2023 AACT Resources to Help Teach the Periodic Table

To help teachers plan for the 2023-2024 school year, AACT will highlight resources from our high school resource library that can be used to reinforce topics in different units. Our last post highlighted resources to support an Atomic Structure unit. We will now focus on new resources to use in a Periodic Table unit plan.

Kick off your periodic table unit with the What Type of Element Are You? Simulation! Formatted like popular online quizzes, this simulation will ask fun questions and pair students up with a family on the periodic table based on how they see themselves. The accompanying lesson plan adds in some depth to align it with content objectives. 

We have also added several student activities that will help students learn about the element names, symbols, and periodic properties:

• Bring in literacy using the Periodic Table and Transuranium Elements activity, which is part of the ACS Chemical Landmarks series. Students will learn about these elements through reading about some of their discoveries.
• The Atomic and Ionic Radii animation shows the different sizes of atoms in the third period or the sixth group to see trends across periods and down groups. 
• Your students can test their knowledge of the Periodic Table by solving the Periodic Table Trivia Crossword Puzzle. Many of the questions can be answered by examining a periodic table, while others are related to specific elements and may require additional research.

We hope that these activities can help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit about the Periodic Table. Most of these lessons were made possible by great teachers who shared their own resources. We need your help to keep the collection growing. Do you have a great demonstration, activity, or lesson related to this topic that you would like to share with the community? Please send it along for consideration.