STPM Chemistry, Physics and Biology Practicals

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Posted by Chong

STPM practical science will be carried out by students at school throughout form six. In general, STPM practical science is similar to SPM PEKA Amali since both of them are school-based assessment of practical work. The assessment of STPM practicals for session 2006/2007 has commenced in early July 2006 and will end before 30th August 2007, the year of the examination.

Remember the days when your SPM science teachers asked you to correct the practical work reports you did until they were perfect or almost perfect and then submit them back to be assessed in order to get good grades? However, this will no longer true for STPM practical science since unlike SPM PEKA, STPM practical science contributes a total of 10% of the respective STPM science subjects. For your information, SPM PEKA carries no weight at all in your real SPM examinations. What you will get at the end of conducting all the SPM PEKA experiments are the useless certificates and the priceless experience. They do prepare you to carry out your STPM practical science independently and correctly.

Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia (MPM) has determined some compulsory experiments to be carried out by the students and only compulsory experiments are assessed by the respective teachers. For instance, out of 20 Physics experiments, only 15 of them are compulsory. They are to be carried out by students individually, in pairs, in stations or in groups as recommended in the Student’s Manual.

As I have posted before, students may write their practical reports in either English or Malay. The practical work report must be submitted to the teacher on the same day the experiment is carried out unless otherwise stated (in the Student’s Manual) or it will be awarded ‘0’ mark. In addition, practical work report which can be completed at home (referring to Student’s Manual) is to be submitted to the teacher not later than 3 days from the date of experiment. A penalty of 2 marks is to be imposed for the report submitted late to the teacher. Moreover, ‘0’ mark is awarded if the practical work report is submitted later than 7 days from the date of experiment.

The assessment of practical work reports for Chemistry, Physics and Biology is different from each other. For Chemistry practical, we need to carry out an experiment in order to get the readings. Then, we need to answer some questions and do some calculations and it is done. The aspects to be assessed are Procedure (how the students carry out the experiment), Observation and measurements (the accuracy and precision of the readings) and Discussion (the answers to the questions). For Physics practical, we have to write a complete report in which covers Purpose, Procedure, Observation and measurements, Processing and analysis of data, Results and discussion and Conclusion. Procedure (4 marks), Observations and measurements (5 marks), Processing and analysis of data (6 marks), Results and discussion (3 marks) and General (2 marks) are the aspects to be assessed for Physics Practical.

Currently I am not very sure on how the Biology practical is assessed since I don’t take Biology. Anyone taking Biology would like to do us a favor?

Update: A reader just sent us the assessment and summary of experiments of STPM Practical Biology.
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