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7 of the Best Science Resources for Teaching the Periodic Table in KS3 Chemistry

Cover all the elements with these lesson plans, printouts, activities and ideas for your secondary chemistry classroom...

Lloyd Burgess

Added: 20th June 2018

Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium…Adamantium? Unobtainium?...er…the Infinity Stones?...HORCRUXES?!?

OK, so perhaps we don’t remember the precise order of everything on the periodic table of elements, but probably you’re far better versed with it than we are.

However, if you’re looking for some new and interesting ways of teaching it to your students we’ve picked out some of the best resources available.

KS3 Curriculum requirents

Pupils should be taught about:

The varying physical and chemical properties of different elements
The principles underpinning the Mendeleev periodic table
The periodic table: periods and groups; metals and non-metals
How patterns in reactions can be predicted with reference to the periodic table
The properties of metals and non-metals
The chemical properties of metal and non-metal oxides with respect to acidity

1 | Large printable periodic table

If you need decent-sized images to print out or share on devices then we’ve got a couple here. One has the colour coding, one does not.

You can download and print them here.

2 | Interactive periodic table

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s interactive periodic table features history, alchemy, podcasts, videos, and data trends across the periodic table.

You can click each element to read detailed information, and the tabs at the top to explore each section. Plus, you can use the buttons to change your view of the table. We tried it and it was like a child messing with the Christmas tree light settings.

It also includes Murray Robertson’s Visual Elements images (seen in the picture above), which aim to produce a vibrant representation of the elements, not just by rendering images of their physical appearance but also by investigating the manner in which they affect our daily lives in largely unseen and often unexpected ways. Fancy.

Try it out at rsc.org/periodic-table.

3 | Explore how elements were discovered, named and organised

Taking its inspiration from the recent discovery of new elements in the periodic table, this chemistry lesson from Dr Joanna Rhodes is intended to get your students thinking about about how elements have been discovered, named and organised according to rules set by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

The students are then tasked with coming up with their own element names, and deducing the positions of various elements in the periodic table by investigating their properties.

Finally, they contemplate whether we may have reached the ‘end’ of of the periodic table – and if not, what the implications would be if any new, heavier elements were to be discovered.

Download this free lesson plan here.

4 | ‘The Elements’ by Tom Lehrer

This one’s just for fun. If you’re not familiar with Tom Lehrer’s song listing all of the elements you should be, and your students should be too. If for nothing else it’s worth it for his audacious effort to rhyme ‘Harvard’ with ‘discovered’.

Give it a watch in class.

5 | My favourite element

To many students being introduced to it for the first time, the periodic table will be mostly a random assortment of sciency words, and even with the ones they have heard of they might struggle to name a use for it.

This series of videos on stem.org explore the chemistry of the modern world by asking colleagues, celebrities and scientists to choose their favourite element and explain why they liked it so much.

It’s a great way to get a glimpse into what different scientists are doing with various elements today, and learn a bit about each one along the way.

Watch them all here.

6 | The genius of Mendeleev’s periodic table

This short TedEd video and accompanying questions and resources look at why Dmitri Mendeelev’s periodic table is the one that has endured, even though the elements had been listed and carefully arranged, and even organised by similar properties before.

Lou Serico explains via Ekaaluminium, an element whose existence Mendeelev predicted decades before it was discovered why this might be the case.

It’s full of enthusiasm without delving into trainspotter levels of fanboying, with lines like: “The periodic table isn’t just another trendy icon. It’s a massive slab of human genius, up there with the Taj Mahal, the Mona Lisa, and the ice cream sammich.”

Watch, and learn, here.