Black Panther Day!

Woke up at 7:10am, had chocolate croissants and a café latte for breakfast, then drove to school. Some rare rain last night! It was also a much warmer day today (nooooo the snow is going to melt before my wrist heals up!). It was the farewell assembly for the 6th graders today. From 8:20am, the whole school went to the gym, and the whole thing lasted through till the end of period 1 at 9:40am. It was super cute – the 5th graders held up these handmade pom-pom arches for the 6th graders to walk through. Each grade performed for the 6th graders (songs, playing on their recorders, chants, etc.) and it finished with the 6th graders returning the favour with their own performance. The kids in Japan are so good at singing, and they all sing properly and very loudly, it’s so nice to see. After the assembly finished we went back to having normal classes. 1-1 in period 2 and we practiced their family “speeches” and then presented. 1-1 took a lot longer to practice since they didn’t do any practice last week. Also, not everyone presented since we didn’t have enough time and not all the kids were putting up their hands. There were like one or two kids who presented to a level that I’m happy with, and the others were just a bit fumbly and relying on the Japanese pronunciation I had written on the board.

1-2 was a bit better since they had had some practice time last week, so we were able to stick to the schedule of having 10 minutes practice time, and then presenting. We were able to get everyone to present for 1-2, and it was pretty funny because the audience would be whispering the lines to remind the presenter up front haha. 1-3 was the best, with everyone using the practice time diligently, and everyone presenting well. We even finished the presentations with a lot of time to spare, so I played Heads Down Thumbs Up with them and they LOVED it. I’ll probably use that game for the revision lessons coming up since they look like they’ll be able to play it an infinite number of times and not get tired of it haha. Lunch with the special needs class again today, and we had our school “pizza” which was pizza toppings on a thick slice of bread (it was really nice!), soup, and salad. Cleaning time was a little rough at the start because the two kids who had argued on Tuesday were being petty with each other again, but we finished on a strong note because we decided to do the reflection meeting that they do at the end of cleaning time in English! They were very enthusiastic about it, all of them repeating the English after me. Since the 2nd graders are pretty good at English, I’m going to try push them quite a lot this coming new school year and see how far they can go!

Last class of the day in period 5 with 4-2 and it was a very fun class with a lot of learning happening. We played a “travel battle game” and the kids loved it, all of them running around clearly asking each other “Where are you going?” and “How are you going?” and all of them excitedly choosing to go to the zoo by rocket haha. It was a great lesson and the English definitely stuck in their heads because they were saying to each other “WHERE ARE YOU GOING” even after the lesson had finished. Got off work promptly at 16:00, rushed home to drop off my stuff and pick up dad, and then rushed to the cinemas to get tickets for Black Panther! Thankfully there were still a lot of centre seats left, so we were able to get some good seats! Went to buy some souvenirs, and then browsed the shops for a bit before going back to the cinemas. The movie was pretty good, the characters were all really cool and everything, but I felt the directing was a bit lacking in this particular Marvel film. The pacing was a bit slow/odd at times and the film didn’t really have much of a climax, but I still liked it a lot – I think I’m just a little biased towards Black Panther though cause he’s just too cool haha. Super looking forward to Infinity War!!! Stopped at the convenience store on the way back home to pick up some breakfast.