Wednesday

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice for breakfast, then drove to school. Today was the 2nd graders’ last English lesson for the school year. We played some revision games, read My Pet (since the 5th graders had presented it to them but their homeroom teacher wanted me to read the actual book so that they could understand it), and took a class photo at the end. 2-3 was great as usual, and we got through all 3 games with lots of time to spare for the photo. It was cute cause one of the kids was like “Do we smile?” for the photo, and it’s like obviously yes you do smile sweetie! But in Japan their official class photos are usually very serious and solemn, pretty different from our class photos in NZ. 2-2 was also great, it was a very smooth lesson. It was also very cute because a few kids were repeating the “…for a walk, EVERYDAY!” part after I read them My Pet. Seems like it got stuck in their head after watching the 5th graders’ presentation! They were also very cute for the photo, where for the 2nd photo they were like “Can we do a funny face?” – of course you can, of course! I like how English is always the cool fun subject with a lot of the games where the kids can relax a bit and break away from the usual subdued lesson atmosphere.

2-1 was a bit noisy and slow to settle down so we had to go overtime in order to take the photo. One of the moodier kids was also having a bad day so it took a while for him to be willing to enter the group photo. They were also all having a go at each other during the games, each being a stickler for rules when they themselves weren’t keeping them exactly, so it was a bit of a tiring last lesson! 6-1 in period 4 and I feel like everyone’s concentration has just flown out the window. They didn’t do the greetings properly (only 2 girls answered the usual greetings questions) and I had to absolutely drag the answers out of the other kids. I think it’s also kinda something to do with the weather warming up though, cause today was really quite hot for spring (23 degrees!) so the classroom atmosphere was really sluggish. Once that apathetic greeting passed though, most of them went back to normal and worked on their picture book pages diligently. A few of them made their own doors for their animals (a leaf covering a frog, a shell covering a seal, etc.) so that was nice to see.

Lunch today with 6-2 again, and it was again really fun! One of the kids was non stop firing away “How do you say (word)?” questions to me with the most random vocab (fridge, nametag, chopsticks, stove), not only asking for the English, but also the Cantonese. We talked about a variety of things today like whether or not I have a boyfriend (I swear they’ve asked me this before, but they just seem to love this topic), whether I’ve met any celebrities (one of the kids has seen Selena Gomez before at the airport!), if I have a pet or not, am I lonely living alone, and so on. I had to make an effort to finish eating my lunch because I was so busy talking to them! Cleaning time could’ve been rough, but it didn't cross over that line because they ended up listening to me so that was great. Phew! 5-2 in period 5 and we went over the alphabet with them, because after realising that most of the 6th graders still struggle with writing the alphabet correctly, we wanted the 5th graders to be confident in the alphabet. We practiced a bit first together before doing the test, and (to be expected) there were definitely a lot of kids (I’d say 50:50?) that couldn't write the whole alphabet correctly. There weren’t as many kids as Grade 6 who switched b, d, p, q, g, j, around, but 5th grade was more about writing downsized capital letters as lower cased letters, or just skipping out letters altogether because they couldn't remember how to write it. There were also a few kids who wrote the letter “I” where “R” should have been. I think it’s because they hear “R” as “I” sometimes, hence why nowadays I really emphasise on the Rrrrrrr sound. Spent the spare 6th period marking those alphabet sheets and prepping for Grade 1’s lesson tomorrow.

Got off work at 16:15 and drove home. Headed out again a bit later around 17:30 to have dinner at a new Hawaiian café with some ALT friends. The design of the café was very cute and it felt as if we weren’t in Japan! The serving sizes were absolutely MASSIVE, which is so rare for Japan! I got the Loco Moco plate, and then at the end we all got one serving of the chocolate and banana pancakes to share, and were all very glad we did so cause it was GINORMOUS. Headed back home afterwards and continued to work on the video montage for school. The only problem will be figuring out how to broadcast it since the broadcast TV is very old and they broadcast using video tapes, or connecting their old camcorders to the TV.