My Professional Development Plan

In my experience in teaching science, I have found that a lot of students feel bored and do not have interest in learning science. The main factors are that they have problem with English terms and vocabulary problems. This causes them do not understand science and dislike it. When I only taught the basic theories by using diagrams to explain it, students could catch up easily. They cannot remember a long and detail theories.. Besides this, workbooks bought from the bookshop were not suitable with my students’ level.

Meanwhile, for my Chemistry  class students, they always asked something that is out of the syllabus. Those questions are too advanced and beyond my knowledge. They were curious to know more than what was in the books. Normally, I will check the answers and discuss the answers in the next lesson. Luckily, they were happy and willing to share their extra knowledge with me too. As an educator, I should always update and enrich my own knowledge.

Sometimes, students’ discipline in class makes the lesson unable to achieve the objectives. If class has a few noisy and naughty students, it will disrupt the lesson. Class control is also a very challenging as I have seen that some of the town school students are quite aggressive.

I am dedicated to improving my teaching style and make it more fun. I would always like to ask IQ questions to students to make their mind fresher. With this, I need to have a lot of knowledge other than knowledge of teaching curriculum specification which is covered by the syllabus. So, I need to read more encyclopedia books and also gain extra knowledge from discovery programmes from Astro. Thus, I can talk about phenomenons that can assist in attracting my students’ attention and elicit their interest.

I am also dedicated to improving my students’ performance in their studies. I always think of a way to achieve the objective of the lesson. I try as much as possible to use simple, compact theories. I prefer to use everyday language to convey the sciences process before I introduced new science terms. Understanding is more important than cramming. By understand the concept first; students can remember it for a long time.

During the lesson, different types of activities can enhance students’ understanding. I always look for activities which can help my students to think creative and critically. I learn how to apply the problem based learning in lessons at UPSI. After delivering my lesson, it is good to have scenario to let student link and relate to what they learn in solving problems.

I also refer to my colleagues and get some good ideas related to class control especially for the problematic classes. It really works and my students become more disciplined in class.

In the coming years, as a professional  chemistry educator, I plan to make a complete and advanced Form 4 and 5 chemistry  teaching modules. Together with these modules there are different types of exercises that I build on my own which are appropriate with moderate and poor students’ level. For me, exercises are a tool that can make my students more confident and elicit their learning interest. If the exercises are too difficult, it only causes moderate and poor students give up in this subject. Challenging questions are suitable for good performance students to lead them to learn more.

Besides this, I also plan to master my ICT skill. Then, I can fully use IT technology which has been provided by the government. ICT knowledge can help me vary my teaching kits like computer and web based instruction. Students can become involved actively in my lesson. I can deliver my message precisely through 3D diagrams, simulation and so on.

I believe  that  teaching  chemistry  is not just teaching science concepts; it also encompasses teaching students noble values related with society. I believe that teaching chemistry can build their knowledge through exploring them with phenomenons that occur in our environment. Students can have a lot of fun in learning chemistry  through experiments and investigations of our surrounding environment and other activities.