I think you were all terrific! If I have to choose one, I think the best performance was given by Grade 2 because they were very lively. This may be because they are younger and, therefore, seemed relatively relaxed. That was why everyone showed their movements so confidently. As a matter of fact, there is a certain degree of difficulty for someone your age to interpret poetry using a cappella. In terms of a cappella, I saw that you had already shaped its form. The part that moved me the most in this competition was combining poetry with different kinds of music. For example, I heard music for ‘Doraemon,’ ‘Chibi Maruko Chan,’ and many others. They have become your own creations! The students of Yu-Tsai have already learned how to incorporate poetry and verses into tunes. One has to spend lots of time to understand these techniques even for adults.
This competition will definitely be of great help for memorizing poetry and verses! However, the degree of how it would affect you depends on how you feel towards poetry ad verses. Therefore, I think the sooner we learn about poetry and verses, the better it is for our literary attainment. It is way of cultivating one’s character. I hope that Yu-Tsai will continue to hold such competitions in the future so as to pass down HanGuang’s concept of promoting Chinese culture to younger generations.

The school's a cappella poetry competition was a success! I think the lower grade students showed great creativity. They were at least able to display the human vocal parts of a cappella successfully. In addition, there were many creative elements in their performances and the formats of the performances were also more diverse. Therefore, these performances were considered the joint efforts by both teachers and students. For example, students in Grade Two Class Yellow added rap to their performance and it was very unique. As for the upper grade students, I have to praise them because the formation of their groups and practices for the performances were all self-initiated. Although they had shorter performances and fewer participants, all the students displayed their strength in research and courage to perform. Through actual and self-initiated participation, I think the students would be able to learn something. It does not matter how much our teachers has taught us because that is only a reference. What really matters is students’ self-initiated learning because that’s something they will retain and benefit from for the rest of their lives. We learn for ourselves, show our ideas, and I am totally behind that type of spirit.
In the future, I would like to start competitions in different art forms for our students, and hopefully there would be something new every year. Elementary school students ought to try different activities in their six-year school time. Hopefully by trying various activities, students would be able to learn more about themselves, about world cultures, and about the society. Through this diverse performance art, our students gained a key into this complex world through observation and participation. If they are able to maintain such a drive to explore new things, they will be able to explore the world when they grow up.
In conclusion, I would like all participating students to know they have done a wonderful job and shown lots of energy. Therefore, I would like to encourage everyone to try different things and add a little more creativity in their next performance. In the meantime, students in the audience must listen, appreciate, provide feedback, and share these wonderful performances with others. This will give performing students a drive to return and show an even better performance in their next performance.

I was totally stunned after seeing such wonderful performances by our grades two to five students. I could not have imagined they were able to bring on such wonderful performances filled with creativity. Among them, I thought the grade two students did an outstanding job with lots of poise, and they have also added a lot of a cappella elements into their shows. That was very close to what I was expecting to see in creativity from every class. The most memorable ones have to be Grade Two Class Yellow and Class Zhi. Grade Two Class Zhi was the first class to perform, and its performance was captivating. Class Yellow improvised by adding rap into its repertoire, and that was totally awesome, totally amazing.
After this a cappella competition, I hope our students have learned more about a cappella and poetry. In order to join the competition, they have practiced and recited the poems over and over again, and that should help them memorize the poems better. The poems selected for this competition are part of the Chinese class supplementary materials at Yu-Tsai. Through this competition, our students have also learned a way to memorize these poems, and that is the purpose of this competition. In the future, should time and teachers’ workload allow, we could have similar competitions once again.

This a cappella competition was a great success. I was on maternity leave before the competition, so I did not know our students were able to present poetry in so many interesting ways. Each class did a great job, and some classes got the essence of a cappella, and I could see their creativity in their great performances. As a whole, grade two classes really got my eyes wide open. Class Yellow sang beautifully, and they expressed the essence of the poem in their song, it has to be my favorite performance.
The only shortcoming from this competition has to be the venue. Originally we planned to have the competition in the conference room. However, with this year’s exploding number of participants and enthusiastic parents cheering for their kids, we changed the venue to activity room, which was right next to the playground. The noise coming from the playground made it difficult for me to hear some of the kids. If we have another chance, we should select a venue with better acoustic effects for the performers.
It would be great to have another competition like this next year, but it still depends on what can our kids learn from such a competition. I hope our computer teachers can give us more encouragement and support. In conclusion, I would like to tell our kids they did an absolutely fantastic job this time. Should there be a competition like this next year, your performance will sure be even better.

This year’s a cappella competition was a great success. I was deeply impressed by the performance of the lower grades students. They may be young, but their team spirit, song arrangement, and team choreography were nothing short of outstanding. Some higher grade classes even got three teams signed up for the competition, their team spirit was truly something all students should look up to.
After the competition, I thought the grade two classes did a fantastic job. They were really cute and poised, and their performance really showed how naïve and pure they are. The middle and higher grade students were, on the other hand, more reserved, and some of them were a bit shy while performing.
If we make the a cappella competition an annual event, I believe our students will accumulate more experience and creativity. We hope to see even better performances from our students in the future. In conclusion, I would like to tell our students that this is your first a cappella competition, and anything that you see or hear, whether it’s from your teacher or your own idea, will become a great learning experience for you. If you did not do so well this year, pay attention to what others have done and learn from them. I believe your next performance will be better.I hope this competition can carry on into next year, and I look forward to seeing more great performances from our students.

A cappella is something that we have never touched on before, and, amazingly, our teachers and students did a great job mixing and matching classical poems with modern songs. It was quite unconventional, but it was loads of fun. The competition as a whole was good, but it would have been better if we could get more floor space to accommodate more students to enjoy and learn from the show. There were many great performances, and our students in the audience all behaved well. A cappella with poetry was a fresh idea to all of us, and the only pitfall was our floor space was quite limited.
Each grade performed differently in the competition, and there were lots of takeaways for all of us. For example, the grade two classes performed well as a whole. Their outstanding performance could be attributed to them getting lots of assistance from their teachers, and their academic workload was relatively less stressful compared to the middle and higher grades, so they had more time for practices. For the grade four and five students, they planned their performances without teachers’ help. Should they get some assistance from their teachers, their shows would have been even better. Even though grades two, four and five did quite well, I was especially impressed by the grade three classes, most notably Grade Three Class Zhi. Class Zhi had chosen a difficult song for its poem, and the teacher had added sounds of various instruments into the song. Furthermore, there were quite a few off-beat notes, so it was difficult for the students to command the tempo. I think students of Class Zhi did a wonderful job. Grade Two Class Blue had quite an interesting show. It combined songs from Taiwanese opera and Huangmei tone, and I was totally mesmerized by it.
After this competition, I believe our students must be quite familiar with the poems they had chosen, their performance must have helped them build up confidence, and their bonding with classmates and teachers must have gotten stronger.
With this year’s a cappella competition coming to an end, we started discussing about having another one next year. I am afraid the grade two teachers may get really exhausted because they have really put in lots of effort preparing for this competition. I was also thinking about taking the competition venue outdoors under the banyan trees so the whole school can see it, or changing the competition to acting, instead of singing, with different elements added into it. There are many ways for our students to learn classical poetries, and we could consider all of them.
In conclusion, I would like to tell everyone that I think they are all great, and they can adopt such a wide variety of styles, such as hip hop, Taiwanese opera, R&B, rock and roll, pop, and even English songs into their performance. Our students have got a good propensity to learn, and I want to thank them for making my morning so wonderful.

I really enjoyed this competition, and the students were amazing. They could sing a cappella at such a young age, and this would be a great experience for all of them. I really like the performance by Grade Two Class Yellow because they got really creative with rap in its performance. It was something extraordinary. Also, Grade Four Class Red had left me with a great impression because they had three groups, and each one of them had a slightly different style. They all did a great job. Overall, I think the higher grades focused on harmony, and I hope the lower grades could do the same to make themselves better.
In this competition, our students fused classical poetry into songs and then performed them in a cappella. I believe they all had fun singing a cappella. They all did a wonderful job. Keep up the good work! I believe you can do an even better job next year!

I think every one did a great job. I like Grade Two Class Yellow’s performance best because they added rap into their repertoire, and that was not easy at all. They must have a good sense of rhythm. Grade Two Class Zhi was not bad either. They did a suite of three Chinese New Year songs, and that was very creative. Grade Four Class Red had also impressed me. Every time the group was about to show some sparks, and then it just toned it down. It was something special.
After this competition, I think all the performances were very interesting. Grade two teachers gave all they’ve got, and the higher grade kids showed their creativity in their performances.
After this competition, I would like to tell everyone that you all did a great job by putting your own thoughts into your performance. I hope next year’s competition will allow more practice time, and you can come in touch with more a cappella music.

Our first ‘Learning Poetry Through A Cappella’ competition was quite successful. I saw a lot of creativity in our students’ performances, and some of them were quite original, even I could not have thought of it. It is difficult for me to select the best performing grade because the lower grades got their teachers behind them, and it was obvious from the comprehensiveness of their performances that they had invested lots of time into preparation. Whereas for the middle and higher grade classes, they prepared most of their shows. There were a few outstanding performances by grade four that really surprised me.
All participating students put forth their best effort in this competition, and we can see that. All of you did an amazing job! However, time control was one area that many of you have overlooked. Some performances were clearly less than three minutes. If all teams can be more thorough, our next competition will be more exciting to watch.