Figure 1
Chemistry is one of the fundamental subjects introduced in Secondary and Higher Secondary School curriculum. The traditional way of teaching chemistry involves theoretical and visual tools. The experimental kits available focus more on the observations or the effects which at times fail to address the fundamentals. Moreover, unfortunately, the course content in standard texts is not well connected. High school students consider chemistry as one of the dry subjects which requires lot of cramming and memorizing. A play-way approach works best not only to address the fundamentals but to make the subject more interesting. Use of innovative, cost effective tools like board and card games can make the subject more interesting and easy to understand. Tata Centre for Technology and Design (TCTD), IIT Bombay, under the domain of ‘Education’ is working on a compendium of board and card games to make the teaching-learning process for Chemistry meaningful, well connected, and fascinating. The objective is not to replace the traditional teaching pedagogy but to complement it. The present focus is on standards VII and VIII where chemistry is introduced. A part of this compendium is a card game CHEMPLAY which addresses two important aspects of chemistry viz.: introduction to first twenty elements and formation of simple compounds.