Micro biology and Speaking with impact workshop
During the September holidays, the school arranged a two-day programme with Ngee Ann which took place on 6th and 7th August.
For my class, we did the the micro biology workshop on the first day. Upon arrival, we gathered in the lecture hall for a one hour talk on Microbiology before moving up to the labs for the practicals. We did a total of four practicals.
First, we were given a sample of pond water and were asked to look
at it under a microscope to observe the cells of the living organisms in the pond water. Most of the cells I saw were the cells of Algae. They were green and rectangular, although there were a few cells that were circular.
The second practical was to observe the bread mould. Before we did anything , we had to first stain the mould so that it could be seen through the microscope. The ideal structure ( of the bread mould ) we were supposed to see through the microscope was a flower shape. Unfortunately, some of us did not get it. I was one of the unfortunate ones but luckily, Michelle , who was sitting beside me got the structure so I got to see how the bread
mould looked like through her microscope.
Stained bread mould
For the next experiment , we got to wear gloves as we had to completely st
ain the slide with a crystal violet stain. It was such a messy job! No wonder we had to wear gloves!
Before we proceed on with the last experiment, we did something a little less serious. We scrapped the insides of our noses and put the sample on a blood-agar petri dish. This was to test for the presence of Staphylococcus aureus , a harmless virus in which 30 % of the human population are carriers. We were told
to proceed to the lab preparation room the next day to check out our samples. Luckily, I did not have the virus.
Finally it was our last experiment. For this experiment, we had to observe bacteria move under the microscope. Many of the students did not get moving bacteria on their slides but one or two students did managed to get it and of course, all the other students crowded around to see the moving bacteria.
The moving bacteria is in the 'donut'. However, quite a few students
pushed the lens too closely on the cover slideand broke it.
The ' moving bacteria ' that could be seen through the microscope.
After lunch break , the nine of us from my class had to attend the speaking with impact workshop. What I initially thought would be a series of lectures turned out to be a series of fun and game
s programmed to enhanced our learning. In total, there were five stations, each focusing on a different area of learning. Due to the time constraint, I only got to visit three stations.
The first station was station four, ‘ The slick salesman ‘ . Here, we were taught on how to be a perfect salesman. The lesson also provided us with a chance to practise what we learnt as each group sent out a representative to promote on the product we were assigned to.
Next was station five. The session there was full of laughs as there was a very free-style way of learning and the lesson was based on what the students said. In other words, it seemed more like a chit chat session rather than a proper lesson. After that we had a short break.
Then it was time for our last station, station one, ‘ Finding our communication styles’ . At this station , the facilitator introduced to us the four communication styles, namely , director, socializer, thinker and relator. We also did a test to find out which communication styles we belonged to. The facilitator also shared with us the importance of knowing someone’s communication style through a case study. Finally, we split into groups and did role plays of the different communication styles and had others guess who we were after we had finished acting.
After all that, it was time to go home.
Written by
Emily Wu
S1-07
