. We also paid the ceramist who varnished and baked the tiles and we also bought stickers with the names of the elements and their mass and atomic numbers.
How did you involve your audience?
In order for the students to participate in the project, we first spoke with the departments involved. We then went on to organize a meeting with the students to inform them of the implementation of this project and from then on everything went smoothly.
What was th pedagogical value of the activity?
Each of the participants feels part of the project and this was reflected by the fact that it was placed on the wall of the entrance to the school. During breaks, we could see students observing the periodic table, sometimes individually, and other times in groups commenting on which tiles their colleagues had painted or even showing which tiles they had painted themselves. In addition, the exhibition of this table served as a showcase for the primary schools that visited us during the science week and as a pedagogical use for future academic courses.
Why others should use this or other similar methods with their students?
It is a joy to see how the students still observe the periodic table every day, with interest, with motivation and without actually realizing that they are studying something so valuable for science.