Tuesday

Woke up at 7:00am, rice and soup for breakfast, and then I cycled to school. Another busy day today with all 6 periods filled with classes! First up was 6-2, and the 6th graders had finished their previous unit, and moved onto their new one “Let’s Read Picture Books”. They actually did really well surprisingly. As in they listened to me reading the picture book. I thought they would find it too childish and lame (it was “Brown Bear Brown Bear”) but they actually listened very attentively. This class also read very well, loudly and clearly after me. The words they struggled with the most were probably “bird” and “children”. We also explained the differences between Japanese sentence order and English sentence order to them, and most of them seemed to get it since it’s basically switching the order around (verb goes at the end in Japanese, whereas the verb goes before the object in English). Next up in 2nd period was 6-1 and they were also surprisingly extremely well behaved today. This class was even more quiet and attentive when listening to the picture book being read. It was honestly fascinating – reading to such a quiet bunch of 11/12 year olds. This class was a bit quieter during their turn to read though, I think there’s less kids in this class who are confident in English. There is one kid who is really good though. We moved faster in this lesson so we were able to do the sentence order explaining part more thoroughly, and they all seemed to get it thankfully. We ended with a bit of time to spare so just let them off early, since they really did do well today. This class had also changed up their seating plan so it was funny walking into the class at first and seeing different kids up at the front.

During the 20 minute morning break the tea-lady handed out jelly that was supposed to have been for the Sports Day (but she forgot about them). I got sweet potato jelly and was so surprised that it’s a thing here! 3rd period onwards was with the 3rd graders. As always they were loud and very lively, but they were relatively well behaved today. The “Face Building Game” was a huge success – the kids loved it. Not all of them were able to remember the body parts but with a bit of prompting they were fine. We definitely got a lot of interesting drawings from this game! Lunch today was yakisoba! With bread, and tofu soup. I ate with the second class of the 2nd graders today. I normally sit at a larger desk at the front of the class, but for this class they didn't have the spare large desk, so I sat at an empty desk with the kids! It was very cute. The kids were joking about it and calling me the name of the kid whose desk I was sitting at, and the kid sitting next to me was very cute and showed me how to put the yakisoba in the bread, to make a yakisoba roll. Spent the lunch break in the classroom, as this class had a lot of kids who stay behind drawing pictures and reading and stuff. One girl even gave me a massage out of the blue. Cleaning time today was a bit wild, as the kids changed roster again so I got 4 different kids than the usual ones. The usual girl who leads them all was rostered to another area too so that’s probably why today was a bit crazy.

5th period was with the last class of 3rd grade, and again it was a little loud and wild. I blame it on the game though – everyone just gets so hyped up during the game. They’re fine with the vocab when we practice it but as soon as the game starts it’s “SENSEI WHAT WAS ASHI AGAIN?”. I guess it’s also more confusing for them because they have one word for both leg and foot (あし). They had lots of fun with the game though, and the teachers were commenting on how the kids really liked the game too, so that was good. The teachers also had a good time laughing at some of the hilarious drawings (one group’s drawing had 5 necks so they couldn't draw the head on top cause they were too short!).

Last period of the day was 5th grade, and we finished the last lesson of the alphabet unit. We did their quiz presentations, and this class was really into it with everyone wanting to present. We unfortunately didn't have time for all of them to present though, so we allocated some time for the next lesson to be presentation time. They didn't do too bad in the summary test either. Most of them got 10/10 on the listening part, and wrote their names in capital letters nicely. We’re definitely going to have to work on stroke order though – despite the letters being written neatly, the stroke order that some kids have is very…interesting. After classes ended I had a meeting with the 2nd grade teachers for tomorrow’s lesson, and also with my JTE for tomorrow’s 5th grade lesson. Got off work at 16:20 and cycled home. Skyped with a NZ friend for a bit, and then headed off to badminton at 18:40!