Mehar M.

With my experience of teaching and being a student myself, I have observed that a significant problem in understanding subjects like biology is being able to retain/learn the information taught. As a teacher my philosophy is to fix the problem right at its roots i.e., I do not ever encourage my students to learn information because forgetfulness is inevitable. I begin with building a solid foundation of knowledge as a strategy that initially provides students with all the necessary elements to be able to imagine and acquire the tricky processes and cycles. After I fix the foundation, I help them develop a map from the foundation to the complete process with an extremely detailed and interesting explanation. This process in the subconscious mind aids them to imagine and picturizing the process. Bead by bead, when they are able to draw a coherence of their imagination, I introduce the scientific terminologies and keywords that IB looks for. This way, there is next to no chance for them to forget the highlights of a process, and they only have to brush up on the scientific terminologies once in a while. Conclusively, this kills the fear that biology is subject to humongous memorization.

I always like to know the expectations of the student. It is essential to know what they need help with. Once I know the improvement points, I introduce the student to an enchilada of methodologies, examples, and explanations to help them. After the explanation, I follow a small exercise, i.e., I ask them to summarize the learning of the day's concept in their language. This helps me to identify their strong and weak points. I correct them and work more on the points where I identify the concept's ambiguity. This exercise ensures that the student has had a take-away from the lesson and gives me the benefit of molding my future teaching sessions according to the student's needs. So, a typical first session is always about understanding what works for the student.

I always work on one suggestion with all of my students; that is, I always strive to understand the concept rather than learn it without knowing its essence. When a student can question the "why" of everything and looks for every possible reason to be able to connect the different steps of a concept or process, he/she can go onto the path of self-learning without a second thought. This is precisely why I focus on step-by-step learning from day one so that students can find a niche with this type of studying technique and apply it themselves when they are extremely well-equipped.

The foundation for a motivated student is answered by the confidence they exhibit. I always try to instill in my students the best explanations and lectures that make them believe they can understand and apply the concepts. This ultimately makes them stay motivated.

The key to complex concepts is "repetition and break-down." I make sure to apply this technique by solidifying the fundamentals first. I break down the topics into their simplest forms and then gradually build up upon them so that it is easier for the students to absorb, imagine and retain the information. Once this goal is achieved, I make sure to involve a repetition of the topics somehow or the other in the follow-up classes.

The prime reason for reading comprehension struggle is a lack of focus and understanding of fundamentals. My go-to solution with that remains to be able to help the student understand basic subjective terminologies first post that I help them break down the context and narrate their understanding to me. I correct it after that, and my purpose for not allowing them immediately is because the effort to understand it by themselves increases comprehension, understanding, and application.

The most successful strategies always start with a well-prepared informative and elaborative lecture. I break down the concept in a layman’s language, and once I am done explaining that, I ask the student to narrate it in their understanding. Once they get it right, I fill in the gaps with the required terminologies, and post that; I ask quick quiz questions or mind questions to test the knowledge. This strategy works the best because it instills the student with a lot of faith and confidence.

If a student is already struggling with a subject, I never "try" making them like it. Instead, I make the subject more bearable and sensible because the integral truth to students finding a particular subject challenging is that they cannot churn out the sense from it. I always intend to make my explanation more relatable, lucid, contained, and elaborative. This idea makes the derive sense and helps them not zone out.

Narration and quick questioning are the two techniques I swear by if a student understands the topic or not. As mentioned before, I always make the student narrate or summarize the whole lecture, tell me how much the student catered out of the lecture, and post that I prompt with quick quiz questions or relate it with a next topic to solidify the understanding more.

A student's confidence is a result of their understanding. As aforementioned, the more you build up on the understanding and application, the more the confidence accelerates. I always try in my best capacities to offer a clear stance on the topic, and I always personalize my lectures as per my understanding of the student's pick up and reception. This is key to building up confidence.

I always have this little oblivious exercise within my lectures that lets me personalize the lecture further. At the beginning of the lecture, I always start with the basic introduction of the topic with clear, engaging explanations. After 5-10 mins, I always ask the student to tell me what they understood without explanation and subsequently ask a few questions. This practice gives me an insight into their pick-up and pace to learn, and that is how I proceed with the rest of the lecture.

As mentioned above, I always do that small exercise of narration and questioning, which makes me personalize and customize the complete lecture for the student, which is very terms is significant adaptability. In addition, I am a student and learner myself; I always understand the needs and situational reception of the student, which aids in tutoring adaptability.

My lectures are full of elaborative, engaging, and lucid lectures, animations, photographs, pictures, narrations, quick quizzes, past papers, etc.