Wednesday

Woke up at 7:00am to great sunny weather (finally!!!), had potato mash for breakfast and then cycled to school. It’s really nice cycling in the autumn breeze! Busy-ish day with 5 classes today. First up was 2-2 in 1st period, and it was the last lesson of the “What’s this?” unit. We did vocab revision at the beginning and I got the kids to run it (they would be the one to point to an object and say “What’s this?” instead of me). Then we played Fruits Basket again, except it was called “Class Basket” for today. They managed to play the game pretty well, and because of our meeting yesterday we had decided to keep tabs on who had had turns to do something, to make sure everyone got to participate. The 2nd grade teachers really like to keep their lessons very structured. They’ll say “1, 2” before we get the kids to say anything to make sure they all say it at the exact same time, and even Fruits Basket was run in a very orderly way. 2-2 still struggled with saying “ruler” as they keep saying “blurer”. I don't know why some kids purposely put on this heavy “r” accent to try sound more “English”.

Next up was 2-3 and the lesson was great as well. This class is the best at asking and answering perfectly. Nothing much to report with this class. What was cute was them wishing me happy birthday when I walked in though, and when I asked them how they knew, one of the kids said his older brother who is in 4th grade told him. I thought that was so cute how the older brother would tell his younger brother about my birthday. I know the 4th graders know my birthday because their homeroom teacher is about the same age as me (only 1 year older) so we were talking about our ages/birthday the other day. Later on she told me that she actually got them to write in their school diaries, so that's how they all remembered/knew! They also seemed to tell a lot of the other younger grades, because they all knew and were wishing me happy birthday. One of the girls from 4th grade even gave me a little present!!! It was all handmade little things like cards and crafts and origami. Too cute. The 3rd graders that I was eating lunch with also gave me hurriedly made letters as they found out my birthday from the teachers in the staffroom. Another 4th grade girl also gave me a card on the staircase, and it said “Ms. Jamie. I have fun in your English class.” with a drawing of me and her in class – too cuuuuute. I spent the 20 minute break either being wished a happy birthday from passing kids, or having more Halloween sheets handed in to me. They’ve run out AGAIN on the English board so I had to make more quickly just after cleaning cause we ended early. The kids are handing them in way faster than I’m returning them!

3rd period was 2-1. They’re my favourite 2nd grade class because they’ve got a lot of the charming kids with a lot of personality, but they’re also probably the most 元気 and loud class so it was a bit tiring today with the Class Basket game. Thankfully they know all the vocab and how to ask/answer, and their homeroom teacher was pleased with them being able to respond with “Yes, it’s a ___” since they couldn't do that last year as 1st graders. 4th period was 5-1 and man was it a breeze to go from a 2nd grade class to a 5th grade class. My JTE laughed at me walking in with a relieved sigh. We did the alphabet karuta game with 5-1, and also the alphabet pair writing game. They did both pretty well but took a little long to settle in between the karuta rounds, but they’re still a decently behaved class. Lunch was with 3-1 again and we had tomato cream pasta, this really nice bread (that was almost like a メロンパン but brown and maybe a bit more savoury?) almond salad, and wine jelly (grape jelly) for dessert. The kids were all eating the bread bun in really different/interesting ways. Some ate the shell (outside) first cause that’s the crunchy sweet bit, and others were eating the inside first leaving the shell to eat last. Spent the lunchtime returning sheets to the 3rd graders since they all had sticker requests, and then spent the rest of the lunchtime marking the other sheets.

Cleaning time went by way too fast today. It starts at 13:30 and the kids were already done by 13:35. I managed to drag it out till 13:40 by pointing out the most miniscule pieces of rubbish (dust) but they still had fun yelling “RUUUUBBISH/RABBIIIIIT” and picking those pieces of rubbish up. Gave them kiwi stickers today for their effort. Last class of the day with 5-2 in period 5, and again they were hard to settle down and we had to wait a lot for silence before continuing. We did the summary test today for the “Plus One Alphabet” unit and most of them got 26/26 for the listening/writing section (I would say a letter and they would have to write it down). Most can write pretty decently without the guidelines as well, but only a few can do it neatly (3 out of 35?). The JTE gave the tests to me to mark since she had to teach a maths class in the last period. It was pretty fun marking and deciding which kids’ writing were worthy of an A+. Only one girl got the A+, since she really has computer typed level neatness. Got off work at 16:00 and cycled home. The clouds are back already since there’s apparently a typhoon coming in, so we won’t have good weather until next week Tuesday…oh my autumn leaf viewing time is flying away.

Went back out at 17:00 ish to go to the bank to update my bank book, buy some stuff at the drugstore, and buy cake and dinner. The cake shop is super cute (it’s called Puchiru and the building is the most adorable cool building I’ve ever seen for a cake shop!) and I spent a long time just standing there deciding which cakes to get! Got myself a katsu-don with egg at the convenience store for dinner.