Reflections

Ang Yu Keng Megan

I discovered that the guided inquiry approach to achieve Holistic development requires different types teacher guidance. In the Centre we worked with, Holistic development for domains such as Language & Literacy and Numeracy are teacher-led, while domains such as Discovery Of the World and Aesthetic and Creative expression lessons are child-initiated.

In addition, I discovered that implementing a Guided Inquiry requires time and skills to implement a Guided Inquiry lesson. The centre implements the lessons closely with the NEL learning cycle.

As a group, we brainstormed different ideas for our action plan; such as a physical workshop, online workshop, etc. I am thankful to have a group who were open to different views and perspectives. As a group, we weighed the pros and cons of each idea, taking into account the feasibility of each idea. With regular communication, we were able to tie down our finalised ideas and share them with the centre principal

Ong Xin Yi

Coming up with a recommendation for the centre was not easy. Our initial plan for the recommendation was to have a workshop for the teachers. However, we realized that it is not feasible since one of needs that the principal and teachers mentioned is the lack of time and teachers are unable to fork out time to attend the workshop. The workshop cannot be done as a one-time event as it has to be ongoing. There is also no difference between our workshop and the professional development courses that the teachers are already attending. This is where we came together to discuss and listened to one another’s opinion. Rie suggested on having an E-Learning workshop. However, we were unsure of whether that would be a good idea since the teachers might not want to attend it. After much discussion, we realized that E-Learning is the least time consuming and teachers can do it whenever they are free.

After deciding on this, we faced another set-back. As we had to come up with a checklist for the teachers, we were unsure of what to include in it. We then decided to research on checklists for children and tweak it to suit the teachers.

We were also unsure of what to add into the slides that the teachers will be reading to learn more about inquiry based learning. Firstly, we had little knowledge on what is inquiry based learning as there were little resources online. Then, we questioned ourselves as to why the teachers would even bother reading our slides when we ourselves are students and that they should be more knowledgeable than us. However, after consulting Ms. Eunice, we learnt that the materials needed can be done very briefly. The content of it would be provided by the principal should the principal want to implement our idea.

Upon hearing that, we were relieved. We split roles to work on the different materials needed for the recommendation and helped one another when needed.

Shirin Banu

I find collaborating and communication with my group on coming with the possible recommendation as an enlightening experience. It helped me realise that when working on a big scale project, it important that everyone is on the same page and clear in the objectives of the project. This had meant all of us had to agree on the concluded needs of the centre and the objective of the recommendation itself. If both of these criteria were not met, the project would have fallen through due to the lack of structure

Hence, during our countless meetings, we always ensure everyone had understood the objective, reasoning, and method of the recommendation. Though we all had strayed from it time to time due to stress and our dear minds trying to form the appropriate links, we always found our way back.

When brainstorming on our possible recommendation, we hit the obstacle of whether to tackle both factors which makes up our need or one. If we were to address both factors, it would result in a heavy workload and us being extremely meticulous to ensure we don’t stray away from the objective. It also meant the recommendation itself would be quite a complicated and big scale one. Thus, after conferring with our teacher, we had decided to address only one factor of our need. We also armed ourselves with relevant literature to support our decision in addressing only one factor.

After we brainstormed on the possible recommendation to address one factor of our need, we split the relevant work among us. We tapped on each other’s strengths when faced with challenges in doing the respective work. I had worked on preparing the workshop slides which ought to be the general skeleton of slides the principal could adapt to her liking. However, due to the limited resources available in guided inquiry, I kept running into a wall. My group member immediately offered help by looking for relevant literature. From there, I was able to work on the slides by pulling relevant information from the various sources as done in a literature review. My group member and I had checked and improved each other’s work. I believe this had led to our materials being well-developed as it wasn’t just one person’s work into it.

Overall, I believe this project is successful in understanding the EC topic we had picked. We were able to understand the topic deeply and uncover the challenges behind it. We had learned the about the opportunities and challenges during the initial brainstorming of the EC topic. We then agreed on the goals and begin to tackle the topic independently in Assignment 1. In Assignment 2, we armed ourselves independently by exploring various literature which helped us uncover various perspectives. I believe in Assignment 3, we were able to smoothly collaborate and communicate due to understanding and knowledge we gained previously.

Tan Jia Xin

Before we could think of recommendations, my group had to first ensure that we were on the same page regarding the Centre’s needs. We met up face-to-face and had Skype discussions in order to consolidate our findings from the Principal’s interview and questionnaire responses from the teachers. There was a lot of information to look through and analyse, so we split the work and focused on sections before sharing our findings with one another. This helped to make the analysis much faster and more efficient.

After concluding that the Centre’s main need was teachers’ lack of skills and knowledge in Inquiry-based learning, we brainstormed for possible solutions. Everyone voiced out their opinions and tried to contribute ideas. We then compared the advantages and disadvantages of the various solutions before choosing the option that would best suit the needs of the teachers. However, the scale of our initial solution was rather huge, as it would require us to come up with powerpoint slides for each learning area. We also lacked the knowledge regarding the content while there were minimal resources available online and even in the library. After consulting our teacher, we realized that we could provide the skeleton of our powerpoint slides for the Principal to adapt accordingly. This helped to lessen our burden significantly, and our plan thereafter proceeded smoothly. Thus, I learnt that it would be beneficial to think ahead and anticipate challenges as it would enable us to plan with the bigger picture in mind. This might have helped to lessen our troubles in the early stages of brainstorming for solutions, when we were not certain of how much of the resources to provide for the Centre.

Wong Xing Yi, Rie

To find out the need of the centre we first interviewed on the principle and found out the most pressing need was the lack of skilled teachers.

After which I think at the start of the process I was fix that the needs are the same. We did an online survey with the teachers, a few of them do not believe in guided inquiry and their believes effect their teaching style. A handful of teachers are also unfamiliar with guided inquiry which was recently introduce to the centre. They were unable to conduct lessons base on it too. Therefore we have derived that our need is that we should conduct ac workshop on Saturday with the teachers to improve on their skills. However we heard that the centre’s teacher also work on a Saturday. Therefore, I thought of having a workshop which was assessable and sustainable.

My teammates also talk about how we should tackle on the misalign believe. Which then we discuss and talk about which recommendation will have a greater impact on the centre and come into a conclusion that the teachers skills was more important.

Managing time was somethings I learn. we realise we had a lot to complete before presentation, my teammates were supportive and calm, they gave some recommendation to each other and what we can cover within the last few days of the assessments.

in conclusion, I learn a lot from this capstone project since assignment 1, with categorising, managing time and being objective.