I am looking for some suggestions on innovative strategies for introducing the chemistry of main group elements to students.  Our Inorganic Chemistry class is a pre-pchem lecture and lab and I'll be using the 5th edition of Miessler/Fischer/Tarr.  (And a big thank you goes out to the authors, who have finally accepted to include at least a little bit of redox chemistry in the text.)  My issue arises with Chapter 8 (and the like), which in my opinion boils down to "read these sections, memorize these facts, quiz Monday".

I think we can all agree that the descriptive chemistry of the elements (I am thinking mostly of the p block, but some aspects of the d block as well) is: