SUGGESTIONS TO OVERCOME THE WEAKNESSES - PROJECT 1

In my report on the project, I have stated three weaknesses of the project that
I have carried out. The first weakness is the issue of truancy among the students.
The students played truant for two reasons during the Jazz Chant week. Firstly, they
are said to be problematic students and secondly, maybe they were not interested
with the activity that we, the teachers, carried out. As for the first reason, I could have
discussed to the Year 6 coordinator and the class teachers to help me to solve this
problem. They know the students well and longer than me, so, I am sure they have
better ways of dealing with such disruptive behaviour of the students. With the help
of those teachers, I believe the truancy issue would have been more manageable.
For the second reason which is lack of interested from the students' part, I should
have reconsidered my activity to see if it is appropriate for all the students in Year 6.
Jazz Chant is a fun activity to improve on the linguistics aspect. Nonetheless, the
level of proficiency of the students plays a significant role in ensuring if the pupils
enjoy the activity that the teachers organise. To be specific, the students who played
truant were those from the low achieving classes. The students from the low
achieving classes might feel shy to chant the Jazz Chant in front of the high
achievers as the groups consist of pupils of mixed abilities. We, the teachers,
expected for the good pupils to practice scaffolding technique and help the weak
ones to perform well, but, it was not the case in many groups. Worse comes to
worst, when the students who are weak have to keep up and compete together with
those who are good in English. The students might have felt overwhelmed. I believe
this problem could have been tackled if the competition is carried out for pupils with
the similar level of proficiency in English. There are six classes in Year 6. Maybe the
first two classes can be divided into two groups to compete with each other, and the

same goes to the middle two classes and the last two classes. A group of mixed
abilities students is very helpful to enhance the abilities of the weaker students in
group works, nevertheless, when it involves competition, it is not a very good idea as
the weaker ones may feel intimidated and there also tendency for the good ones to
blame the weaker ones for their lost like what happened on that day. This leads to
more demotivating situations for the weaker students and they might even withdraw
themselves from joining such activities in the future due to this experience.
The second issue that I have stated is regarding the emcee and mini
workshop tasks that I did. I was nervous as it was my first time which caused me to
make several mistakes when I was delivering the mini workshop and being the
emcee. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect, I should have practiced before I
gave the mini workshop to the pupils and be the emcee for that competition instead
of just preparing the script. This is because if I practised a few times earlier, I would
have identified the mistakes that I can make when delivering the mini workshop and
being the emcee and would have avoided on the real day. Therefore, before I deliver
any workshop, talks, be emcee etc., I will make sure I practised well to prevent from
making silly mistakes on the actual day.
The third issue is lack of time for the pupils to practice for the competition. I
was not aware of the level of proficiency of the pupils in that school when I decided
to just allocate six hours from the three days for their practices before they perform
on the fourth day. Some of the pupils needed more time for practice and I believe
they would have performed better if they practised well. Thus, I must be more alert of
the pupils' needs when I conduct a project after this for them to give their best in the
competition. The ways discussed above will be my guidelines to avoid such issues
from occurring in the future.