In the era of the 2000s and 2010s, many educators, including myself, found themselves in a familiar predicament: the Sunday evening scramble for PowerPoint presentations to fill the void of a hastily planned lesson for the following Monday. However, it wasn’t until a few years into my teaching career that I began to question the effectiveness of this approach. It took me longer than I care to admit to realize that the hours spent searching for PowerPoint slides were actually time wasted. Instead, I should have been focusing on how to best explain the content, rather than relying on PowerPoint to do the teaching for me.
In my opinion, a visualizer is the most versatile tool for explaining and modeling content. The teacher has complete control over the release of new information, and by building ideas slowly from a blank canvas, I can keep students’ attention focused on what I want to convey.
Let me illustrate this with a typical Year 10 chemistry lesson on covalent bonding:
Whiteboards at the ready, I ask the students to draw the electron structure of fluorine in 30 seconds. After a brief pause, I call on some students to display their work under the visualizer. I point out common mistakes, such as putting too many electrons in the outer shell.
I then ask the students to turn and talk: How can we find out the number of electrons in the outer shell of fluorine? After a brief discussion, I cold call on a student who correctly answers that fluorine has 7 electrons in its outer shell.
I then display the periodic table under the visualizer to reinforce the concept. I explain that fluorine is in group 7 and should have 7 electrons in its outer shell. I invite the students to correct their diagrams if necessary.
I then introduce the idea that fluorine is not happy with 7 electrons in its outer shell, as it would be more stable with 8 electrons. I draw another fluorine atom and use dots instead of crosses to represent electrons, explaining that all electrons are the same in reality.
I then explain that the two unstable fluorine atoms share an electron to become stable, forming a covalent bond. I highlight the bonding pair of electrons to emphasize the key content.
I then count the number of electrons in the outer shell of each fluorine atom, which is now 8, indicating stability. I congratulate the students who made it through the lesson, encouraging them on their journey to becoming master chemists.
While I could have delivered this content using a PowerPoint slide or other methods, using the visualizer allows me to deliver information at an appropriate pace for the learners in the class, while also emphasizing key content more easily than if I had projected a fully annotated diagram or list of bullet points.
In conclusion, embracing the visualizer in your teaching is a simple, evidence-informed strategy that will greatly improve the effectiveness of your lessons. Don’t hesitate to incorporate it into your teaching – you won’t regret it!
Dan is a science teacher and Head of Department in the South West of England. He is committed to continuously improving his own teaching and creating free resources showcasing careers in the STEM subjects on his website. Dan is also a dedicated tutor at PMT Education.
*Please note the intended irony in this list of bullet points.
