Video
(rap song presentation video)

As an English assignment I was paired with two other girls in my class- Bella and Kiara- to present a rap we wrote related to the short story Afrika Road by Don Mattera. The story was one about a protest, by the unique perspective of the road which the protest danced upon. We had to use poetic devices, and creativity to present our song in front of the class.

For this project I demonstrated the Core Competency of Communication. Some examples of this include giving feedback, presenting in front of people we don’t quite know, and being part of a group.
Besides knowing Bella from Girl Guides when I was younger, we were all with people we didn’t quite know yet. However quickly I think we were able to work as a team, and I got to know Kiara better. To write the rap we assigned parts of the short story to each of us, then taking the paragraphs we each wrote 8-10 lines before putting them together. We believed this was the most effective way for us to achieve our common goal.

The day we were assigned this project was a friday, so we exchanged numbers for over the weekend. During the weekend we could update each other on our progress, and present ideas. Then we could bend each others work so the pieces would fit together easier when we combined all our parts. I thought this was cool because we all have different styles, different ways of writing. But after writing our separate sections we combined them and switched out words, fine-tuning it so all of our words would work together. It was a team project that could still showcase our individual talents.

I think our rap was pretty good, besides the fact that we forgot to underline the poetic devices which cost us marks. Besides going over the criteria again before handing the project in, I think we could also work on our presentation skills. Specifically, bringing in props or costumes, interacting more with the audience and simply aspects such as posture, tone, speed, movement and eye contact. I also think a possibility we could’ve considered was playing music in the background which would contribute more to the fact that it was a ‘rap song’ instead of just a poem.
There are actually a lot of things we should’ve gone over related to our presentation, and it would’ve been helpful to go over the script a couple more times. Next time, I think we should meet up at lunch or flex, and think about simple things we could bring that as props, to add to our story. There’s a lot to consider for our next project but this was an interesting assignment that I’m thankful for because it allowed me to communicate with my teammates and get to know them better.