Thursday

Woke up at 7:00am to beautiful weather this morning – finally! Although the forecast is still saying that it’ll rain this weekend again…I am hoping with all my heart that it’ll change! Had rice and soup for breakfast, and then drove to school – I would’ve cycled in this gorgeous weather except I’m still recovering from the cold. Only 3 classes today because of this thing in the afternoon for new students of the school. The schedule for today was also different with first period starting 10 minutes earlier at 8:40am instead of the usual 8:50am. The morning break was shorter too, and lunch and cleaning time was also shortened. The kids got off school at 12:10 and the rest of the staff were busy with welcoming the parents and new students.

Anyway, in first period we did “What’s your favourite ___?” with 4-1 and they were great as always. It was a good lesson with them repeating nice and clearly after me whenever I said vocab, and they played the games well. I’d been warned by my pred that the 4th grade gets a bit too competitive in Karuta so I told that to my JTE and she made sure to tell them to play nice. They did good – no tears today! I think they know most of the vocab already (colours, sports, animals) and they were able to ask “What’s your favourite ____?” pretty well so I’d say today was a very good lesson. In 2nd period I had the special Halloween lesson with 1-1 and it was pretty smooth as well. Their classroom didn’t have the HDMI cord so I couldn't play the song for them, so I had to stretch the lesson out with some games on the spot, since they finished the planned craft way faster than I thought they would. They all really liked the craft though, and were playing with the bats and witches, pretending to make them fly and stuff.

3rd period with 1-2, and another pretty smooth class. They liked the Halloween song but they were saying how the ballerina doesn't fit (the kid in the video dressed up as a ballerina, whilst the other kids were the usual ghost, witch, monster, etc.). They did well on the craft and most of them remembered how to say “Trick or Treat”. We had a really early lunch at 11:10am and it was curry rice and orange yoghurt today. It was really yummy, and there was one girl in 3-2 who was able to eat 2 massive servings! 3-2 is actually a little more affectionate than 3-1, so I guess it’s not a grade difference thing. Guess 3-1 is just really indifferent to me haha. In 3-2 they will come up to the desk I’m sitting at to talk to me at least! The kids only cleaned their own classrooms today, so I didn't have to watch over my little corridor area. Stayed in the staffroom and just did whatever until 16:00. It was a bit hard because there wasn’t much prep for me to do for anything, so I just stretched out whatever I was doing to try fill up the time. The teachers finished with the new students orientation thing and had a kind of reflection meeting on it at 15:45. It was pretty interesting hearing them discuss about the new students (which kids were good, which ones had problems, which ones cried, etc.). It was also really interesting how they keep track of students by numbers. It was literally “Number 18 who was in row 2 was not sitting quietly” “Number 17 was like this” and so on. Very interesting. It is quite efficient though because all the kids in class know what number they are, so sometimes calling out the number gets a faster response than calling out their actual name. The meeting was basically identifying and naming the problematic kids, which I found really interesting – I guess they’re making very early preparations for when the kids actually start school next year in April! The teachers’ meeting didn't run too long and actually finished way earlier (at 16:07) than what I thought it would run till so I was able to get off work fine at 16:15! Drove home, made dumplings, did some laundry, and had rice with kimchi for dinner.