The Sewing Workshops in Alleys

To many students, sewing workshops were where clothes were made, but they did not know how they looked like inside and how did those mums and aunts work. We had visited sewing workshops and had interviews there, so we generally knew about the histories of sewing workshops and the how they were operated. The teacher asked us to make promotions in the class, not only to make the students to better understand sewing workshops, but also to make our exhibit introduction more complete. We could practice our public speaking that way and find our own shortcomings. We also made more people know the stories of sewing workshops.

To make the class promotion more successful, we had following discussion and preparations before going to the classroom:

1. 1) What topics to talk about?
2. 2) What materials to prepare?
3. 3) To promote in what ways?
4. 4) Who to be in charge of these topics?
5. 5) Order and etiquette to go in and out of the classroom.
6. 6) Which class and when to promote.

1. 1) Topics: History of sewing workshops, Introduction to sewing workshops, Works in sewing workshops, introduction of school uniform dissembling.
2. 2) Making posters, preparing uniform, making PPT instructions.
3. 3) The allocation of work: History of sewing workshops (Yi-ping and Xin Ouyang), Introduction to sewing workshops (An-peng and Ya-ting), Works in sewing workshops (Chi-yuan and Ting-yu), the introduction of school uniform dissembling (Bao-le and Jin-yu), PPT (Po-ta and Ya-guan).
4. 4) Given the students’ comprehending capacities, we decided to make promotion in grade 5. It would be easier for them to understand. We asked the teacher to help us coordinate about the class and time.

Discuss and prepare contents

Funny practice

Look at my lively expressions and gestures

We all had the same gesture?

Our school uniform was composed of these parts.

Can you guess what is the place in the picture?

Po-ta Chen

Yi-ping Liu

I teamed up with Ouyang for today’s class promotion. We introduced the past glory of Taiwan’s garment industry. We practiced many times so it was very successful. When we were in the first class, I was nervous and jammed. When we went into the second class, I was better at it. I was afraid to lose face when I was on the stage. Luckily, it went well, but I thought I did not do it well enough. The attitude of the first class was not good enough. As a listener, you got be more passionate and attentive. Otherwise the speaker would lose confidence.

Jin-yu Chen

Chi-yuan Huang

I forget that I had to make the class promotion that day. I had not prepared at all and practiced as much as I could before going on to the stage. Although I finished the whole introduction, I was very nervous. We did worse than last time, so we had to work on our speaking abilities. Through this class promotion, I found myself to be braver. I could not only speak louder, but also in front many people. I learned a lot from this class promotion.

Ya-guan Wang

I listened very carefully to other students’ introductions and found their voice was too small. The students under stage might not hear them. They were too nervous, with there hands clutching clothes and trousers. The students were not active after hearing our introduction, which made us feel it, was not worth the effort. So I would listen more attentively if I were the listener in the future. I would try not to make the same mistakes the speakers made. I did not know my own shortcoming before. Now after I’ve watched others’ speaking, I had seen those shortcomings clearly. Class promotion was a very good experience.

An-peng Wu

Xin Ouyang

Ting-yu Li

Ya-ting Tsao