Reflection

The main purpose of creating this blog is to provide basic knowledge regarding Chemistry to the new Form 4 students. Some basic knowledge that they should know before they go deeper into the syllabus are including the glassware apparatuses in the laboratory, the common general safety signs that can be seen in every Chemistry Laboratory, and a few new terms such as Nobel Prize, elements in Periodic Table and Element  and the name of a few simple chemical formula.

In Chemistry, we have nine topics in form 4 and five topics in form 5 that have to be covered. In Form 4 syllabus, we will cover the basic concepts of Chemistry while in Form 5 syllabus, we will cover more on the applications to the basic concepts that students have learned previous year.  For the certain topics in Form 4 syllabus, there are many concepts that are quite difficult to be taught just by using chalk-and-talk method. 

In this semester, we are required to attend lectures given by Dr. Syarifah Sariah bt Syed Hassan which is Teaching in Education. In her lectures, we are required to create a blog on the subject that we teach back in MRSM. Apart from that, we are also required to create an advanced power point regarding one of the topics from our subject.  In this 2 weeks time, we have gained a lot of new information from our lecturer. The lessons taught by Dr Syarifah really helped us in improving our teaching skills by using advanced power point. 

From my observation, when students do an assessment, most of my students could not answer it very well. It shows that the learning outcomes have not been achieved completely. Based on the Robert Gardner Theory, every student is a unique that have different multiple intelligence. Some students are expert in calculation, some students are expert in doing experiments while some master in writing and listening. Gardner had classified multiple intelligence in a few intelligence like linguistic, logical mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligent and intrapersonal intelligence.   

Chemistry is said to be one of most difficult subject, so by using a lot of animations and videos, it will help the students to understand and ‘see’ the content of the topic clearly. Research shows that the absorbance of the knowledge by the students is different if teacher is using different approaches. Lectures only give 5%, reading  10%, audio 20%, discussion 75%, practice by doing 75% and immediate use of learning is 90%. Based on that statement, I think the usage of advanced power points and videos will help our students in their learning process.