Monday

Woke up at 7:10am to find my hard drive still recovering its files – man this takes forever! Had some rice for breakfast, then set off for school. I didn’t realise it was a permanent change, but our morning staff meetings are now on Mondays instead of Thursdays. I guess it does make more sense to have these meetings at the beginning of the week. Finally class with the other grades start this week! First up today was 2-2 in period 2, and I’m not sure if it’s because their homeroom teacher is a new, freshly graduated teacher so she’s not that strict, or if the kids really have just changed after becoming 2nd graders. They were really noisy today and a lot of kids were just up and out of their seats running around at random moments. They were definitely a lot more well behaved as 1st graders. This class also has a lot of the kids with fiery tempers and strong opinions, which I thought was interesting – I thought they’d give the class with the easier kids to manage to the new teacher (especially since she’s a fresh grad), but I guess it doesn’t always work that way.

2-1 was a bit better because their homeroom teacher stepped up to discipline them a bit more, but they were still a little noisier than they were as 1st graders. They used to hang onto every word I say, now I have to get them to quieten down and repeat myself quite a lot. The lesson was very simple, where we made our own business cards (the kids tried their best writing their names in English, cute) and introduced ourselves to each other whilst exchanging business cards. I also introduced the Small Talk section to them because I really want to push them. At first they were really confused by it and complaining that they had no idea what we teachers were saying, but then their homeroom teacher helped to explain what the goal of Small Talk was (in Japanese) and in the 2nd round they were much better and got the hang of it, putting up their hands to repeat what words they heard from the mini conversation. 2-3 was the best (funny how 2-3 last year was the best 2nd grade class as well haha), they did great with Small Talk (again thanks to their homeroom teacher explaining it super well), and I learnt from the previous 2 lessons to only give the kids 4 business cards to make, so that we’d have enough time to actually do the self-introductions and swap the business cards. The kids were all trying really hard with their English so it was super cute and lovely to see. Their homeroom teacher was a 1st grade homeroom teacher last year, so she knows all about their quirks, personalities, and just how they work as a grade, which is why I think this class is the most well behaved (so far…the other classes could always improve!).

Lunch this week is back to eating with the kids again, and my JTE rostered me backwards, so I’m starting with eating with the 6th graders first. It’s because the 1st graders are still getting used to school and everything (the little babies only had their first school lunch last Friday!) so it would be a distraction and mess for them if I came this week. Lunch with 6-1 was nice, started out quiet but in the end I don’t know how we got onto talking about historical figures with a group of kids crowding around the history textbook thing. Lunch today was super delicious soup, mapo tofu and rice, and an orange slice. Cleaning time was easy, at least the 2-1 kids listen and aren’t noisy during cleaning! Spent the spare periods 5 and 6 photocopying the worksheets for this week’s lessons for various grades, and future lesson prep. Got off work at 16:30, went home, and started planning a day trip to Hitachi Seaside Park in Ibaraki for this weekend!