Thursday

Woke up at 7:00am, rice and pickles for breakfast, and then drove to school. A day full of play practices today with 1st and 4th grade. First up was 4-1 in period 1 and we went thoroughly through the script with them. They were pretty good! We grouped them in their character groups first (so all the wolves were together, mother goats were together, etc.) and gave them 10 minutes to practice saying their lines together themselves. After that we read through the whole script once as a class, with everyone saying their own character’s lines when it was their turn. They did very good! I was at first a little worried whether we’d be able to pull off this play, but it looks like they’ll be fine. Next up was 1-1 in period 2. 1-1 is seriously the most energetic class out of 1st grade, and perhaps out of the whole school! We did a total of 3 practice runs of the play today. 1st one to just refresh their memory. Then I filmed the 2nd one, and we watched it on the classroom TV and we pointed out the good points and bad points together. Most of it was the same (good points: loud clear voices, bad points: messing around, being noisy while waiting) and the kids were pretty good at pointing out their own mistakes/bad points. 3rd run of the play, we aimed to fix the bad points! I filmed it again, we watched it again, and it was a pretty perfect run.

Next up was 1-2 and I feel like they were better last week. They must’ve just been on an off mood today. The play practices weren’t bad per say, but last week’s one was definitely the most perfect. We did the same thing with filming the practice and reflecting, and they were pretty similar with 1-1 in terms of pointing out the same good and bad points. Next up was 1-3 and their practice was very good. They were the most adorable in the reflection part, because instead of saying general stuff like “We used loud clear voices” or “We played our parts well”, they pointed out specific people like “(Name) was very good” or “(Name) used a very loud voice and I thought he/she did very good”. It was so adorable to see them praising each other like that! Such sweethearts. We had some time leftover in 1-3 so I went through the game we’ll be playing with the 6th graders once with them (we’ll be playing Mr. Wolf, what time is it? Except I changed it to Mr. Cat, since wolf is quite hard for them to say). They really liked it and asked to play it again but we didn’t have time. Looks like it’ll be a fun game for them and the 6th graders to play though.

Lunch with 6-2 again today and it was pretty funny because of two things. The first was that we had oden for lunch today, and it had quite a bit of seaweed in it. One kid really doesn't like seaweed so he holds his nose and he eats the seaweed, and then immediately drinks some soup or eats some bread straight afterwards. It was just really cute to watch, he was like a little kid. The second funny thing was that one of the kids showed me this family tree of the class that he’s made, and the kids go crazy over it every lunchtime. I’d been seeing this paper but hadn’t seen the written contents until today. It was basically a crazy sprawling family tree with aliens and imaginary characters, and some kids in the class had clones! Reminded me of how we used to have “families” in primary school too, although 6-2’s one was on a whole other level with all the extended (extended!) family trees. The kids were super cute about showing me it though – they were like “Jaime-sensei, we’re gonna show you this so make sure you don’t tell anyone”. I felt so included haha. The lunch break today was again super super short because of the special schedule we were running on, so I only got to talk to some 2nd graders and walk outside with them before the bell rang. Cleaning time was again a breeze, this week’s kids are all fine.

4-2 in period 5 and we practiced the play’s lines as well. They were a bit more noisy than 4-1 so I had to pause every few scenes and clap to get their attention and get them to quiet down so that we could actually hear the lines being said. My JTE also had her hands full with one little scuffle that dragged on to become a long one. One girl wouldn't stop crying/feeling down even after the other kids had apologised. She kept holding onto her grudge! The other kids practiced fine and the wolves and shopkeepers were especially into their roles. Got off work at 16:30 because I was finishing up an Olaf print for the “pin the carrot on the snowman” game. All the pictures I found were pretty pixelated, so I ended up drawing him on photoshop myself. After work I did some laundry and had dumplings for dinner.