Try to encourage active learning in the lecture theatre. Talk about a concept and then ask them to look at some examples and work through them on their own.
Throw in pop quizzes when you discuss a concept and then give an example and give them a few minutes to work through that example. That's moving towards a partially flipped classroom context. Also use worksheets to give an increased level of formalisation to it.
Use the units to check that they’ve actually done the right calculation. The other thing is when they’ve got the mole concept and they’re applying it, try to get students to do an estimation of the answer. So are they estimating something that’s very large?
They’re stepping into an area where they must do calculations and they must support them with strictly mathematical algebra, so that when they’re doing calculations it’s clear what the data is and what the units are and how these all fit together to make up the calculation they’re doing. So it’s really about making things mathematically strict.
Students’ patience in thinking about this material is quite short sometimes. So don’t lecture the material for very long. Have a break and get them to do a problem. Do this after introducing the topic, once it’s getting a little bit more concrete, that is, when they can actually work through a problem.
Lecture for five or ten minutes and use work sheets, which they pick up as they come in. Let them work on the worksheets, then have a discussion and use a response devise, like their mobile phones, to feed back answers.
