Electron Role Play

When teaching electronic configuration, if it's a small class you can get each student in the class to be an electron. They can arrange themselves in different directions. It's really good if you've got steps in your classroom because you can demonstrate going up in energy. They face towards the front or the back of the room. If you simply tell them to think about parallel and antiparallel spins they come up with that themselves and it's really good when you can say, 'Yes, you came up with that yourselves.'