Wednesday

Had the cream pasta I made yesterday for breakfast this morning (I had made a whole heap last night woohoo) and set off for school at 7:45am. Today was a completely full day with all 6 periods filled with classes! First up were 2nd graders. Today we moved onto learning places (supermarket, library, school, etc.) and they were pretty good! 2nd graders are really enthusiastic and chant really loudly, and all their homeroom teachers have pretty good control over them, stepping in when they get a bit rowdy, which isn’t too often. They found “library” and “shrine” hardest to remember though, so we repeated that a few times. It was just too cute though, because they were saying/mumbling “shiiiiiine” and “libebabeb” when they couldn't quite remember. Good effort though! The 2nd class also struggled a bit with “post office”, always forgetting to say the “office” at the end. They perfected with a bit of practice though.

Next up were the 5th graders. We were still on the alphabet, and today we played two games. The lucky card game got everyone up and moving and playing intense games of paper scissors rock. Next was the chain game, and this was pretty good too, but again unfortunately we ran out of time so we were only able to play 2 rounds. They all did pretty good though, although some spelling was all over the place (TEN turned into TEM, and DOG turned into DOV). Afterwards was 6th grade – today we moved on from explaining why we want to go somewhere (I can…I want to…) to introducing the country (You can…You can see…). Instead of the usual jingle and chant, we finished off the interview sheets from last time. I kind of wish we could just completely take the jingle/chants out of the lessons, since we would then have so much more time to do more work/activities/games. For the interviews, the kids can ask the questions pretty well (“Where do you want to go?”) but they take some reminding to finish up with the “Why” and “Because”. They also did pretty well in the listening activity. Even though they didn't understand absolutely everything (in particular the individual grammar “you can see” “you can eat” “I like” etc.) they still managed to get the gist of it because they caught the keywords (like panda, Great Wall, etc.). Next was working on our “country cards” where each student chose a country they want to introduce, and three things you can do in that country. This was pretty fun as they liked thinking of the different things you could do, learning the vocab for it, and also trying to draw the pictures. A lot of people chose France and generic things like the Eiffel Tower, escargot, and so on.

Lunch today was rice mixed with chestnut, mushroom, and some other tasty vegetables. Also mushroom turnip carrot soup, and sanma fish with some pickled salad on top. Everything was really good and I’m glad the rice and soup had lots of stuff mixed in it so that it would be filling enough! Apparently there was a lot of rice leftover though, the teachers reckon it was probably because the soup had a lot of stuff in it the kids probably got full from that. Spent the lunchtime walking around handing out stickers to the kids who’d already finished the emoji sheets. During cleaning time today I stayed in the teachers’ office, and the 5th graders who were cleaning the office came to talk to me after they finished cleaning. They wanted to practice the English they had learnt in class! Cuties.

Last two periods! 5th period was 1st grade. As expected, classes that are held at the end of the day are just full of hyper kids that are unable to concentrate and focus! Everyone was very loud, but we still got the planned activities done. The 1st graders are still having a lot of trouble remembering the animal names. They could remember colours and numbers pretty well, so it’s either that we’re doing too many animals, or I’m just not drilling them on the vocab enough. At least they properly learnt how to ask “What animal?” today, even if they forgot the animals’ names! Their zoo worksheets are adorable though – their drawings are all so cute, and some added penguins and foxes (animals we haven’t learnt yet). They also absolutely LOVED the animal alphabet song video I found from Youtube, they seriously laughed at every single animal. So innocent.

Last period 2nd graders were also a bit crazy and hyper today too. The vocab drill was good because their loudness contributed to their enthusiasm and they were able to remember the vocab better than this morning’s 2nd graders (who had a lot of trouble with shrine and library, but this class didn't at all!). But when it came to the game (Fruits Basket, but we called it Town Basket for this lesson) everyone was super hyper and overexcited, running around everywhere and purposely not sitting down, but then crashing into each other as they fought for the last seat. Can’t blame them though, when it gets to the end of the day all concentration just flies out the window. They still got the vocab down though so I can accept the noise and hyper-activeness. There was a lot of leftover rice from today’s school lunch so I got to bring some home yay! I had that for dinner later on in the night.

I went to another badminton group tonight! This one was super close to my house, only 6 minutes drive away!!! The level here was also higher than yesterday’s group, so I really enjoyed the games and got some good exercise in. I’ll definitely be coming back. The group was mainly made up of old uncles that were all really pro. One of them is 54 years old and has been playing for 40 years, and is the coach of the badminton club at a junior high school! This group finishes a little earlier at 20:30. I chatted a little bit with the other ALTs (total of 5 of us including me) before going home.