I like to approach chemistry as a different language, because it used symbols to convey ideas across, but they are not the reality. When we draw a little stick structure, alcohol does not exist as I’ve just drawn it, it’s a representation.
Get students to recognise the importance of functional groups: Start with hydrocarbons, and talk about skeletal structure and say we can ignore the hydrogens, they are kind of like your skin, but the functional groups are the things that do things, so they’re your hands. The functional groups will actually do things with other compounds. Then slowly introduce the concept that most compounds have two or more functional groups, and then you have competition - which one will react first?
