Professional Documents
Culture Documents
English 10 / 1004
June 4, 2018
Almost every high school around the world provides after-class or extracurricular
activities that students participate after school; they include tutoring, sports activities, and
clubs. These extracurricular activities can help students to find their goals and their
pathways in the future, improve the students' skills outside the classroom, provide social
opportunities, and the activities also are productive free time for the students. From these
activities. In most Thai schools, there are also a lot of extracurricular activities provided
for the students to do after school and in their free time. At MUIDS, the school also
provides extracurricular activities in period 7 for the students, such as peer tutoring,
volleyball training, and the Model United Nations (MUN) club. However, there is not
much variety of period 7 activities, so the author believes that there are ways to improve
them in order to provide the solution and persuade Mahidol University International
The author uses eight academic articles from different sources and an interview to gather
the data and opinions. In order to improve period 7 activities at Mahidol University
International Demonstration school, the school should provide more variety of activities
and give more opportunity for the clubs to show their work.
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At MUIDS, there are many factors that decrease the effectiveness of 7th-period
activities are important for the students’ future. Firstly, participating in the period 7
activities will allow the students to gain many necessary skills including many life skills,
specific skills, social intelligence from the activities and time management. According to
Crimson (n.d.), one of the greatest benefits that the students gain from the activities are
the real life skills. The real life skills contain goals setting: the students need to set their
aim in the clubs’ activities, for example, in sports activities, most of the athletes aim for
winning and the improvement of their skills. In the future, the graduated students will
also need to set their ambition in their future careers. Leadership and public speaking are
one of the life skills the students will gain: many activities require the students to lead the
teams activities and also require the participators to share their opinions, such as MUN at
MUIDS or debate club. These extracurricular activities also improve the students’ social
and spend time with new people, hence forming new friendships,” mentioned Nicole
Jackson, 2017. The students also get the opportunity to actively work with other people
which also improve their socializing skill and cooperativeness. Many extracurricular
activities take the students to visit many new places, so the students get more social
mentioned that many students improved their time management when they add
management. Moreover, the time they spent with extracurricular activities is also
productively used. Many activities developed students’ specific skills based on the
activities, for example, MUN club at MUIDS; this club trained the students for debating
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which the students will gain a professional public speaking skill. Most importantly for
most of the students, the students will be able to explore their interest. As mentioned
above, many extracurricular activities are career based activities, so the students who
participate will get the opportunity to find out their career paths (Crimson, 2017).
In order to find solutions to the problems of MUIDS period 7 activities, the causes,
and specific problems are needed to be identified. As the author interviewed the students
about MUIDS period 7 activities, there is one main problem which is the students do not
join period 7 activities, but this problem is composed of many small factors. According
to the survey, most of the students mentioned that the biggest problem that causes them
not to join the extracurricular activities is that the schedule of the clubs overlaps each
other. In a week, there are four hours of period 7 activities, excluding Tuesday which has
no club or period 7 activities, and some clubs occupy already two to three days, so the
students cannot participate in every activity they want because they need to go to other
clubs first. Moreover, it is mentioned that the school sometimes have academic activities
that overlap period 7, so they need to participate in the school’s activities before they
participate in their clubs. In addition, many students also mentioned that they did not
know about period 7 activities in MUIDS well; they did not know what clubs were
provided the school and also there’s not enough advertisement or presentations that can
make the students know more about the clubs. Another important factor for MUIDS
period 7 activities to be improved is that there are not enough variety of activities, for
teachers for only Basketball, Volleyball, and Soccer. There are other sports that the
students want to have after-school training including Table Tennis, Badminton, Rugby,
etc. Specifically, about sports activities, a lot of sports leagues that MUIDS join require
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the students to go out of the school in school time and they missed class, so the students
do not have much encouragement to join sports activities in period 7 and after school.
Some problems also come from the students, which is the students are not free in period
7; many students take extracurricular courses outside the school, so they do not have time
have some variety of activities, the activities and clubs provided by school do not catch
students’ interest and do not suit students’ need; some students want to participate in
activities that are related to their interests their future careers, for example, photographer
club. All the small factors decrease the students’ participation in MUIDS period 7
activities, so we need to find the solutions to these problems in order to improve MUIDS
period 7 activities.
From the problems about MUIDS period 7 activities mentioned above, various
MUIDS needed to add more various types of clubs and period 7 activities. Some of the
activities include Academics teams and clubs, for example, Science club, more culture
clubs and variety of sports activities. About the schedule alignment, the school can add
Organizing clubs to fit appropriate time is also required, for instance, many of the students
attend only one culture club, so the school can Spanish club and Japanese club at the same
day on period 7. Moreover, many sports activities’ leagues require the students to miss
some classes during the school time to compete in the league. The school needs to
organize those activities not to overlap the school time. These particular solutions will
enable the students to participate their preferred activities more easily because they will
have clear schedules and also clear timelines of their activities. Some problems were
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created by the activities organizing process. The school needs to be more strict about the
clubs activities by having clearer schedules and proper activities. Many activities don't
have their particular time, for example, some clubs change their activity time according
to the head of the clubs, and some clubs also needed confirmations to start the club in
each day. There should be students doing the role of the activities’ or clubs’
representatives so that the activities will not always need the teacher to control or take
care of the clubs every time, and the students will also be able to participate in their
activities more strictly. In addition, the students will also have more motivation in
participating their extracurricular activities. One of the solution that the school can make
after having the students to join the activities is that MUIDS could give more development
hours for the activities, for example, some extracurricular sports activities do not give
development hours to the participators, so there are fewer students joining sports activities
in the evening.
Conclusion
This research report aimed to suggest improvements and solutions to the problems
of period 7 activities at MUIDS. This research report concludes that there are many
problems that caused the students not to participate 7th-period activities at MUIDS, and
they can be solved by adding more variety of activities, improving schedule alignment
and giving more development hours. The students will participate more extracurricular
activities, and they will gain more skills and social opportunity for their future. This
research report recommends further studies on each activity’s advantages and ways to
References
Gordon Surry School. (n.d.). Period 7 Activities. Retrieved May 21, 2018 from
http://www.gordons.surrey.sch.uk/_site/data/files/pdf%20files/extracurricular/pe
riod%207/515D50EFE47AABE52FEFD1299F606A8F.pdf
Varsity Tutors. (2014). 7 extracurricular activities that can enhance your college
experience. Retrieved May 21, 2018 from http://college.usatoday.com/2014/09/
05/7-extracurricular-activities- that-can- enhance-your-college-experience/