Term 3 Blog Post 4: Termly Reflection

Introduction:

In this blog post I will reflect on my personal growth in science and on my performance in the science assessment test for this term(term 3).

How has my knowledge and understanding for Science improved and grown?

This term I have definitely improved! Looks like studying hard and having better time management did pay off after all. This term most of SLC's responsibilities have ended for me, and I took it upon myself to ensure that I had to improve my results. After all since time was the main factor that affected my results during term 1 and term 2, this term I should score much better as I would have had much more time to study and do more practice. Last term I was devastated at my Science marks(actually at most of my marks), and after a lot of hard work this term I managed to bring back some confidence.

So the topics that were focused on this term were mostly Ecology and Nutrient Cycles, I found this less boring as compared to Physics, but then again I realised that there was a lot of memory work to be done. Therefore once again most of the studying was done by ourselves, while class time was mostly used for going through worksheets and assignments etc.

I think I would have enjoyed Science a little more than last term because what we were learning was part of Biology; always more interesting to me. It was nice learning what the different relationships between organisms with one another in the environment, as well as other simple concepts of population, community and ecosystem. We also revisit what decomposers were and their role to play in order for the Nutrient Cycle to exist. I think many of us would have already found all these concepts and content familiar as we had already learnt some of it during Primary School. This made things easier for everyone when we wanted to self-study at home. I also did a ACE project with another group of fellow classmates regarding Ecology so as to allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the subject, and we presented it to our class to share what we had found and learnt.

There was also another group that did the same, and that allowed us to learn from one another! So in this way my understanding in Science has grown in that I realised the importance of hard work, and even with high intelligence or talent in Science, one must be willing to put in a certain amount of effort before seeing tangible results. After all, the joy in learning is when you put in effort; be it a certain project or assignment, and see yourself improving and getting what you deserved. Such is the case of 'No pain, no gain'.

For my knowledge in Science, I definitely managed to learn much more regarding Ecology as compared to when I was learning the same subject in Primary School. This time we went into much more detail, and learning many new terms such as "Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism etc." There's a Chinese idiom, '温故知新', and I think it really fits in my current situation.

With that, I know that I should not rest on my laurels, and that should I choose to go into a 'Slack Mode' now then I would surely fail my EOYs. If I just think about it, EOYs would be testing on Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Should I choose not to study hard and start early, I fear the worst has yet to come!

My performance in the Science Assessment Test:

For this term's test, I scored a total of 33.5/40, which is actually 83.75/100. This means that I got an A1! A huge improvement from last term!

I think firstly I was very lucky during this test. I actually was busy trying to study for all my other subjects, and was struggling to try to put Science into one of my top priorities. I tried my best to study over the term, but things don't always turn out the way we want too. Therefore for this particular term, I confess that I did quite a lot of 'last minute' studying.

I still remember the night just before the test where I studied from 9pm - 5am. Went to sleep for 1.5hrs and went to school the next day, all confident that I should be able to score well. I think this is very bad, and I will at all cost try to avoid such situations in the future. I finished 3 cups of coffee in on night, but I told myself that I had to score well this term, and I would not allow anything to stop me from getting an A1 this term. Therefore I wanted to make sure that I had memorised every single content from my notes. Surprisingly, I did not feel sleepy in school at all!

The test paper this term was considered easy as compared to the other terms. I do not know if it is because I studied, or simply because the teachers wanted to set a easier paper such as to allow us to score better. I did the best I could, and I got an A1. Despite that, I am actually not very happy with my score as I felt that I could do even better. Thinking about it, I really need to continue to improve my time management skills, so that I can juggle all the many things that I had put so much effort in. All my passions; CCAs, Council and the like. If I want to do well for my EOYs, to get into CSE or at least IPSP, I would surely need to work doubly hard. This year is a very important year for me as a Secondary 2 student in Hwa Chong Institution, and I am not planning to let slip my chance of becoming an outstanding student. Whether a not I will emerge as another one of those 'legendary' students that are all-rounders, or end up as a wannabe, whatever I do now will decide.

Term 3 Blog Post 3: Interactions & Cycles

Introduction :

In this blog post, I will be talking about the issues and things we learnt in class, and the theme for term 1 was - Interactions, as well as Cycles. Basically, we were introduced to Ecology, and what the Nutrient Cycle was. It was almost a revisit to what we had learnt during Primary School, which helped us a lot as most of the content had to be learnt through memory work and self-study, so a little bit of background knowledge actually made a huge difference. My ACE project group also did a PowerPoint Presentation regarding Ecology, which helped us gained a better and deeper understanding before we officially covered the topic in class.

Ecology

Simple concepts of population, community and ecosystem

Basically we learnt many new terms such as 'population' and 'community' and 'habitat'. We also had to be able to identify a habitat and some of the organisms associated with the habitat. This was pretty much what we learnt in Primary School, and is also where the tedious 'memorising stage' is. I would guess that many of us spent quite some time trying to make sure we had the sufficient content in our heads before we headed off to any examination.

Covering things that were not during Primary School included learning the importance of various physical factors like air, water, temperature, light, minerals and acidity/alkalinity, in regards to the life of the organisms. Now that was a mouthful, and I found it hard to try to form any kind of acronym to help remember all those factors!

We also had to remember the many reasons of the importance of conserving the physical environment. I paid particular attention to this one, seeing as to how the practice assignments had a question that weighed 6 marks, asking us the exact same thing that appeared on our notes.

Relationships of Organisms with One Another and with the Environment

This one was a little more interesting for me(and perhaps my ACE project group too), as we had done more research on this area during our presentation(for the fun of it). This was because out of what we learnt for the interactions between organisms; Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism, Herbivory, Predation and Competition, we found particular interest in 'Parasitism'. Just a quick gist of what we found:

Tongue-eating parasite:

Cute little fellow isn't he? There were also many other interesting things that we found regarding parasites.

Now going back to the topic, we also needed to be able to establish the relationships in a food web, such as the producer, consumer, herbivore, carnivore, decomposer and the food chain. The Sun of course, is the principal source of energy input to biological systems.

There were also other areas that were not covered in class but in the notes; pyramids of numbers and biomass, as well as energy losses between trophic levels.

Nutrient Cycles

Nutrient Cycles in the Ecosystem

For the theme 'Cycles', there wasn't really much being taught in class, and the notes we were given were also minimal. Most of my class thought that this would not be tested on much during the examinations, and decided to skip/skim through this part of the notes. I on the other hand was not prepared to take any chances, and also made sure I knew the content very well.

So what we basically learnt here was the Carbon Cycle and its importance, which is really to help maintain a balance in the ecosystem. I also understood from linking to what I learnt in Ecology that nutrients trapped in living organisms are recycled with the help of decomposers.

There you have it! This post might seem a little short as compared to the others in my E-Portfolio, but most of the things we learnt this term were details that had to be memorised!