Thursday

Woke up at 7:00am, rice for breakfast, and then drove to school today since it was pretty windy out. First up was 4-1 today, and it was a nice class. They successfully learnt to say “What’s your favourite colour/sport/animal/number” and how to answer it properly “My favourite colour/sport/animal/number is…” so that was good. No one managed to get Bingo as they didn’t get to ask enough people, and some people were confused with the Bingo sheet. It was still good speaking practice, and they were very good about the “No Japanese, only English rule”. It’s funny getting the “EEEHHHH!?” from everyone when I tell them that the “punishment” is doing “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” in front of everyone. 1-1 next in period 2 and it was another super duper 元気 class. The BOE teacher yesterday commented on the 元気ness of my school’s kids, as they are a lot more 元気 when compared to other schools (hence the noisy, and maybe more ‘un-disciplined’ image, even though they are disciplined, but just too 元気)! I read out The Big Turnip to them first, then we decided the roles. No one wanted to be the Grandpa or Grandma, and a whole bunch of kids wanted to be the turnip, so I let them be. It was hard to fill up the whole lesson with just reading out the storybook, so I played a few games. Tried to do the “How are you relay race” that another ALT told me about, but the 1st graders couldn't do it by themselves too well, and needed a lot of prompting.

1-2 was much better with deciding the roles, and every character got a volunteer. They were a bit quieter than 1-1 when reading out the book though. 1-1 was so super enthusiastic and yelling out ONE TWO ONE TWO and doing the “phew” part with a very dramatic action. 1-2 really struggled with the relay race game, so I do want to drill that a bit more with them. 1-3 was super sweet again today but no one wanted to do the Grandma, so I let them be with that. They had a few kids who got the hang of the relay race game, so that was great. Lunch with 4-2 again today, and the Attack on Titan kids asked me who my favourite titan was today. We had cream stew with vegetables and chicken, salad, bread, and grapefruit for today’s lunch. Everyone was exclaiming how sour the grapefruit was today though.

The last lesson for today with 4-2 in period 5 was an observation one, with the principal and VP watching, for my JTE’s evaluation. 4-2 is overall a much more enthusiastic/participative class than 4-1 (even though grade 4 overall is very good), so it was a nice and loud class today. We had 2 people get bingo in this lesson so at least they got the hang of the game this time round! Had lots of people wanting to present at the end too, and they loved the drawing the numbers out of the box system for selecting people. Spent the empty 6th period writing out 6th grade’s nametags, and then got off work at 16:15. Went straight home to do laundry and clean my house to prep for my mum coming tomorrow!