ENGLISH A and B SCHOOL BASED ASSESSMENT (SBA)

YEAR 2021

Name: Micayla Myers

Candidate number: 1001091199
Center number: 100109
School: St. Hilda’s Diocesan High School
Teacher: Miss Thomas
Theme: Education
Topic: Truancy's negative effect on students attending online classes
Territory: Jamaica

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 ACKNOWLEDEMENT

Firstly, I’d like to thank God for giving me patient, guidance and for providing the resource
and help needed to completing this project. Also thanks my teacher, group members and
parents for their help with meeting the necessary expectations for the SBA. I hope this
research will be understood as intended and leaves a good impact on someone.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENT PAGE
Plan of investigation 4
Group Written Report 5
Artefact 1 6
Artefact 2 7
Artefact 3 8
Reflection 1 9
Reflection 2 10
Plan of Oral Presentation 11
Oral Presentation (Speech) 12
Reflection 3 13
Reference Page 14

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 PLAN OF INVESTIGATION

The group’s theme is education. For my individual topic I’ve selected “Truancy’s negative
effect on students attending online classes”. I found great interested in this topic upon
realizing that a lot of the students engaged in truancy especially now that we’re using online
learning platforms. Many students deliberately skip school and this affects the academic
performance of those students.
I’ll use sources that I can find from browsing the internet, watching YouTube videos, and
asking a few interview questions. These pieces of material will help me to make my SBA a
success.
As student of English, I believe that I’ll be able to improve my ability to work with my peers
in groups. It will help to build and strengthen my vocabulary, comprehension, research and
reasoning skills and improve my abilities to express my thoughts and ideas in writing. This
investigation will help me to gain more insights on truancy and understand the problem
from different point of views.

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GROUP WRITTEN REPORT

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 ARTIFACT 1
“An Investigation Into Some of the Major Cause of Truancy”- Ratau John Monobe, Khangela
Baloyi

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 ARTEFACT 2

“Truancy: Cause, Effect and Solutions”- Bill Rivers from St. John Fishers College

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 ARTEFACT 3
“Truancy Reduction: keeping students in school”- Myriam L Backer, Jane Nady Sigmon and
M. Elaine Nugent.

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 REFLECTION 1
Apparently, truancy is and has always been a problem in schools but I’ve never look at it
that way. I never knew hiding away form school or not attending without a valid reason
caused problems nor did I really know it could be caused by problems. However, after
researching, gathering and analysing information on this topic, I’ve found three artefacts
that have given me a better understanding of Truancy.
Ratau John Monobe and Khangela Baloyi’s article on “An Investigation into Some of the
Major Causes of Truancy” taught that there are serious factors that contribute to truancy.
Family challenges, educational deficiencies and the psychological state of the child are
factors that are instrumental to understanding the reasons for truancy. The article also
made references to a lot of other persons views on truancy. This piece of material helped
me as it is beneficial to my studies and bettered my understanding on the causes.
The second piece was an investigation titled “Truancy: Cause Effects and Solution” which
was carried out by Bill Rivers from the St. Johns Fisher collage. This piece gave a different
feeling towards the topic as it showed me how serious the topic of truancy is as he has done
a successful investigation in his school with intentions to find out why his students are being
engaged in truancy.
“Truancy Reduction: Keeping students in school” written by Myriam L. Backer, Jane Nady
Sigmon and M. Elaine Nugent is a newspaper article and the third piece used for my project.
Here the theme is shown very clearly and they expressed their views on truancy in attempt
to solve the problem. This was beneficial as it provided more information on the topic from
a different angle.

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 REFLECTION 2

Monobe and Baloyi (2012) speaks highly of the topic and it is seen clearly. The reference to
various studies of other researchers helped to bring out the reliability and objectivity of
their claims. The words and expression which were used are very significant as they gave
better understanding and shared some of the important information on truancy.
Rivers (2010) looks at different studies that reveals the various reasons for truancy in
adolescents and encourages serious work must be done. In addition, he uses language that
is easy to understand. These words include poverty, extreme neglect, emotional
detachment and abuse. Rivers is a professor but his language is simple so that readers of all
age can understand the main idea of the piece.
“Truancy Reduction: Keeping students in school” points out the problem and solution in a
very informative way. They expressed their own views education and the piece uses formal
language and written in simple standard English the mood was indicative and showed no
misuse of language, grammar, or punctuation.

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 PLAN OF ORAL PRESENTATION

Theme: Education
Topic: Truancy’s negative effect on students attending online
Classes.
Genre: Speech- the expression of ideas, feelings and thoughts
by means of articulate vocal sounds, a formal address
or discourse delivered to an audience.
Source: Original piece.
Language: Standard English.
Reason for selecting genre: This genre was seen as the best was to express my
thoughts on truancy and to bring out my researched
facts and knowledge learnt.

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 ORAL PRESENTATION SPEECH

My name Micayla Myers, “Truancy’s negative impact on students attending online classes”
is the individual topic I chose for my School Based Assessment from the theme “Education”.
This topic was of interest to me as I’ve noticed that since Covid 19 pandemic has started a
lot of students in my community have been part taking in truancy.
Truancy is the act of a school-aged child or adolescent frequently missing school without
adequate excuse. While schools often cite parenting and home life as the cause of truancy,
some truant youths often report school issues as the cause. Students are at risk of negative
out comes including educational failure, social isolation, substance abuse, low self-esteem,
unwanted pregnancy, unemployment, violence, adult criminality and incarceration.
Truancy can be caused by bullying, mental health issues, boredom, lack of ambition, poor
grades (especially having repeat a grade), being behind on school work, gangs, lack of
education, poor academic performance, giving into peer pressure to skip school and
violence at or near school. In addition to placing students at risk, truancy has harmful social
and financial consequences. Truancy often acts as a “gateway” behaviour that can lead to
students trying drugs and alcohol, engaging in other criminal acts such as vandalism and
theft and ultimately dropping out of school altogether.
As it pertains to online school, it is a little easier for students to be truants as they aren’t
physically at school so they can always log onto classes and not participate finding
something else to occupy their time like social media, idling with friends, going out,
sleeping, watching television ect. They can blame it on internet connection or not having
electronic device and take the day to do something else. Some don’t have adult supervision
at home in this time so they aren’t being monitored to go to classes.
To stem this problem one can offer supervision to children who loses focus easily or put
them in groups with other responsible children which will encourage and help then, they
can also reach out to the child and their parents to find out what’s the main reason for the
child being truant and try to fix the problem with them. Rewards can even be offered if the
child’s work is done and done on time.
Truancy is a problem which can be solved with proper supervision and the right amount of
interest in a child. Thank you.

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 REFLECTION 3
Having read and developed an understanding of the articles, I have realized that my beliefs
on truancy has changed significantly, I’ve gained more insights about truancy, it’s negative
effects and I’ve seen ways in which this problem can be solved. This topic intrigued me as I
was amazed by causes of truancy as I had no idea there were so many factors which
contributed to truancy and I was amused in seeing the different ways in which each problem
could dealt with.
Also, I have become better at research and finding the relevant material as I had to search
the internet to find this article. I’ve also became more careful of the ways in which I select
materials for my other SBAs since I have learned how to find articles that are reliable and
relevant to specific topics. Choosing and narrowing my investigation into three artefacts
that I deemed worthy for the completion of my research wasn’t that hard. My vocabulary
was improved and I’m now more adept in speaking and writing English.

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 REFERENCE PAGE

“An Investigation into Some of the Major Causes of Truancy” -

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED530677.pdf

“Truancy: Cause Effects and Solution”- https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1106&context=education_ETD_masters

“Truancy Reduction: Keeping students in school”-

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/188947.pdf

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