Thursday

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice for breakfast, then set off for school. While getting all the flash cards and stuff for 4th grade’s lesson, I discovered that the small versions of the transport cards weren’t actually made yet, so I hurriedly printed those out. 4-1 up first in period 1, and it was such a smooth lesson that we finished super early. We started on the “Let’s Travel” unit, and today was covering modes of transport. They learnt the vocab super fast, so I think they must have learnt it before in previous grades – they practically knew all the words already without needing my explanation. Then we played a game where each student got a card and had to act out that mode of transport to another person. If the other person had the same card as well, they become a pair, and then can go to get new cards from the teachers and repeat the process. The kids really loved this game (the actions were pretty funny – we had kids spinning themselves around for helicopter, shaping their hands like a triangle and jumping for rocket, etc) and they were all making pairs a lot faster than my JTE and I expected. The line for the new cards would just keep getting longer and longer with no slowing down! Since we finished with time to spare we played the quiz game on my laptop, and then gave them a preview of next week’s lesson by introducing the grammar point/question (“Where are you going?”).

1-1 up next in period 2 and it was just such a busy lesson! Busy as in I was constantly bombarded by questions and kids needing my help. We were making posters for next week’s lesson where they would be making little family “speeches”. They had to draw the family member they’d be roleplaying as, write the name, and decide on a favourite colour and animal. Everyone kept wanting to write everything in English, so there’d just be a constant stream of kids running up to me and tapping me on the shoulder, or pulling on my hand (I have to be so alert and careful around the first graders because they don't seem to know what a fracture is exactly, so they keep tugging on my right hand without thinking twice about it!) to ask me “How do you write [colour/animal] in English??”. It was very cute ad nice to see them all trying so hard, but it did get a bit overwhelming and I couldn't teach the kids who finished the poster early what to say for the speech, because of the constant stream of questions. It was a bit better in 1-2 because their homeroom teacher helped out a lot more, so the workload was much more manageable. I was even able to get little practice groups going in the back of the classroom as the kids started finishing up their posters one by one. The homeroom teacher would look after the kids who were still drawing their posters and deal with any of their questions, leaving me free to practice the speech with the kids at the back. It was super adorable because the kids were very enthusiastic about practicing the speech and they didn't even get tired of it no matter how many times we repeated it. In fact, they would be the ones to initiate “One more time! One more time!” as soon as they finished saying the speech. It really was super adorable.

1-3 was much the same as 1-2, except more kids were able to finish their posters and start practicing the speech. They were all doing really good in memorizing their speeches! They were also super adorable and enthusiastic about practicing the speeches. I swear the early finishers must have run through the speech at least 20 times but they were still going at it till the end. When I left them I could still hear “My name is…” and “I like…” drifting down the corridor. Lunch today was bread and spaghetti (yus to a filling lunch on Thursday!!!) and soup, and there were a lot of leftovers (not sure if 4th graders just get extra large servings?) so I could help myself to second servings of spaghetti AND soup without feeling bad. It really was a lot of spaghetti though – I saw one kid get three extra servings, and his last helping was an absolute mountain of spaghetti piled high on his plate. I was asking the other kids if he really could finish it all, and they reassured me that this kid can eat unlimited amounts of anything as long as it’s not salad haha. Cleaning time was pretty smooth, except I had to keep reminding the kids to clean and not do any turns and slides and jumps and curling (Olympics hype is still in full force amongst them I guess haha). 4-2 in period 5 and it was just another good, smooth lesson. 4-2 has a few moody kids but they’ve all been in good moods lately, so yea, today’s overall class performance was great. They were just a bit noisier than 4-1 while playing the game, but I love their enthusiasm. Never a shortage of people putting up their hands in 4-2, absolutely never – even if they don’t know the answer!

Got off work at 16:00 (all the teachers were at club activities and the staffroom was empty as). Headed back out again at 17:15 to the station to meet up with some ALT friends for dinner. We decided to try out this Chinese restaurant one of my Japanese friends had recommended before (as a legit Chinese place) and it was super good!!! It’s quite hard to find authentic, good Chinese food in Japan so I was really happy that this restaurant was legit. We had sweet and sour pork (I missed this!), fried rice, xiao long bao, dumplings, salad, and Peking duck. It was all super delicious! The owner and chef were Chinese. They were also really nice in letting us pay the bill separately, which I was really thankful for since most Japanese restaurants don’t let you do that. Stopped at Lawson on the way back home to buy tomorrow’s breakfast and get some cash.