My Reflection

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At first, when we were starting our project, I was so excited to tackle the issue of having and implementing a play-based curriculum in Singapore. As I had the impression that Singapore’s preschools were currently all more academically inclined, I was looking forward to contributing to changing people’s mindsets and convincing them to be on board with a play-based curriculum. I had a very lofty and unrealistic idea of the end product of implementing such a curriculum in Singapore but this Capstone project helped me to realise that there’s so many other factors at play and helped me to broaden my perspective.

Firstly, through talking to the centre principal and conducting a survey with the teachers, I managed to find out first hand that there were many other factors to consider when implementing play in learning. It was not just about the children having fun and enjoying themselves, but it is also about all the different groups of people, like the parents and the teachers, that are involved in the children’s learning. I realised that the quality of a child’s learning is heavily reliant on the different stakeholders’ attitudes towards the curriculum that they provide. If those stakeholders’ hearts are not in it, then that would definitely be a roadblock to optimal learning for the child. Feedback from the principal also helped us put into perspective the feasibility of our recommendations and how they would be able to work or not work in that particular centre. From this, I realised that there’s no one overarching solution that would solve the issue at hand, but it had to be constantly tweaked and adjusted so as to benefit all the stakeholders involved.

Another need identified was that time was an issue. Through interviewing the principal and the teachers, I realised how busy their lives were and it was very hard to find time to create the best possible set of materials for the children. It was enlightening and eye-opening to be able t9 find out the perspectives of the teachers, as this was something I have never thought about when I thought about implementing play in the classroom.


Organisation Skills

As this project was not one that could be completed in one sitting, it was important to have good time management to be able to complete all the necessary portions at the right time in order for us to move on to the next part. We worked together as a group to remind each other and allocated tasks so as to maximise efficiency. Thus, due to my group members constantly helping each other and sending reminders in the WhatsApp group, I was able to complete the tasks well and we were able to complete the entire project with minimal hiccups.

Communication Skills
Our group’s communication started off well as we were a group of people who had the same mindset initially about how good a play-based curriculum was. However, after consulting our lecturer and finding out the centre principal’s perspective, we realised that our perspective was too one sided, thus we decided to explore the broader topic of Learning Through Play instead. With the change in focus, our group were able to communicate our individual concerns and ideas well and we were able to ensure that our perspectives were aligned easily. For the action plan, we were also able to ensure that everyone was on the same page and that our action plan was able to tackle the issue at hand. With five different pairs of eyes looking at out project, I felt that we, as a group, were able to provide new perspectives and check all the different angles for each other.

Problem Solving Skills
As a group, we had good communication, thus solving minor hiccups that arose along the way was easy. We were able to quickly identify any discrepancies in our perspectives and quickly align them with the rest of the group’s in order to quickly and seamlessly move onto the next portion of the project.

Through this, I realised the importance of communication and working together in order to achieve the best possible product as a group