Born in 1995, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tung is one of the youngest teachers to be honored as Hanoi's Dedicated and Creative Teacher in 2024. Although he has only been working for 6 years, Mr. Tung has been entrusted with the task of leading the team of excellent students in natural science - chemistry of Bac Tu Liem district.

However, the achievement of training excellent students is not the main reason why he is special. The 9X teacher puts most of his passion and creativity into ordinary students, helping them to change from being indifferent and afraid of chemistry to loving, being passionate and seeing learning chemistry as a fun thing.

Learning Chemistry by Playing Games: Why Not?

The 2018 general education program puts chemistry, physics, and biology into a common subject called natural science. Much knowledge of natural science in general and chemistry in particular is relatively abstract, difficult to understand, and difficult to remember.

When he started teaching at Phu Dien Secondary School, the young teacher Nguyen Thanh Tung, who had just graduated, realized the psychological difficulties his young students had in natural science class.

"Children can only learn when they are interested. What children are most interested in is playing. But what do they like to play, I have to find the answer," said Mr. Tung about his journey to finding a teaching method that helps students play and still study well.

Step one, Mr. Tung got to know his students. When he saw that the distance between them was close enough, he asked his students how to make them interested in class. The students answered honestly: "Studying is very interesting, but sometimes we really want to play games."

The teacher asked the student what games he liked to play. The student answered werewolf, uno, exploding kittens... So the teacher asked him to play with him to learn about the games.

Playing board games with his students, Mr. Tung quickly grasped the rules and the "touch points" of each game. The idea of ​​making a deck of cards with similar rules but incorporating natural science knowledge of chemistry for the children to learn through play came to the young teacher's mind.

That's how the board games "made by Mr. Tung" were born. He researched graphic software to transform the decks, designing cards in a "teen" style, humorous and "ignorant" but in fact very knowledgeable.

Werewolf turned into a game about cells. Uno turned into a game about chemical elements. Exploding Kittens turned into a game about chemical compounds. The dry and confusing KNO3, CaCO3, NaCl suddenly became simple and interesting when they became card names with witty definitions.

Like " Here's explosives, here's explosives! My mixture with C and S will explode immediately " (KNO3), " The lifeless limestone is often found on the street. I'm also in eggshells " (CaC03), " The ocean is mine. I'm the vast lord. Wherever I go, people praise me as: Salty " (NaCl).

Every time there is a relevant topic in class, Mr. Tung throws out a board game for his students to play. His board games are eye-catching, novel, and free, so all students enjoy them.

"The children took the lessons home to play with great interest and were very proactive. They not only played during class and recess, but also brought them home to play with.

Learning while playing, playing while learning makes the subject feel familiar and interesting. For example, instead of calling the cards by their original names, the children call them by the chemical names of the inorganic compounds on the cards. The whole game only hears the bustling, excited sounds of "I play the base card, you play the acid card".

Natural science knowledge of chemistry automatically enters the children's heads without having to force them to memorize it," Mr. Tung shared.

Having succeeded in using board games in teaching, Mr. Tung continued to research and explore converting difficult knowledge content into games. Up to now, he has designed 5 highly applicable board games. Among them, there is 1 game for 6th graders, 2 games for 7th graders and 2 games for 8th graders.

For grade 9, because of the special nature of the transfer exam, teacher Tung is researching suitable methods.

Passion is caring for all students, helping weak students learn

In the application submitted to the Hanoi Department of Education and Training to participate in the Hanoi Teacher Award for Passionate and Creative Teachers, teacher Nguyen Thanh Tung defined the two words passion and creativity as follows:

" Passion is caring for all students ."

" Creativity must come from observing the needs of students ."

Although he is a teacher leading a team of excellent students, Mr. Tung still devotes a lot of enthusiasm to the general students. For weak students, he uses many flexible teaching methods of project-based learning, enhancing the practice of natural exploration. His goal is that every student must learn and meet the requirements of the program.

The board games that the teacher designed are aimed at this group of students. He also designed 15 experimental simulations in 15 topics of the natural science program from grade 6 to grade 8 using powerpoint tools. The purpose is to allow students to use computers to experience experiments similar to real-life observations in the context of school laboratories that have not been invested in and equipped with modern facilities.

In addition, Mr. Tung uses 5 virtual reality software applications for more than 100 lessons to help students learn biology, physics, and chemistry in a gentle way.

For example, students can witness with their own eyes the magical and vivid animal world or the vast universe with planets rotating in orbits right in the classroom space. Students' passion for scientific exploration is aroused and nurtured through each virtual reality lesson like that.

In his work of nurturing gifted students, Mr. Tung focuses on understanding the abilities and strengths of each student. At the same time, he builds a test bank, understands test trends and predicts test questions to have appropriate review strategies.

As a young teacher and a former student of Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, Mr. Tung understands the academic pressures of today's students. The more he understands the obstacles of his students, the more he tries to learn modern teaching methods in the world, increasing the application of technology in schools to help students conquer their goals. He also shares, supports and inspires his colleagues with new teaching methods.