Book smart or Street smart?
Science is such a subject that makes you feel smart but at the same time makes you feel like you know nothing. This is because of the changes that take place in the field of science every day. To learn and get well acquainted with the subject takes a little more time than you think. The scientific principles take quite a bit of time and effort from the students. There are students who are just book smart and have learnt all the principles but the street smarts know where to put them to use and get a reaction. The application is as important as the theory in all the branches of science.
Here are a few tips that could come to use for you while learning science.
Read the topics beforehand and ask doubts if there’s any to the teacher when they teach that particular topic. There can be discussions held on how each one in the class understood the topic and clear the confusions. The summary or the questions from the chapter helps for this.
To understand the topics one must read the headings as well. The bigger heading gives the broader idea of the topic and the smaller one gives the detailed explanation and the sub-topics.
Paying more attention to the graphs, minute details, formulae, extra notes given, and the highlighted words will help a student to retain the information clearly.
Reading the same topic more times assures that the topic learnt will not be erased from the memory easily unlike those topics which are just glanced upon.
The knowledge of where to apply the formulae and how to derive the solution for a certain problem has to be given more attention while learning.
Not to forget the application of the principles that have been learnt. If a student knows when and how the principles in science are used, they understand the concept much better because they know how it works in practice.
There are many techniques to learn the broader topics and also the sub-topics. Using mnemonics for sub-topics, creating a memory map for each concept, flash cards for certain topics and explaining them, quizzing will be helpful, and also enacting or teaching the concepts to others is also known to be one of the powerful techniques in learning.
Knowing what works for you in the best way is a small task which will only make you better in science and every other subject.
