Use demonstration or simulation of how both forward and reverse reactions occur up to and at equilibrium in several mixtures. The PhET simmulation below shows both reactions are happening, even though concentration of reactants and products isn't changing.
Use demonstrations when teaching about solubility. Students need to be thinking about what's going on. You have two clear solutions and when you mix them together a white precipitate forms instantly. Then decant the liquid and get them to think about what’s in the supernatant and what is the solid. Go on to use calculations to work out the solubility for an amount of substance. Use the amount that you can see as a precipitate to work out how much is in a saturated solution.
Demonstrate a reaction that occurs within the time frame of your lecture. Start it at the beginning of the lecture, and then go back to it in the middle and at the end to show what has happened. For example, you can use copper in silver nitrate solution.
Use little cartoons or even just physical representations. Have a jar of marbles representing electrons and move them around. Because sometimes having physical things to manipulate helps with understanding of a concept. Even though in reality it’s nothing like it, it’s just a representation.
Put zinc metal in copper sulphate solution and record it with the visualiser. Have it running as you talk about the push and pull of electrons. Then bring it up and say, ‘look what’s happened here, the zinc has rusted’. Students make more of a link when they see things being visualised. The oxidation of metal has a very visual impact on them. But then, they might forget about the reduction side, so you need to remind them of it.
If you put copper metal in a silver nitrate solution, the solution becomes blue and you get silver metal. Ag+ is becoming Ag and Cu is becoming Cu++. The students see both oxidation and reduction happening - and happening at the same time. If you do it close to Christmas you can use the copper filament to make a Christmas tree, and then you get a nice silver on the Christmas tree. They know that it was a colourless ion solution, but then they can see silver on the Christmas tree. So they can easily see the reduction.
Use a lot of demonstrations - actually doing reactions at the front of the class. You can't actually see the electrons moving when you're doing the reaction, but still it helps to use demonstrations. Beware of possible misinterpretations that could arise when doing demonstrations.
For this particular topic, there are some quite nice simulations of wave functions and of orbitals and similar things on the web that can be used to visualise what orbitals look like, and what wave functions look like. They seem to like it.
