Since the beginning of the Singapore Circuit Breaker, I have been looking for ways to ensure I have enough physical activity for the day to stay healthy. I wanted to start a workout plan and try it for 6 weeks. After doing some research into youtube fitness channels, this is the workout plan I am to follow:
Daily: 6:00pm – 6:35pm
Visit Our ‘Music Therapy with Apex Harmony Lodge Page‘ to see our work from the last three months!
Disclaimer: Due to the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions, this outdoor appreciation project will be based on a trip that took place a few months before the published date.
For my NYAA Outdoor Appreciation Project, a group of my classmates and I had travelled to the Tioman Islands in Malaysia to spend 5 days developing our outdoor skills, teamwork and completely detaching from technology. In this trip, we engaged in several outdoor experiences ranging from kayaking to hiking. I will elaborate on my experiences and personal learning in the following voice recording outlining the events of each day.
In the first day of the trip, we settled into our accommodation and gave up our technology for the week. We played a lot of team bonding games and activities to build connection on the first trip of the day. The highlight the first day of the trip was swimming freely in the ocean which was something I had never done before and had actually been a little afraid of. One of the first exercises we did was a swim test as a team relay race in which we had to swim 50 metres into the ocean. I quickly realised that I wasn’t as afraid or as incapable of swimming in the ocean than I had first thought and this was definitely one the activities in the trip that had made me aware of my self-limiting beliefs that would prevent me from being more comfortable in the outdoors. That night, we had a reflections in groups guided by our activity facilitator as to what we individually want to achieve through this activity trip and I said that I wanted to be less reserved and be more adventurous and active. It was nice to detach from technology today.
Today was the day of our biggest activity challenge – hiking and overnight camping in one of the oldest rainforests in Tioman. We started off early in the morning with packed belongings and took a long walk to the base of the hiking trail. We spent the next eight hours hiking through the jungle. I was surprised by the fact that I actually enjoyed the hike, though tiring at times. I had practiced hiking before and maybe it was why I found the experience more enjoyable. Some of my friends had a little difficulty navigating the route so I tried my best to help them through the process. The hike was a good bonding experience with the people on the trip and had some funny and good moments – we saw a big snake and had to change course. Eventually, we reached out campsite at the other side of the island and set up our camping tents by ourselves as a challenge. We sat by the campfire for a while and ate food, then we went to bed. It was a really tiring day, due to the humidity and the travel but I had fun. I learnt that good company can really make any situation better!
After we woke up, we started packing up the campsite, and dragging kayaks placed in the campsite into the nearby shore. Our day today consisted of us kayaking around the island back to our accommodation. We had to make kayaking groups. The highlight of this day for me was when my teacher suggested I team up someone in our group who was a little apprehensive about kayaking on the open water so I would be able to support her. I was happy that I could be a comforting friend to someone who was fearful, even if I am not the more natural athletic person. The kayaking was a nice experience feeling the ocean water and looking at the other islands near Tioman and chatting with my friends. It was a bonding experience. After the three hour kayak and some time to refresh, we went to visit to turtle rehabilitation center on the island. We were taught more about the biological life cycle of turtles and I learnt a lot of interesting facts about them, but more importantly, we gained a further understanding of the widespread impact of human resource consumption and urban development on turtle populations. It made me feel strongly inclined to pursue awareness about the environment when I get back to my community.
Today, we explored more of Tioman’s local community and met with local people who taught us a lot about their culture and sustainable living. Firstly, we visited a farmer family on the islands and learnt more about their daily activities. We did raking, composting, planting, harvesting of their land and learnt more about all the processes involved in growing food. We even ate some local food and asked questions to the local community on their experiences on the island. On the way back from the visit, we did a beach clean up, and I saw the global impacts of industrialism and pollution in the remote beach island. Later on, we did a team building exercise that involved building a suitable raft with just metal barrels, sticks and ropes and it took a lot of creative thinking and teamwork. We had a race between rafts and my team used our fastest swimmer as a propeller. Our last full day on the island was really rewarding and a fun way to bring this activity trip to a close.
Even though I may not be very athletic naturally and have had a lot of experience with outdoor activities, I felt like this trip broke my self limitings beliefs and fears of participating in outdoor adventures. I enjoyed being in nature and I felt like I developed more grit, persistence and mental control.
What I really enjoyed about this trip was the connections and friendships that were strengthened throughout the process. Furthermore, I enjoyed the fact that people of all different physical abilities were able to come together in a judgement-free way to support each other in each activity we did. There were many instances in which we needed to rely on each other and think as a team and I felt like my abilities to both lead a team and work cohesively in a team has improved.
Being in the beautiful Tioman Islands, but also seeing the man-made environmental damage make the realisation of our unsustainable practices very clear in a direct way to me. This has motivated me to look for ways to make my life more sustainable and I have started making changes with the regards to the cosmetics I use. I have tried using coral reef friendly ingredients in my cosmetics and tried to make sure product packaging is recycled or repurposed.
Lastly, this trip was a welcome break from technology for me and made me aware of my own dependence to technology and all the times I do not really need to use my phone when I could be engaging in more meaningful activities.
The Community Project I had taken along with my group-mates to Bintan Indonesia was an eye-opening experience into service learning. The following are the important takeaways I have gained from the experience:
During this community project, I feel like my inclination towards leadership has grown. Needing close collaboration with my group, we did struggle initially to manage our schedules and personal commitments with the time it takes to prepare resources for a project like did. However, I found myself delegating tasks often, asking questions that will guide the group forward or creating resources like the previously linked powerpoint presentation. I enjoyed working in a group and ensuring that our group stays focused to our goal of ‘developing a lesson plan and educational resources to promote 21st century skills’. Furthermore, I discovered the importance of playing to the natural strengths of people in the group. To create the book for example, I relied on my teammates who were artistically inclined to envision the art and colours, whilst I worked on the narration, plot and including important English language chunks in the book. Furthermore, the teamwork this project required was not only between our group members but also between educators in my school, UWC, and TIF educators. Online communication and consistent communication were skills I developed here to ensure that our group had the right aims for the students we were about to teach
During this community project, my group had several times when we felt like we needed to reach out to educators of certain age groups to create a lesson plan for them. We had set up a meeting with a teacher of 5th grade and understood how he tailored his lessons to be age appropriate for his students and applied that to our lesson as well. It was very helpful to reach out and speak to people with expertise to better understand the nature of the project that we were doing. Additionally, research into journals and reports produced by the NGO’s in Indonesia or the Indonesian government gave us a better sense of the barriers the community was struggling with in terms of their education needs. We learnt that effective research leads is important to the effective implementation of a project so that we are not blindly serving a community.
Once of the first things that we had learnt in the community was that the locals did not want to be seen as an object of pity or an object of rarity that tourists should come and look at blindly. The community was strong, independent and unique in their own rights and our service trip was not meant to be to benefit us or ‘look good’ but was truly meant to benefit the people without pity. It was an interesting ethical dilemma in service learning that we had to grapple with as we went along with our project. Through the conversations with the local community in Pengudang, I feel that my understanding on the aims of service were clarified and I gained practice in engaging in service without ulterior motives. I can now be more appreciative of true service learning and have learnt to spot-check where my own prejudices arise during service projects and correct myself. This understanding has definitely transformed my experiences with community service.
A few months later, we went for our second trip to Bintan, Indonesia to carry out projects we have been planning alongside The Island Foundation over the past few weeks. Our objectives were to teach students concepts that would be relevant to their life within the community of Bintan and maybe give new methods/resources of teaching for the TIF staff. With the lesson plan and the book we had prepared, we had now gone to carry out what we had prepared to do. These are a few images and videos of my participation in the lesson: 
My group created a lesson plan that would allow for students to think about their environments and what they could do as individuals to help it in the future. We had created a set of activities and tasks that would help achieve this. To better understand how effective our lesson was after it was finished, we spoke to the TIF educators and students and formatted this SWOT Analysis:
The following is an look into how our lesson plan and resources created for the lesson can be used in the community in the future:
To aid our lesson we made several resources for example, sets of pictures and words, but most importantly, we wrote a storybook for the children to learn the relevant threats to their environment in Bintan (overfishing, crude oil spills, pollution etc.) In my opinion, the storybook resource that we created was the most applicable to their needs as a result of the variety of possibilities in which it could be used. The main opportunities the book could lead to are:
Secondly, Our group came up with a small activities that was engaging for the children:
Adaptations in our lesson would be in applying our ideas into the unit of ‘Food’ that they are planning on teaching the children. We revisited the ‘whiteboard reflection activity’ and how that could fit in the unit of ‘Food’ and came up with a sequence of energiser activities based on the concept. Additionally, suggestions were given to improve our storybook and develop it to be better suited to the children in a variety of mediums (video, different language) and add actions throughout the story to make it more active.
Overall, the experience of the trip was very eye-opening and it made our group feel a sense of achievement actually carrying out what we had been preparing for over the last few months. We got to meet a great community and great people along the way!
During the following months, we drew from the knowledge we had gained about the community. We spoke to TIF educators, teachers in our own school campus and researched more into the established concepts and philosophies on cognitive development to produce an effective educational lesson for local students.
The following is key points I learnt from teachers and educators on how to construct a lesson for the students.
1. Incorporating 21st Century Skills (Critical Thinking, Collaboration)
I learnt the importance of incorporating 21st Century Skills (Critical Thinking, Collaboration) to raise the quality of students and develop highly refined and practically applicable skills. These skills help children to have better thought processes and communication skills that help them in the future. The importance of starting to develop these skills early and provide a quality platform for students to learn is something we usually take for granted and not really understand how beneficial these are for our future.
2. Contextually and Age Appropriate
When planning a lesson it is crucial to make sure the lesson is of the conceptual understanding level of the group of students that we are working with. The concepts should drawn upon knowledge they are familiar with and knowledge they can expand on related to the particular topic. In this case, we learnt how teaching knowledge that is relevant to the lives of students in the community would be highly beneficial and practical.
3. Time Management
While planning our lesson, we realised the difficulty of trying to fit all of the content we wanted to cover within a particular time limit. The main issue we learnt how to work around was leaving time to consolidate the information that will be given to them so that the lesson if effective and not open-ended. I realised that we need and equal amount of time to give new information as well as discuss and digest that information during class time.
4. Classroom Management
During the process we researched into classroom management techniques and I learnt a lot about effective methods of keeping the class attentive and engaged. I learnt that vocal or visual cues are better methods than verbal cues. Additionally, we learnt to modify our techniques to the age group of the students again which account for their attention span
We incorporated ideologies from cognitive development philosophers into our plans for the project. In our lessons plan we aimed to build upon concepts and draw upon knowledge students are familiar with and knowledge that can enhance their understanding on that particular topic and prompt them toward new refined ideas. This syncs up with the Vygotsky’s ideologies of the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ wherein teachers guides them through what they know and what they have to learn through discussion and debating. This then relates to the 21st Century Skill of collaboration as it evokes sociocultural learning and helps children catch ideas themselves rather than it being taught and not understood. The latter is a philosophy put forward by Piaget.
Furthermore, we read reports from Indonesian educators such as the ‘Catalysing Productive Livelihood’ report that helped us know how to tailor our lesson plan to the Indonesia’s development needs. The main components lacking Indonesia’s educational development from reading the Catalysing Productive Livelihood report is the quality of teachers, the quality of education and the late enrolment in school. The approach of learning we want to incorporate gives students a higher quality of education as it develops more practical skills needed from the future using more holistic ways of teaching rather than rote-learning or teacher-centred learning. This method of education focuses on realistic levels of knowledge so that no conceptual understanding is lost in translation. It is a method that can be implemented at a young age and non-reliant on level of content so students can starts practicing beneficial skills that can counteract late the issue enrolment. Student-centred learning gives teachers new improved and efficient methods of teaching as well.
The following links are the resources we prepared to present to The Island Foundation:
A presentation we made to describe our intentions, aims and lesson outlook:
Lesson plan drafted for project execution – LINK HERE
We had also prepared a handmade book (which is now used in the school community in Pengudang).
Disclaimer: Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic the Community Service aspect of NYAA discussed here was carried out an academic year before enrolment to the NYAA programme.
In this community project trip, our group visited a village in Bintan called ‘Pengudang’ to work with ‘The Island Foundation’. TIF is an International Charitable Organisation, registered in Singapore. It runs an education programme in collaboration with local people in the coastal communities of the Riau Archipelago in Indonesia. It’s aim is to create lasting change by educating the next generation to create resilient, resourceful problem-solvers, equipped with skills for better prospects in life. (Click here to visit their site and learn more about their projects and support them.) The focus of our first trip to Pengudang was to learn about the people, culture and true needs of the community we aimed to aid. We explored areas of the community through conversations with locals and explored their needs through the perspectives of nature, economy, wellbeing and society.
There are many aspects and areas at play inside a community, so learning about the community in a more holistic way, with several perspectives, gave us a broader understanding of what is happening within Pengudang and helped us make sure that we were not placing emphasis in only one area of the community. Additionally, it aided us in better understanding how all these aspects of the life within the community co-relate, overlap and come together as a whole. Asking different stakeholders about these perspectives was beneficial as it gave us different opinions from people with different roles in the community. It gave us more information, ideas and references.
For instance, our group met with a kite-surfing instructor named ‘Aidil’, and from hearing his perspectives on the community, we got to understand and hear firsthand why there may be financial struggles, lack of higher education and the aspirations of the youth population in the community. This helped us understand the goals of the community and accordingly adjust our lesson plans towards assisting this goal. In Aidil’s case, one of his struggles was that the lack of English communication skills prevented him from getting a job in the tourism industry, so we realised the importance of incorporating a way to develop English communication skills in our lesson plans.
Similarly, meeting with Ibu Mariani and Ibu Sakdiah also gave us important insights into community life as females. But interestingly, meeting the stakeholders helped break several misconceptions I had had about Pengudang. For example, that there is no prominent gender discrimination, more girls go to schools than boys do or that their culture is greatly important to them and will not be submissive to the rise in tourism. This allowed us to grasp the intricacies of the community and understand it better.
The presentation below is the information Pranav Harish and I collected about the economy in Pengudang, Bintan
Reflection on Teamwork and Presentation
When presenting this Compass perspective alongside Pranav, I feel we did quite well overall. I believe this is due to various factors during the process of preparation. Firstly, we had collected appropriate information on our compass perspectives that we effectively incorporated into the content of our presentation that helped specifically elaborate on the situation in Pengudang. For example, Bintan Resort Corp. Scholarships, Perspectives of stakeholders that justified the trends spotted about the economy like Pak Madun and Pak Iwan about increasing entrepreneurship and economic diversification. This was presented in a good way due to the connection-making and cohesiveness we spotted between our trends which showed larger cultural movements and impacts within the other compass perspectives. For example, relating an increase in tourism to women in the industry and it’s effects on the larger society. However, we could have shown a heightened level of refinement with out content through relating this to how we see trends in the economy relate to internationally or spotted more possible trends that could have shifted our views on the economy. Personally, I could have had more insightful things to add to the presentation. When looking at my presentation skills individually, I feel like I spoke with a good amount of clarity and used hand gestures to help put across my points more effectively. However, I did fidget with my hands/hair/face and looked upward while speaking and in those aspects, I could have improved on the presentation. But mainly, I feel the good collaboration we had as a team benefited the clarity of the presentation as we had clear-cut sections for when to speak and we communicated with each other during the presentation and made sure it was connected and well-projected.
Today I had a few friends over and we decided to make chocolate chip muffins.
We used this recipe that was originally for cookies for this muffin instead. These are the results.
With all this baking i’ve been doing recently, I feel like I am getting the hang of the process such as mixing dry and wet ingredients separately before you combine etc. and the taste of the cupcakes were nice as well!
Today I decided to make eggless banana bread – a nice, healthy and tasty option if you feel the urge to bake.
The recipe I used was from theworktop.com and it follows like so:
Here was the finished product: (I added some chocolate chips)
It was a little dense due to not being eggless and wheat flour I added but it had a nice flavour. I learnt that baking with coconut oils means that you cannot store the goods for too long.
Today I made some carrot cake with my mom. We decided to back a carrot cake as a healthier option to other baked goods and we used healthier wheat flour instead of all purpose flower. We follow this recipe:
This is the finished product:
It tasted really nice and was quite simple to make as well. It was a fun group activity.