Wednesday

Woke up at 7:15am, had chocolate bread and a latte for breakfast, then set off for school. Spent the morning cutting and laminating the new sports flash cards, and photocopying worksheets for today’s 5th grade lesson. First lesson today with 1-1, and it was another fun, great lesson. They had a lot of trouble remembering “badminton” though, not too sure why that was, since the Japanese word for badminton is just in Katakana so it’s basically the same. “Volleyball” was also hard for them to pronounce, but that’s normal since Japan doesn’t have the “V” sound naturally in their alphabet. We played the “gathering cards” game again and they always love that game, because they get super happy when they find people holding the same card as them. As always we finished all the planned activities early, so we ended up playing the Missing Game in the last spare 5 minutes. 1-2 in period 3 and it was just as good. They also struggled a bit with badminton, but not as much as 1-1. In fact, 1-2 struggled more with remembering volleyball. They also had a lot of fun with the gathering cards game. 5-2 up next in period 4, and it was a solid, good lesson. We first revised how to say all the months in English, and also went over how to say the dates (the differences between 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and the rest which are all “th”). Then we did the textbook listening activity, followed by the same game that the 6th graders did – asking each others’ birthdays and writing their names down. Finished off with some more alphabet writing practice, and I’m really glad that they all follow along so happily. Sometimes writing practice can be a bit boring, but 5-2 doesn’t show any signs of boredom or exasperation at all.

Lunch with 4-1 again today and it was a lot of fun. We talked about liked/disliked foods (one girl doesn’t like all meat and seafood!!), favourite Disney characters, Ghibli movie, Sanrio characters, Youtubers, so many different topics! Today’s lunch was delicious – butter rice with creamy seafood sauce, and French salad. Class with 5-1 in period 5, and it was a pretty good lesson, but we spent longer on the listening activity and the game, so in the end we didn’t have time to do any alphabet writing practice. Got off work at 16:00, popped by Lawson to get some cash, and went home.