Overall Reflection
Goh Cheng Yang
S10170149
Organisational Skills
In the timespan of this CAPSTONE project, I was able to pickup the skill of outlining and delegating work as a checklist. This specific skill was able to help me balance out the assignment contents with other module assignments for my groupmates and myself. By doing so, the planning has helped us to switch our mindset to different assignments at different times and to not place added pressure at a point of time. Organisation was really the most important factor in this project as without it, it would difficult to plan for meetups amongst ourselves and the other parties such as Ms Eunice herself for consultation and the principal of our chosen centre. Content itself was made easier as we decided to focus one part of the assignment per meetup and believed in the saying “three heads are better than one”. This strategy will help me improve lesson planning and curriculum organisation in the future in the industry.
Communication Skills
Communication-wise, I was able to adapt to different group meetup’s timings and my groupmates workstyle. One was more domineering and vocal in his beliefs whereas the other was good in researching. I had to adapt in that sense to be the balance of the two by giving some feedback on the ideas proposed and help to do research as well, I was also more of a creator in terms of the required things to be submitted. Overall, being the balance in a group was the best option I had to follow my belief in adaptation as well as a good stress manager. With this, we were able to provide objective discussions instead of a hostile debate for every idea thrown. Eventually, the smooth communication that we had gave us the opportunity to suggest the idea of e-workshops from a just a take-home kit, which is an example of how slowly agreeing to each other and accepting opinions help refine ideas. In this industry, it is important for teamwork and leadership to co-exist for a better workspace as well as relationship amongst colleagues.
Current or Emerging Childhood Issues
Learning points from Interview and Feedback
Problem-solving Skills
I learnt throughout this project, to think big, but not overly big where it is not practical. When we were first discussing for out inquiry question, we tried pushing the idea of having a big workshop event however we had not considered the more fundamental aspects such as gathering the parents’ awareness for the event. Hence, we had created a more viable suggestion to spread awareness for the event and created a timeline prior to the e-workshop. This became a more wholesome and thought out idea instead of just jumping into the idea of having an e-workshop with loopholes such as how to get feedback from the parents and wanting to know what they are more interested in learning. The problem-solving skills that I attained via this project will help humble the way I think as well as put more attention to caring about small but important details in a project or curricular planning in the preschool environment.
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Through the interview, it was evident that every school is bound to face issues or parts of refinement. With the children being in a preschool and parents at work, children to parent relationships may not be strong and it may be a budding issue if not intervened or improved. This had taught me to focus on small problems or need for improvement as it may potentially provide problems in the late future. “No problem should be is too big nor too small”.
The feedback for our suggestion to the principal has taught me that creativity and practicality are intertwined. The feedback given per the principal was that we had a fresh idea for a suggestion to the inquiry question. However, the idea had some impracticalities such as the lack of security and potential outbreak of resources to another company. This taught me to focus on even the minor details in a plan to provide a safe yet engaging resource for the targeted audience.
One prevalent issue in most preschool centres was the parental involvement in the school curriculum. Parents in the local workforce are busy with their day jobs and hence place their child in a childcare or preschool as they lack the time to physically be present due to it. Hence this CAPSTONE Project enabled me to research more on the topic of the importance in parental involvement in schools and children’s schooling, hence developing the idea as a group of suggesting ways to help parents reinforce the curriculum.