Our Partners

Partnerships and Collaborations

 

NIEC x KidSTART

 

Project L.A.H

Project L.A.H (Lend a Hand) was conceptualised in collaboration with KidSTART to give Year 1 students in the Diploma in Early Childhood Development & Education (ECDE), and Diploma in Tamil Studies with Early Education (TSE), a platform to make a difference in the community through service to others.

 

Over 500 students signed up, and they were all actively involved in liaising with various community partners, preparing proposals and volunteering their time to execute the various activities.

Throughout the journey, the students were constantly engaged in reflective conversations with their class mentors to foster deeper understanding and appreciation of self, others and the community.

 

Read more about their creative projects and passion here!

 

KidSTART Foundational Training Programme

NIEC-City Campus worked with ECDA to develop a Child Development module for the KidSTART Foundational Training Programme. Our Lecturer, Ms. D K Gowri Danakodi, conducted 3 training sessions for more than 60 KidSTART practitioners. 

 

Not only did participants deepen their understanding of children’s developmental milestones, they also learnt the skills needed to effectively communicate the importance of child development to parents and the different ways in which parents can support their child in their development. 

 

NIEC x National Library Board: Read for Books

For every 10 people who read for 15 minutes, 1 book was donated to one of the National Library Board’s (NLB) beneficiaries. Lecturers from NIEC (ITE) contributed their time by organising the reading sessions as an additional class activity. They also encouraged their students to do their reading at their own time. By the end of the project, even the lecturers’ families chipped in too! In all, 34 books were donated to NLB’s beneficiaries through this project.  

 

 

 

NIEC x KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH): Wagga Book Series

Based on research evidence that early social-emotional skills are critical foundations for later social and academic success, and due to the lack of social stories and teaching materials which are localised for the Singapore preschool context, NIEC has been working with KKH since 2019 by forming a team to create a social-emotional skills curriculum using modified Wagga* series books suitable for classroom wide learning. The team from NIEC co-developed the books by ensuring that the language used, context of the stories and concepts taught are developmentally appropriate for preschool children. As of 2022, 10 out of 11 books were completed.

 

* Wagga is a character in a series of stories on social behaviours in children developed by the Department of Child Development at KKH, to help parents support their children’s emotions and behaviours. 

 

Celebrating Children’s Day and Christmas with the little ones

 

Despite not being able to hold physical celebrations during the year, NIEC-TP Campus’ student leaders collaborated with Little Skool House at Temasek Polytechnic to curate 2 virtual events to bring cheer to children and to get them into a festive mood.

 

With the guidance of their lecturers, the student organisers put together a Children's Day Carnival on 7 October 2021 and a ‘Joy of Giving’ Christmas Celebration on 20 December 2021 for over 50 K1 and K2 children. The students and lecturers had such fun telling stories, playing games, singing songs and dancing with the children,  and the little ones enjoyed it very much too!

 

Quality Teaching Tool Working Committee

NIEC is represented in a working committee set up by ECDA to develop a Quality Teaching Tool (QTT) for Singapore’s early childhood sector. The QTT will serve to improve the quality of teachers’ pedagogical practices. It will set out the principles for quality teaching that are aligned with the Early Years Development Framework (EYDF), Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) Framework, Quality Rating Scale (QRS) and Skills Framework for Early Childhood. In addition, the QTT can be used by centre leaders during lesson observations to guide teachers to improve their classroom practices and plan their professional development. As members of the QTT Working Committee, we help to connect and align the priorities and perspectives in quality EC education teaching and learning and teacher training among ECDA, MOE’s Preschool Education Branch and NIEC.

 

Social Service Skillsfuture Task force (STT) Early Intervention (EI) sub-team

The STT implements key strategies to enhance the resilience of the sector, and looks into ways to empower social service professionals to deliver effective services. The STT’s focus on manpower pipelines and talent development has enabled the transference of skills and experiences from outside of the social service sector, which strengthened capabilities of Social Service Agencies in Singapore. As a member of the EI sub-team on the STT, NIEC worked closely with the STT to help shape the training of EI educators and learning support educators for greater porosity between EI and learning support.

 

Inclusive Support Programme (InSP) Resource Panel

The InSP caters to children with developmental needs aged three to six, who require medium levels of early intervention support. By integrating both early childhood education and early intervention in a preschool setting for these children, the InSP seeks to provide a more inclusive learning experience for both typically developing children and children with developmental needs. As a member of the panel, NIEC provided advice on the pilot design and implementation, guidance on capability development on inclusive education, and advice on the design of the formative study for the programme.

 

Masterclass on creative story writing

Virtual Global Experiential Programme (GEP)

As students have not been able to travel overseas for GEPs, NIEC (ITE) and the Hong Kong Vocational Training Council (HKVTC) hosted a virtual GEP in October 2021 so that learning and exchange could still happen despite the ongoing pandemic.  

 

During the session, the students had the chance to find out more about the early childhood landscape overseas and participated in taster lessons to observe how Numeracy and Discovery of the World classes were conducted in Singapore and Hong Kong.