Friday

Woke up at 7:10am – it was a good thing I set two alarms for the first time ever! I usually just have one, but because I went to sleep so late last night I thought I better be prepared otherwise I’d easily fall asleep again! Had a banana and rice for breakfast again, threw out the trash, and then drove to school. Today we were having the 1st graders’ play presentations! In 2nd period, all the 1st graders and 6th graders met in the gym, and we had a joint lesson time. It was super great!!! The 1st graders were especially well behaved and totally showed up the 6th graders. We started off with a greeting (Hello, how’re you, how’s the weather – cause that’s all the 1st graders can do at the moment) and the 1st graders were super enthusiastic and answered really loudly. I asked the 6th graders again afterwards to try and get them to be just as enthusiastic. It was pretty funny to watch though, they were all like “wo” at the 1st graders’ English. First up to present was 1-1. Everything ran a lot smoother than I expected – all the homeroom teachers came together to help put the character bands on. I really like 1-2 and 1-3’s homeroom teachers, they’re really helpful and just take the initiative to do anything to help. 1-1 presented pretty well, voices could have been a bit louder but that was probably just the gym and the space. 6-2’s homeroom teacher was great too as she got her kids to say the “1, 2, 1, 2, phew” part (together when the 1st graders said it) later on, so that was pretty funny. 1-2 also presented very well, I couldn't have asked for anything more. 1-3 was great, especially the boy who was playing the grandpa role, because he had to say his lines all by himself and he said them perfectly! All in all, each class was just super cute and remembered all the cues and didn’t panic/get stage fright or anything, so it was really great.

After all the plays finished we had the class representatives from each 6th grade class to come up and say some feedback. They both were super sweet and just said things like how the 1st graders were super cute and that their English was very impressive, and that they found their English amazing. We then moved onto playing the game! As soon as I just said the word “game” the 1st graders all cheered. I did a demonstration round with 1-3 (they’re the most calm and orderly class) to show the 6th graders since they hadn’t played the game before. After that we split into 3 groups, and got a 6th grader and 1st grader from each one to be the “cat”, so in total we had 6 cats to start with. We then started the game! The 1st graders were super into saying the whole “Mr. Cat, Mr. Cat, what time is it?”, the 6th graders were a little more shy, but I did see some of them at least moving their mouths! Game time was super fun, the 1st graders really enjoyed it, and although it took the 6th graders a little longer to warm up (towards the end I saw a few 6th graders holding the hands of 1st graders as they took the steps together so that was nice), they enjoyed it and got into the game too. My JTE had even made all these little “The Big Turnip” bookmarks to give to the 1st graders as mini rewards, but we didn’t have time to hand them out in the gym, so we just gave it to the homeroom teachers to hand out.

Had period 3 and 4 free so I just continued cutting carrots and other random stuff. For today’s English broadcast, since it’s the last one of the year, instead of doing Christmas vocab, my JTE decided to do vocab describing our impressions of the kids at this school (since we’re both new teachers). I then did a little quiz about how NZ celebrates New Year. The kids rostered on today for broadcast were being really cute and trying to guess all the answers. Lunch today was really nice and filling because we got quite a large bowl of udon that was filled with a lot of vegetables, and then a chocolate chip bread, salad, and a fried fish cake thingy. Spent the lunchtime outside playing jump rope with 1-3’s kids. There was one kid who was so adorable – just kept missing the timing and tripping but always did large exaggerated actions when he fell, such a comedian. Cleaning time was a bit more lively today, in that they weren’t cleaning as quietly or as orderly, but they still did their cleaning so you couldn't say it was all bad.

Last class of the day with 5-1 in period 5, and we finally had an actual real good lesson! We played two games (I got 5-1 down – just input lots and lots of games with point systems into their learning and they’ll be good as gold). First game was writing letters on the board with team colours, separating the letters into their group heights (e.g. a is “1 storey”, b is “2 storeys”, q is “basement floor”). The kids really liked this game and because I said I’d minus points if there was talking, they were pretty quiet – not completely dead silent, but almost, which is an accomplishment because they’re normally way louder than that. They liked it because they had to focus on what letters had already been written (if another team wrote “a”, you could no longer write it), and it was quite cute because I saw kids looking at their nametags, or around the classroom for letters because they couldn't remember what letters there were by themselves. So through that game, we got the height of letters down now, so I was pretty happy. It’s just so great to see kids who usually slack off or don’t focus, focus and try in the game and actually learn! 2nd game was writing letters on the backs relay, but instead of writing the letters on the board, my JTE suggested each writing it on a piece of paper, and then revealing at the end. This was a great idea because the kids couldn't sneak looks at other teams to see what they were writing, and had to truly think for themselves. There were a few mistakes, but that just made for great learning opportunities. I think most of the mistakes came from some kids’ unfamiliarity with the letters from not practicing in class enough with the writing activities/worksheets, and also some kids not paying enough attention when we went through the stroke order. For example in the game “b” became “p”, and “e” became “o”. The kids loved the game though and were sad we could only play 2 rounds because the lesson started a bit late. We can probably play this game in future lessons though, so it’s allgoods.

Spent period 6 drawing up the masks for the 6th graders’ play. It’s actually quite fun drawing all the different characters, because there’s just such a variety! Got off work at 16:15 and drove home. Tonight was our school’s 忘年会! It was at a restaurant near the station, and traffic was pretty bad getting there. I guess everyone else is having their 忘年会 as well! The restaurant we went to was very cute and served Italian style food. The food was nice and I got quite full, which I normally don’t for drinking parties since they don’t usually serve a lot of food. It was also pretty cute because the restaurant was playing Pirates of the Caribbean in the background. We only played one game tonight but it was quite fun. When we all arrived we filled out this little questionnaire thingy (What was the most shocking episode this year for you? If you could have one wish to be granted, what would it be? What would you want to reborn as in your next life? Who’s your favourite celebrity? What would you tell a kid if they asked you if Santa is real or not?), and the game was the organisers reading out the answers and us guessing. Our team got 1st place and we got radishes as prizes! 2nd team got apples (I would have so rather gotten the apple!) and 3rd team got mandarins. The party actually finished super early at around 9:00pm, which I was very glad about since I was going snowboarding tomorrow! Drove straight home, packed my gear ready, and went to sleep.