The battle of the Brains
I attended an assembly called " Rapat 1 Malaysia" on 4th of May with a friend of mine. We represented our school to the gathering that was held for the representatives from all schools of Selangor state. There were about 1,000 teachers attended the assembly at INTEKMA resort and convention center, Shah Alam..
I really admire these two speakers who are really good in their fields but most of all for the fact that both are very eloquent speakers. Prof. Siva speaks Malay like it was his mother tongue and it was really amazing. While Prof. Khoo was very cool in explaining everything, especially about history with a meaningful insight, which shows that he reads a lot...
These brainy scholars had really heated the otherwise boring gathering. One of the reps. commented that if all the Chinese and the Indian speak like both of them, the 1Malaysia concept would be materialized in no time... and I couldn't agree more with him.....
Then, on the 10th of May I organized a staff development course for all the teachers at my school. It was very enlightening and the speaker is a senior lecturer from U.M (again). Dr. Chua wrote more than 30 books on various topics and had done some tests on human brain which had won him a gold prize.
The course was about creative and critical thinking among the students and he disclosed to us all about the brain...the left and right brains, both with different distinctive features.
As a teacher, I've always heard about creative and critical thinking but I didn't really know how to go about it in the classroom. Dr. Chua had opened our minds to the way of new thinking and how to approach the students during the lessons.
The truth is that there is no such way to teach creative and critical thinking...all we need to do is to have a little creativity and really know our students to get them interested....we also learnt that schools favour left brain most people are left-brain dominance, thus we need to balance it....
We need to activate both sides of the brains in order to make lesson more effective and to have a lasting impression on the students..
It was officiated by the deputy of Education Minister, Dr. Haji Mohd Puad Zakarshi. However, I'm not going to talk about the whole assembly....just wanna touch on the highlight of the day which was the appearance of two guest speakers, the most notable men in Malaysian education, Prof. Emeritus Tan Sri Khoo Kay Kim of U.M and Prof. Madya Dr. P. Sivamurugan of U.S.M
I really admire these two speakers who are really good in their fields but most of all for the fact that both are very eloquent speakers. Prof. Siva speaks Malay like it was his mother tongue and it was really amazing. While Prof. Khoo was very cool in explaining everything, especially about history with a meaningful insight, which shows that he reads a lot...
These brainy scholars had really heated the otherwise boring gathering. One of the reps. commented that if all the Chinese and the Indian speak like both of them, the 1Malaysia concept would be materialized in no time... and I couldn't agree more with him.....
Then, on the 10th of May I organized a staff development course for all the teachers at my school. It was very enlightening and the speaker is a senior lecturer from U.M (again). Dr. Chua wrote more than 30 books on various topics and had done some tests on human brain which had won him a gold prize.
The course was about creative and critical thinking among the students and he disclosed to us all about the brain...the left and right brains, both with different distinctive features.
As a teacher, I've always heard about creative and critical thinking but I didn't really know how to go about it in the classroom. Dr. Chua had opened our minds to the way of new thinking and how to approach the students during the lessons.
The truth is that there is no such way to teach creative and critical thinking...all we need to do is to have a little creativity and really know our students to get them interested....we also learnt that schools favour left brain most people are left-brain dominance, thus we need to balance it....
We need to activate both sides of the brains in order to make lesson more effective and to have a lasting impression on the students..
| Left Brain | Right Brain | |
| Logical Sequential Rational Analytical Objective Looks at parts | Random Intuitive Holistic Synthesizing Subjective Looks at wholes |
Even though the course was about serious matter, Dr. Chua is a very funny man.....his jokes after jokes had us in stitches...it was very educating, yet entertaining.....
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