Monday, October 31, 2011

 

Just finished marking two extra assignments for a kid and trying to delay the inevitable sgc.

at this point in time, it is becoming more defined between who will make it and who will not. Consider the many kinds of kids in my school. Kid A is smart, but refuses to work. He slips behind in studies and risk failing an exam which ought to have been easy for him. Kid B works her head off, but in reality is just putting in time without real work. She realises the difference now but there's a huge gap to fill. Kid C is like B, but brighter, and woke up earlier. He might make it good. Kid D is still in mode for memorising equations, even after 2 years of getting the memorised answer correct for the wrong questions. Kid D is unlikely to survive. Many others.

If we can turn back time, how would I make a difference? How can I motivate A? How can I show B the light earlier? How could I have motivated C earlier to hit the H3 standard (and yes, he made the leap from U to B. He is that good.) How can I teach D to stop her O Level mentality straight from the start?

Chemistry is applied science. It needs math, it builds on physics, and it is sometimes applied to biology. It touches on making real life connections. It is not a subject that you can get by on memorising, but neither is it a subject that you can get by without memorising. My advice? Come prepared to do math, inclusive of implicit integration. Come prepared with an excellent appreciation of physics at O Levels. Come prepared to understand many weird situations and dare to test your understanding through theoretical predictions. It is most rewarding when we can prove ourselves right. Because the electron is abstract, yet real. And everything starts from this tiny little thing that we do not understand well at this level. But it can be done, and it can be done well. Put in the hours, the depth of thought, and integration your knowledge with everything else you know. Take pure sciences if you can help it.

8 days left to Paper 3. Good luck to the kids. Good luck to A, B, C and D, and the rest of the national cohort.

Zhengyu wrote at 9:26 PM.