Tuesday

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice and soup for breakfast, then drove to school. Drizzly day today, I wonder what this year’s monsoon period will be like! First up today was 4-1 in period 1, and it was a good lesson, except I didn't plan/think through the group restaurant game properly, so that didn’t go too well. It was just a bit messy with the groups and just the way I did the game. Tried to fix it a bit in period 2 with 4-2 by having them do the restaurant exchange in their own groups (so pairs, and not a group with a whole other group) but it was still a bit messy. It solely depended on whether the kids in the group were conscientious kids or not. There were some kids who were doing the game very properly and getting in some good English speaking practice, but the rest were just sitting around doing nothing. 4-3 was the best because I just completely abandoned the group aspect of the game, and had the kids just go around asking each other, so more pair work. That worked much much better, and it was a great lesson. It’s also very interesting how 4-3 is the quietest class of the 3 so far.

Lunch with 6-2 again today and we had curry, naan, honey yoghurt, and cabbage soup. Cleaning time today was easy again, because by the time I got to the corridor (had some work to do so I couldn't be there from the beginning) the kids had already finished and were lining up for the little reflection meeting we do at the end of cleaning. The junior high school (JHS) English teacher (JTE – Japanese Teacher of English) that will be teaching 1 hour of 6th grade lessons with us a week, arrived at our school just after cleaning time. She was very nice and could speak great English (almost feels weird speaking in 100% English with another Japanese teacher!) and she’s even been to NZ once before! 6-1 in period 5 and it was a super great lesson. The kids were on their best behavior, probably because there was a new teacher present. It was actually quite cute how blank the kids were looking, what with having a new teacher who’s Japanese and can speak English fluently. The kids did great during Small Talk, and we got the new JTE to do a small self-introduction for Round 2 of Small Talk, and the kids caught what she said so that was great. We then played a game with the alphabet cards where the kids practiced asking “ Do you have a __?”. They all really liked the game and everyone was playing it properly, absolutely everyone. Then we did the crossword worksheet I prepared for them, since the teaching plan’s original activity was just writing letters on lined sheets, which is boring.

6-2 in period 6 and they were just as good, except maybe a little bit noisier in general than 6-1. This time the JTE knew more what Small Talk was, so she added a lot more stuff in her self-introduction. The kids had a great time reporting back everything they heard, and they actually got a lot! The alphabet card game was great, crosswords were also great (one kid even finished both crossword worksheets!), overall the 6th grade lessons are definitely on the good track. Got off work a bit late at 16:30 after having meetings about English lessons with the JHS JTE, grade 5 teachers, and grade 1 teachers.