Wednesday

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice and a latte for breakfast, and set off for school. First up today was 1-1 in period 2 and it was another fun lesson. We sang the Hello song, the Colours song, played the Missing Game with the colours, sang 7 steps, read “5 Little Monkeys” to them, and then sang and danced to the 5 Little Monkeys song. We ended up with a lot of time left so I quickly threw in the Key Number game, except I changed it up from the usual rules (where they compete to grab an eraser, but that can result in some tears and over-competitiveness in the younger grades) and had them do number poses instead (e.g. holding up three fingers when I said 3). We still had some time left after that game, so we read 5 Little Monkeys one more time, this time with the kids saying the numbers. We still ended a few minutes early but their homeroom teacher allowed me to end the lesson early. 1-2 in period 3 and we did the same stuff, except I sang the songs a few more times and played the planned games a bit longer to try and stretch everything out to fill the whole lesson. It worked out well and I managed to fill the lesson up.

5-2 in period 4 and it was another good lesson. At this rate, I don't think I’ll ever have an average/bad lesson with this class! We did the other half of the listening activity, and I feel like they’re getting better and better with listening as each lesson passes, possibly because of the Small Talk section. They only had to listen to each recording twice, and most of them had got the answers already after the first listen. Then we finished off the passport writing worksheet, and got onto another activity in the textbook where they had to write down things they like and want. Got a lot of random animals during this part (which I didn't know the Japanese word for so I had to search it up) like guinea pig, and tilapia (I don't even know this animal in English! Apparently it’s a freshwater fish native to Africa). Lunch today in the staffroom again, and we had a Children’s Day meal. Spring roll, mochi, soup, and chicken + veggies mixed rice. Cleaning time was a breeze again today. Last class of the day with 5-1 in period 5, and I’m not quite sure what the reason is, but 5-1 struggled a lot more with all the activities (both listening and writing) when compared with 5-2. It was quite an obvious gap in ability. Not sure if it’s because the kids just have an actual skill gap (are all the kids in 5-2 just better in English overall?) or if it’s something else. I teach both classes exactly the same though, and both homeroom teachers hardly use any Japanese, so I’m not quite sure what it is. Hope we can improve this though. To be fair they did improve on the listening activity this week – they made it through with just listening to the textbook CD recordings, and didn't need us teachers to give them a slowed down simplified version. Spent the rest of the afternoon doing some lesson prep and just doing some reading cause I got a bit bored of all the lesson prep! Got off work at 16:00 and went home.