Friday

Woke up at 7:15am, rice for breakfast, then set off for school. It’s become so warm now that I don't even have to wear a jacket! A very relaxed day with only two lessons. First up was 6-1 and it was our last English lesson. We gave them 15 minutes to finish off the picture books, and I played Mr. Bean’s Christmas episode for those kids who had finished already. After that we played charades relay with jobs vocabulary, and the kids seemed to like it a lot. I was quite surprised because one of the shyer girls was getting really into it and looked really happy! We ended with taking a class photo. We stayed in the classroom during the 20 minute break since there were a few kids who still wanted to finish off their picture book pages and origami doors. It was super interesting because the other kids were getting ready for their graduation practices, and the girls had all changed into what I thought at first were their high school uniforms, but my JTE told me they’re actually suits for the graduation! I found it so interesting that the kids here have to wear full on “suits” (they look just like junior high school uniforms) for the graduation, and since it’s a one time thing, that means they bought this suit just for their elementary school graduation…wow. That explained one of the boys wearing a much more formal outfit than he usually does though. They’re going to look so smart for graduation! Those suits looked like they would’ve cost a lot of money though.

Lunch today was chicken cutlet with rice, soup, beans, and a slice of orange. For today’s last English broadcast of the year we played the video that I made instead of doing the usual vocab stuff. When we told the 6th graders who were doing the broadcast that their Momotaro plays were in the video they were like NOOOOOO, such shy cuties. I really want to see the kids’ reactions while they were watching the video! The tea lady had brought strawberries from their farm again, and there were a lot leftover so she handed me the bowl and was like “here you go, please finish them all” – yay free strawberries! 5-1 in period 5 and we played some revision games to enjoy the last lesson. We did the back writing relay with whiteboards to revise the alphabet (a lot of them still mixed up b and d), and charades relay to revise the “What’s this?” lesson unit. They really liked the charades relay game – the kids here seem to really enjoy charades! Took the class photo at the end, and as expected of the wild 5-1, two of the class clowns did the “draw me like one of your French girls” pose at the front haha. It was a bit noisy, and hard to get them to quiet down for instructions at times, but overall it was still a fun last lesson. Gave the class photo files to the respective home teachers in the spare period 6, and they were all saying how the kids really liked the video and were giving applause at the end of it, cute! Got off work at 16:15 after having a quick meeting with the 3rd grade teachers. Because of graduation ceremony practices 3-2 and 3-3 can’t do their usual scheduled periods, so we talked about having a massive combined lesson with all of Grade 3 together in period 4. Since I just planned to play the back writing relay game, and the sports charades relay game, it looks pretty doable. If the gym won’t be available, we talked about just holding the lesson outside on the grounds, and they laughed when I made a comment on how that’s actually good because then the noise won’t be a problem! Got off work after the meeting finished at 16:15.