Year 8

Year 8 Assembly Journey

Throughout the course of each academic year, every year level in Secondary is required to create, produce and perform their own assembly. The intention is that this is an opportunity for each year level to strengthen their community through a very collaborative process. It is hoped that the end product provides a space for the year level to shine.

Here, Olivia (8A) reflects on the process of creating and performing the year 8 assembly.

Greetings, Global Jaya Community! I’m Olivia of Year 8A. This assembly thrived through many happy moments, even slight difficulties and errors. But how could this have possibly been achieved? Through much teamwork and communication throughout the planning and the actual performances, all of which have made this assembly possible. For more information regarding the process of the Year 8 Assembly, continue reading!

Creating an assembly was a massive project that needed collaboration and team-building tactics to be completed. In November of 2022, Each advisory voted for three students from their class to run the assembly- all of which got together to create the Assembly Committee. Each of their roles was different and ran different aspects of the assembly- from stage management to music to props, and much more, each member was in charge. 

Creating a successful assembly like this was a very time-consuming process. Each individual step took weeks or even months. The steps were forming the main idea, executing the main idea, and showcasing the main idea. 

This was the creative vision for our assembly: Our audience had the chance to pick and choose from a series of options in the storyline that lead to a different ending and whether the main characters will live happily ever after. Luckily, the audience made the right choices and guided this story towards the right path, which led to a happy ending for the characters. This production was in the form of a comedic play featuring musical performances from our very talented musicians. 

In the midst of that process, we learned so much about creating an assembly and large scale projects like this. Firstly, collaboration is seen throughout this entire process. Collaboration is crucial, and the value is learning how to problem-solve with others that differ from our ideals for a wonderful outcome and to be accepting of new ideas. This is an important skill that we will need throughout our lives.. We also needed to learn how to be open minded and accepting of ideas that aren’t ours. Who knows, maybe they do work?

And during that process, we also learned to become problem solvers. In projects that are large like this, issues may come about and appear here and there, especially because this was our first time making an assembly. We learned how to think creatively when a challenge does come around. With that thinking, we learned to strive together to make solutions. Lastly, being a reflective learner. Through our mistakes, the challenges that occur along the way and how we faced them, we look back at those experiences and we hold them until another large scale project like this occurs again

However, one thing we could’ve changed was the general management of the assembly. A few technical errors occurred amidst the backstage chaos. One way we can avoid this in the future is to enhance our decision-making skills, curate self awareness, and enhance our communication skills, even if one’s backstage or up at the top of the technical management space, it is vital for future projects which feature much collaboration.

Hopefully this article provides a clear perspective on what we learned by creating an assembly as a year level. I would like to congratulate Year 8 for doing a fantastic job in handling the assembly, again, thank you for reading!