Photos by NTUC First Campus and Avelyn Ng
The last of the five large childcare centres announced by the Government in May 2015, My First Skool at 10 Jurong West was officially opened by NTUC Secretary-General (SG) Chan Chun Sing on 4 October 2017. It can take in 319 children from two months to six years old.
Parent company NTUC First Campus (NFC) is piloting a research study on mother tongue acquisition in the early years on the new campus. A first-of-its-kind, it will explore how different factors impact language learning and how bilingual competency and technology affect social cognitive development.
NFC is partnering experts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre who will head the four- to five-year study.
“Learning other languages is quite different so we want to keep the study focused on Mandarin at the moment. As we scale up our Malay and Tamil language provision through our centres, we are likely to have some sample studies on them in the near future,” said My First Skool Deputy General Manager Thian Ai Ling.
Besides helping to strengthen the bilingual curriculum in the preschool sector, the findings will be used to develop resources for My First Skool’s teachers and parents.
Social Mission
The new My First Skool’s learning spaces are also uniquely designed in line with its vision to be a centre of excellence for bilingualism and cultural intelligence over the next three to five years.
With the potential of young children manifesting in different ways, SG Chan highlighted the need for preschools to introduce a greater variety of teaching methods and learning styles.
He explained: “Bilingualism is just one of them. For example, in the showcase just now, you also saw My First Skool using new technologies to help the students not only learn to read better, faster, but also understand what they are reading in a more in-depth way. We are pioneering all these new concepts because we believe we have a social mission to evolve the teaching pedagogies to cater to the needs of our students.”
Moving forward, some 30 My First Skool centres will be participating in another research project in partnership with Nanyang Technological University’s Early Cognition Lab that aims to better foster racial and religious harmony within the curriculum.
My First Skool at 10 Jurong West's "Bilingualism and Cultural Intelligence Room" with bite-sized exhibits on various languages and cultures that are refreshed every few months to provide students an immersive experience.
A mock-up of a Chinese provision shop is one of the centre's themed dramatic learning spaces.
