I had a great day today at school, and it just kept getting better afterwards.
I had just two classes today, half as many as I normally do, and they were both fun. The first class with with some second year students and Kobayashi sensei. We met in my classroom and watched parts of “The Incredibles” while the students listened carefully and tried to understand the English dialogue.
It went really well and the students were surprisingly interested in the class. It’s amazing what adding a TV and a DVD can do to the student’s interest level.
In fourth period I taught a class with Maeda sensei. His students are the highest scoring English students in our school, so I introduced a project for next week – they will make their own TV commercial and perform it for our class. Maeda sensei is going to bring his video camera, so we should have some good video of some Japanese TV commericals next week. The students are allowed to use English and Japanese in their commercials, so I’m not sure how it will turn out. If it was just English the project would last four weeks – with Japanese we can do it in two.
After school three second year high school students from Akashi Nishi high school came over and we had a great English conversation. This was the second visit for them, and they were a lot more comfortable with speaking English compared to last time. They brought pictures and omiyage from their school trip to Malaysia. We had a great time talking about their trip, and it was nice to see them getting comfortable with speaking English. I don’t speak any Japanese with them, and as far as they know, I don’t know how to speak Japanese. It’s a good experience for them.
Kuniko got home a little bit after the girls left, so we went out to Denya to deliver a letter and some pictures from my mom, and have a great dinner. We ate a wide selection of yakitori and talked with the master and Masao, a friend I made last time I was there. Kuniko translated the letter from my folks, and the master looked very happy.
I’m off to bed now – the rest of the week should be considerably more relaxed.
