2014 № 7

Vice Editor-in-Chief of the journal considers the critical situation in the modern chemical education at school.

Associate Head of the Legal Department of the Administration of the All-Russian Trade Union of the Education is answering our readers’ questions.

The story about sweet taste chemistry is continued. The concepts of anti-sweeteners and hypoglycemic effect are defined. The examples of anti-sweeteners are discussed.

Realization of FSES requires research and evaluation focused on subject and meta-subject educational outcomes. Consequently, there is a necessity to develop meta-subject effort criteria and indicators as well as specify appropriate tools. This article presents the author's vision of the solution to the problem as well as the ways and means of achieving the meta-subject results in chemistry class.

One of the possible ways of forming and developing universal educational activities by implementing didactic tasks with the use of various types of students’ activities at the lessons of chemistry is discussed.

2014 has been declared the Year of Culture. Studying chemistry and its laws give better understanding of the world around us, its uniqueness, beauty, and thus to enhance personal culture and experiences. According to the Sanitary Regulations and Norms (SanPiN) Chemistry has a high rank of difficulty in a scale of school subjects:11 points (the second place after Physics -12 points). It is difficult to maintain students’ interest to such a difficult subject, but it is possible to solve the problem using various forms of organizing lessons. Dramatized lessons developed by the teacher individually or in association with students make a positive contribution to the solution of the problem, permitting to promote activity, to discover potential talents of teachers as well as students as actors, directors, decorators. Staging, emotional involvement and role playing promote self-realization, cooperation and creativity, responsibility of students and their positive attitude to Chemistry as an important science. Dramatized lessons correspond to the system of activity approach to education and meet the FGOS requirements: there is a democratic type of communication, the teacher abandons the authoritative role in favor of acting as the organizer, students make serious efforts in working with information sources. The experience of a dramatized lesson is described by the author in the article.

The author presents a connect-the-dots type dictation for revising and testing 8 form students’ knowledge of chemical element symbols.

Interdisciplinary (chemistry and biology) elective course “Industrial activity and human health” (68 h, 2 h a week) was developed for systematization of students’ knowledge. The course program and an example of the course lesson are given in the article. For forming systematic knowledge

The concepts of «text», «educational text», «integrated educational text» are defined in the article. Text features and properties are discussed and the generalized classification of educational texts designed on the basis of the analysis of psychological, pedagogical and encyclopaedic literature is presented. The author gives special attention to the classification of educational texts according to their dominating didactic parameters (informational, instructive or motivating texts). The examples of integrated educational texts for the elective course «These magic minerals» are presented in the article.

The author discusses the peculiarities of electronic publications for secondary schools analyzing the experience of schools in Kaluga and the Kaluga region. Their possible application in teaching chemistry is discussed according to their structure and contents. Some technical difficulties in the variation of the material at the stage of planning and conducting lessons and classes of additional education have been revealed.

The article presents data on the properties and other characteristics of the chemical elements from potassium to nickel, most clearly distinguished from all others.

History of the development of industrial production of fertilizers in our country in the period before the 1930s is considered. Some technological features of phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen fertilizers production in pre-revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union are discussed.

The author presents the scenario for the intellectual game for the 9-11 form students. The game is devoted to the anniversary of a great Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov.

In this article you can find information about the holiday which appeared recently in the North America – “The Mole Day”. The aim of this holiday is to attract students’ attention and raise their motivation to studying Chemistry. The dates of celebrating this holiday related to the number of 6*1023 (the Avogadro number) are suggested. The author suggests discussing possible scenarios of celebrating such a holiday. A program of organizing “The Mole Day” at school is presented.

The article deals with the general principles for extra-curricular work in chemistry in secondary schools. It has been emphasized that school chemistry evenings, problem youth forums, chemistry games, quiz competitions, chemical Olympiad, chemistry weeks and months, etc. are important and long-remembered experience in the life of each student.

The possibilities of application of the author’s technique of problem-based teaching of chemistry at secondary school are shown in this paper. The given technique is based on the system of new problem experiments developed by the author. There are more than 100 problem-based experiments in this system in total. Problem-based experiments in combination with an advanced technique of task-oriented teaching of chemistry are included in the general system of developing teaching of chemistry at secondary school. New problem-based experiments and advanced technique of training and educating students have been tested experimentally in schools of Moscow and Moscow Region. Application of the new methodical system of training of chemistry at secondary schools has shown its high efficiency in practice.

A new technique for studying the topic "Corrosion of Metals" is presented in the article. The suggested technique is based on chemical experiment – an instrument for deepening and expanding the knowledge of students, developing their cognitive interest.

The experimental research project on the topic “Determination of food acids in vegetables and fruits” for the 10-form students’ extra-curricular activity is described.

In this paper the methods of growing crystals of ammonium dihydrogen phosphate in the form of druse and on models of trees of cardboard and wool threads are described. The use of food colorants for dyeing crystals is considered.