My personal developments in Science

In term 1, I learnt the periodic table and bonding. The hard part was in remembering the list of elements and bonding reactions.

In term 2, I learnt acids and bases. This was easier to remember, in terms of concepts, but needed more thinking to apply.

In term 3, i studied the human reproduction, and ecology. Both are all about cause and effect, like how food chains are affected when one organism increases or decreases, and if the ova is unfertilised, what happens to the uterus. For ecology, I just needed to know how reactions work, and for reproduction, I had to memorise the process.

I found that subjects needing memorising took more effort to remember, but very little effort to apply. They are more theory. However, subjects which have a few basic concepts that apply to many kinds of problems, those require a lot of thinking. In term 1, I think I did well because I could remember most of the info, in term 2, because I had enough practise applying the three concepts(acid+base=?). In term 3, I did ok because the test focused on theory, which I had memorised.

However, I feel that memorising makes subjects very dry, since its only about facts. Not much application there, but applying a concept is interesting but more difficult since the answer has to be processed, and thought through, but the challenge is more fun. Thus I feel that science should have more application.

My reflections on my learning

I am happy to learn Science, however, I have faced a few issues. Most of my science lessons have been carried out mostly in powerpoint. Also, my syllabus is too superficial. Why do I say so?

Powerpoint presentations are powerful in bringing concepts across in pointers. They boost the mere lecturing by adding colour and sight to engage another of our senses( the visual) to aid our memory. However, as with all things, for a good, there's a bad. When our teacher uses Powerpoint, concepts may become watered down. This is because long paragraphs are not aesthetically pleasing, and if the teacher does not fully elaborate on the main point, the student does not understand the main concepts. Also, Powerpoints are very logical in their structure, as the teacher advances from slide to slide. Some students do not learn this way. Some need the teacher to explain to him what he does not understand, and/or adjust the difficulty of the explanation to him. A powerpoint is dead, but a teacher is real- the teacher can do a lot of things the powerpoint cannot, so why should the teacher rely on the powerpoint? And since science is about exploring the world through our senses, a classroom sharing like this is quite dead. Why not at least a video?

Secondly, we only learned 7 topics this year. I feel that our current science lessons are too few. Only two and a half hours, math is three hours, is the school placing more emphasis on math? I feel that too little time is given to science. The country is going to need more scientists to make our country ready to face the challenges from global warming and defense technology. And the school says our lower secondary education is to find our interests. If too little time is given to any subject, I'll say there's bias. It's not right. Science must be given at least as much as math, about three hours. Then we can truly learn each subject to find our interests.

Thus I feel these are the two main areas the school needs to look into. I don't think adding more science subjects solves the problem, I think we need to give our students more time. And more exposure to the wonders that science is working out there.