Tuesday

Woke up at 7:00am, had udon for breakfast, and then drove to school. One of the 1st grade teachers told me that the 1st graders had already noticed my haircut from seeing me in the car! As expected kids notice things so quickly. First up was 6-2 today and we started the new lesson unit “We are good friends” – the kids will do a play of the story Momotarō. I find that when the lessons are teaching more practical English (schedules, how to say wants, can and can’t, time, etc.) the lessons are more enjoyable and it feels like they’re actually learning. But when it’s lessons like these, where it’s not very practical and will probably not be used in real life, even the kids are a bit more restless. Even though they liked the activity where they had to find all the different characters from different stories, it just felt like there wasn’t much English learning going on. Same with 6-1, they were a bit more restless today too. Also the 6th graders aren’t as enthusiastic with the word chain game as the 5th graders. Only the same few kids were putting up their hands. Might have to go round asking in turn, as the kids who don’t put up their hand can actually do the activities.

Had class with 5-2 in period 3, and we did the textbook listening activity, and wrote up their dream schedules. 5th graders definitely love playing the word chain game much more. It was hard to choose who to pick cause almost everyone put up their hand. Everyone managed to finish writing their dream schedules on time, so we were able to do a little bit of speaking practice at the end for the presentation tomorrow. Period 4 with 6-1 was much better than the class in period 2. We first did the powerpoint quiz that I had made about stories from different countries – I would show them a picture and they would guess the title, and which country the story originated from. The kids had a lot of fun shouting out different countries and story names. At the end I asked them which story they wanted to watch (and I would find a video to show them), and at least 80% of them voted for “Maui and the sun”. I think it’s because of Maui appearing in Moana, and also they found the picture of the sun with the face funny. We then listened to the story of Momotarō in English from the textbook CD.

Lunch with 6-1 was a lot of fun today too. I asked two kids who sit in the front to bring a desk from the other empty classroom because there were no kids absent today (I was sitting in an absent kid’s desk yesterday) and they were running gladly to get the desk. Today’s lunch was delicious! Creamy tomato based pork stew, milk bread, pickled cucumber and tomato salad, and a mandarin to finish. The lunchtime talks today consisted of their favourite/disliked foods (a lot more kids liked natto than I thought!), their favourite anime/manga, and a new thing has started now where I will time the kids to see who can drink their milk the fastest. It started yesterday with one kid claiming he could finish drinking his milk in 40 seconds, so I got out my phone to time him (he finished in 24 seconds), so today’s kids also challenged and the fastest finished in 12 seconds (12.13 to be exact)! The original kid who started this milk challenge tried to challenge again, but the fastest he could manage was still only 15 seconds. Cleaning time was easy again today but I just had to remind them a few more times than usual to focus on cleaning instead of playing in the corridor. Finished and put up my Christmas themed English board in periods 5 and 6, had the meeting with the 2nd grade teachers for tomorrow’s revision lesson, and then drove home at 16:30. Had some udon and dumplings as an early dinner before going out again to buy some Secret Santa presents! I bought two gifts – one for this Thursday’s ALT Secret Santa exchange, and one more for the 16th where there’d be a Christmas party at my volunteer helper’s house. After I finished the Christmas shopping I went to play badminton, which I haven’t been to in a while!