At The Grange Institution, Singapore
At The Grange Institution (TGI), Singapore, our future-focused curriculum supports our unique Cre8tors-in-Action© educational philosophy aimed at developing Global Citizens by equipping them with the following 8 core competencies:
Construction & Design
Respecting the Environment
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Active Citizenship
Teamwork & Partnerships
Original Ideas
Recognising Issues
Service Leadership
VERE360 complements the school’s current ways of teaching with virtual reality experiences, so that our students can see what they learn come to life immediately! From our experience, virtual reality can empower teachers to conduct highly engaging lessons that leads to possibly greater retention of knowledge. In this article, we share a few humble examples as part of our beginning efforts.
Example 1: “What’s in your head?”
Complementing the Milepost 1 and 3 – Brainwave Units
This VR experience brought our students inside our heads! Students played with a 3D modelled puzzle where they could take apart parts of the brain to learn about the parts’ functions. Afterwards, the students put the parts of the brain back together, learning about the basic anatomy of the brain. Here is a demo of the 3D modelled content that was used for the lesson:
Example 2: “A Day in the Life of a Water Droplet”
Complementing Milepost 2 – On Tap and the Cambridge Primary Science Curriculum
This Year 3 lesson was meant to help students recap what they have learned previously about the water cycle. Using virtual reality, the students tracked the journey of a water droplet that went through the processes of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. This lesson was meant to help students consolidate their knowledge of the water cycle Check out below:
Example 3: “Greek Pottery Story – Icarus”
Complementing Milepost 1 – The Stories People Tell
In this Unit of Learning our Year 1 students explored stories as a clue into our civilisation and our culture. The teacher and the students explored different countries from around the world. This VR experience encourage them to find out about stories through a non-book medium and the use of shadow puppetry showcased another way many civilisations told stories as part of their cultures. Check out the story of Icarus:
Example 4: “Music In The Dark”
Complementing our Music curriculum
One of the strands of our Music specialist curriculum is “Appreciation”, where we wish for students to develop an appreciation for traditional music from around the world, and similarities and differences of different regional music and musical instruments. As the learning took place via online remote learning during the Home-Based Learning period in Singapore, this specific VR content was designed to expose students to various common musical instruments they might come across in their lives, was was meant to engage the students in music even when they had no easy access to the music room in school. Note: The above experience might be limited unless viewed using a VR headset.
As you can see, our VR content is still developing and while it still has an amateurish feel to the final creation, we are nevertheless very proud that it is a true collaboration between our teachers and the VR designers. There are lots of easily available VR contents in the market; however, what we truly value in this TGI and VERE360 partnership, is that we truly customise the content to suit the learning of the students, and that we celebrate teacher agency and teachers as co-creators of content.
Visit our website for more information about The Grange Institution (www.thegrange.edu.sg) and VERE360 (www.vere360.com).
