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By Curriculum Planning and Development Division |
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The Social Studies Primary and Secondary teams produced four
RDMC packages between them:
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| Southeast Asia: Physical Environment and Economic Activities
(for primary schools); |
Our Neighbourhood (for primary schools); |
Sri Lanka:
A Resource Package (for secondary schools); and |
The Venetian Experience (for secondary schools). |
These packages provide teachers with the flexibility to customise
their lessons to cater to the different learning styles of their
students. They also provide opportunities for student-centred
learning activities and allow students to learn at their own
pace. These packages have been distributed to all primary and
secondary schools in Singapore.
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(Click to read more)
| The topic of Venice was
selected based on feedback from teachers at
the focus group discussions. Many teachers mentioned
the dearth of resources on the topic of Venice,
and they found it difficult to sustain students’
interest without visual resources. The challenge
for the team was to incorporate the wish lists
of teachers into the package, while ensuring
the delivery of the learning outcomes of the
syllabus. |
Among the ideas mooted,
was a game that engages students in their learning.
When we embarked on research for this delivery
mode, we became more excited with the prospect
of bringing a “dry” content topic to life.
We studied existing strategy and role-playing
games such as The Age of Empires as well as
classic ones, like The Uncharted Waters, which
we believed had educational value. While the
games were entertaining and useful in developing
thinking skills, we noted that the delivery
of learning outcomes would, at best, be incidental.
At that juncture, the magnitude of our task
in developing the RDMC prototype became apparent.
During the storyboarding phase, we realised
that modelling even the simplest of the role-playing
games was an extremely difficult task. The package
has to provide a balance between learning time
required and delivery of learning outcomes.
By taking a step back and analysing what we
really wanted, we realised our original intention
was to create opportunities for students to
make decisions based on key historical events,
so that they could experience the impact of
the decisions made by Venetians as well as to
empathise with the reasons behind Venice’s rise
and fall as a city-state. |
This led us to focus on
providing students with decision-making platforms
using IT simulations. We were mindful that the
package had to be flexible enough to cater to
different pedagogical approaches, from content
instruction to self-directed and cooperative
learning.
To maintain academic rigour, the team made full
use of the research work to make the simulation
of key events in the history of Venice as accurate
as possible. Even the clothes worn by Venetians
and the items they traded in were genuine evidence
of Venice’s past glories! Inevitably, some creative
license was exercised in this section, since
the team had to speculate on some of the possible
but substantiated decisions made by the political
leaders of Venice. |
| The team also wanted to
use the opportunity to impress upon students
the grandeur that was Venice. This led to the
creation of the Explore Venice section. The
final product was made up of seven self-contained
sections, designed to maximise the package’s
potential use for the teaching of Venice. While
some of these sections focussed on content,
others focussed on developing thinking skills,
incorporating cooperative learning techniques
and encouraging the use of multiple-intelligences
in the classroom, among other pedagogical principles. |
As with all our RDMC packages,
rigorous pilot testing was done at some primary
and secondary schools. The feedback was carefully
considered to improve on the package. It was
encouraging to observe students being actively
engaged in the development process.
After the RDMC packages were disseminated to
schools, we visited schools to get feedback
on the use and relevance of the resource packages.
The schools appreciate that concepts are brought
across through the various learning paths and
that they encourage reflective thinking. Many
schools also commented that the packages complement
the Social Studies instructional materials and
have helped teachers to make their lessons come
alive in the classroom. |
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