Monday

Woke up at 7:10am, had rice for breakfast, and then drove to school. Super relaxed day with only 3 classes today. I feel like 3rd semester is super chill, with not many schedule changes or extra lesson hours. Spent the 1st spare period printing out the English board stuff (I made a little winter dress up game with a panda, hedgehog, and penguin). First class of the day with 3-2 in period 2 and it didn’t go too badly, today was one of their better days. That, or they just loved playing Pictionary! Even though the unit vocab was super random (instruments, stationary, animals, vegetables) they still remembered all of them pretty well, and actually knew most of them already (probably from when they were grade 2) so I guess it’s more a revision unit. Had play practice again with 4-2 in the 20 minute break, and today’s group’s mother goat had her lines all memorized! Very happy. The others weren’t too bad, I think the best thing is that now the little goats know when they have to say their lines (cause they say it one after the other).

3-3 in period 3 and it was also pretty good (everyone loves pictionary!) but it got a bit loud towards the end when we play Karuta. Their homeroom teacher gave them a talk afterwards about being quiet when listening to instructions/in between rounds. 3-1 was perfect, no problems at all to comment on! Their teacher volunteered to run the last round of Karuta which was great. I keep forgetting to let the teachers run the games too (we were reminded of this at the office day the other day) so I’ll keep that in mind for the future. Everyone seriously loved Pictionary though, and because we had to play Karuta not everyone got a chance to draw, so I think I’ll play Pictionary relay next week!

Had lunch with 1-2 today and once again I cannot decide who out of all the Grade 1 classes is the most affectionate. 1-1 might be more affectionate in lessons, but I forgot how affectionate 1-2 can be during lunchtimes/outside of class. I think it’s also because their homeroom teacher encourages them to ask me questions, and they all leap at the chance. Today’s questions included what my horoscope was, what animal zodiac I am, how old I am, when my birthday is (it was cute that they asked me questions they’d asked before), and they asked me lots of questions about my dog back home, which I’m surprised they remember about! Lunch today was Japanese style – seaweed rice for miso fish, soup, and pumpkin. Lots of kids didn’t like pumpkin so a lot of it was thrown away, so sad such a waste. Went back to 4-2 at lunchtime today to practice with the rest of the kids that weren’t there at the 20 minute break. One of my favourite kids in 4-2 was already roaming the corridors saying with a funny accent “Jaime-sensei”. Practice was good again, hope this will carry on till the lesson on Thursday! Cleaning time was easy today, one of the hyper kids is rostered on this week but he was in his good mode today. Spent periods 5 and 6 putting up the new English board, but it looked a bit empty so I made an extra worksheet (Decorate your own snowboard!) for the kids to do. Got off work at 16:30 and drove home.