Thursday

Woke up at 7:00am today and had bread for breakfast. I love how their bread is sliced so thickly here and is so soft and fluffy! Drove to school again today. Driving is the best! Today was a much more relaxed day today with only 3 classes to teach. I made the most of the spare periods working on my new Sports themed English board! Laminated everything and cut it out ready to stick up.

First class of the day was 5th grade. We continued on from yesterday and let them play one round of Karuta with the person next to them. Also found a new jingle for them to listen to since yesterday one student asked me why it was always food! I found an animal one for them that they seemed to like a lot, so that was good. We always seem to run late with the 5th graders. The lesson plans are very heavily dependent on having absolutely perfect students who don't talk and listen 24/7. Even though we were meant to play two games today, we still only managed to get to Karuta. We’ll have to leave the Chain game for next week!

Second class was 1st grade. The last one to have the animals lesson this week. This class absolutely loved the “Old McDonald Had a Farm” video and laughed at all the animals appearing. They also did the vocab drill very enthusiastically, shouting out the animal names. But when it came to remembering which animal was which, they didn't do so well. That’s ok, enthusiasm more than anything is nice at this stage. We played animal karuta and one little girl cried cause she kept losing out on getting the cards! The homeroom teacher dealt with that though – I’m very grateful for homeroom teachers who can properly discipline their classes. They’re all very good at it except for one 3rd grade class (the super rowdy one). We then did the animal maze worksheet and again it was pretty adorable how they all forgot the English names of the animals. They could get easy ones like “lion” because it sounds similar in Japanese, but apart from that it was lot of giving out hints!

Prep time in periods 3 and 4. Worked on my English board and took a break from lessons. Lunch today was milk bread and ramen!!! The ramen soup was delicious, I am really loving 給食!!! This particular 1st grade class seems to have all the adorable kids. They are just so extremely affectionate, they've even started to call me Jaimeちゃん instead of Jaime先生! The homeroom teacher told them to ask me questions today, and again they were all so cute and funny – “Does NZ have buses and taxis?” “Does NZ have police to catch the bad guys?” “What shape is your house?” – and a lot of putting up their hands only to forget what they wanted to ask. Another lunchtime spent drawing pictures for the girls – they’ve coloured in my drawings real nice though so that was really nice to see! At the end of the lunch break when I was leaving a couple of the kids asked when was their next English class. They were so innocent. They've had theirs already so their next one wouldn't be till next week but they were all bouncing around “Today?” “No.” “Tomorrow?” “No, next week!” “The day after tomorrow?” “That’s the weekend!”. One of them even asked me how many times he has to sleep before he can have English class again. Adorableness scale is hitting max everyday here! Walked around a little bit during cleaning time today since I didn't want to sit in the teachers’ office doing nothing again, but the kids just seem to be distracted by me despite me repeatedly telling them to clean, so I admitted defeat and retreated back to the teachers’ office…

Last class of the day was 4th grade! I think 4th graders are the best year so far. They are super enthusiastic, loud but not rowdy, and they listen and move to instructions pretty well. I was surprised by today’s class’s enthusiasm. Some new place cards I made didn't have the magnets on the back so I couldn't stick them on the board, so I asked for volunteers to help hold them up and they ALL put their hands up and shouted YEEEEEES at the top of their lungs! Such an enthusiastic class. Please spread your enthusiasm for English across all the grades. Also, half of this class managed to remember the place names AND the grammar. A lot of them very adorably wrote Katakana so that they would remember how to say “What place do you like?” – very cute, and it’s so nice to see them trying so hard. I hope they carry this enthusiasm and good behavior on to the next year when they became 5th graders!

The teachers had a lot of snacks today so naturally I got some too! It was this really yummy corn potato snack thing, and there was even a version where it was covered in chocolate. After I got off work at 16:40, I drove to Daiso to get some more stuff, then 7-Eleven to get some cash, and then home. Planned for my Tokyo long weekend with my friend living in Tokyo, and then called it a night!