At school today I had four classes in a row. That made it really hard to get prepared in the hour or so that I had set aside for prep time. I did manage to get everything done, though, and when the first students showed up I had everything in place.<\/p>\n
The first class was with the youngest kids. We had a good time today, and I led them through a couple of dance routines. The textbook that they are using is pretty ambitious – the songs they are learning have some really difficult English in there. The kids followed through on the gestures, though, and I think they had a good time. The students also made a steady beeline for the bathroom, and now I know why we teach that expression right off the bat. <\/p>\n
Kento, the only little boy in the class, is still afraid of saying anything. His dad is a trooper and comes in and sits down with him. His dad tries to get him to talk while I try to keep the activity going without Kento but also try to get him to get involved once in a while. Also Yuzuha (the three year old) is pretty high maintenance. She wants to get my attention all the time, and that pulls me away from the lesson and the other students. Yeah, it’s always quite a lesson.<\/p>\n
One thing that surprised me was that when I set the young students on a task to color a picture, they constantly asked me – what color should this be? How about this? Does this shade of green work for the leaves or should I use another? <\/p>\n
I had somehow imagined that the students would idly color away while I walked around and talked in English with them about what colors they are using. Instead I was giving them explicit instructions – green there, the hat is blue, the man is pink, etc etc. I don’t remember worrying so much about coloring details when I was coloring as a kid, but I guess that was a long, long time ago. I think I just went nuts and colored it however I liked. Today’s coloring lesson wasn’t so much a creative outlet as a color by numbers. But when you consider I gave them all the instructions in English maybe it is a good thing.<\/p>\n
The other classes went smoothly, and now that we’re in the textbook the students are a little easier to guide through the lesson. It’s really nice to see that veteran members of the class help and guide the new students in the class. I haven’t seen a student ignored yet because he or she was new. Part of the “group” mentality in Japan? It really pays off in this situation for all of us.<\/p>\n
My junior high class was a lot of fun. I try to goof around with the junior high school students more to keep things light and make the experience of learning English a little more comfortable. One of the students in that class, Yuki, is pretty shy, and when I look at her or ask a question she tends to turn red and\/or burst out laughing. It might take a little while for Yuki to calm down, but in the meantime she is trying hard to speak English. The other students are getting more talkative as well. <\/p>\n
After class I came back home, walking back in the rain that came around unexpectedly. Luckily I had an umbrella with me. Right when I got home Kuniko sent me a message asking me to meet her at the station with an umbrella, so I turned right around and met her when her train arrived. Since it was so late we got some goodies for dinner at the grocery store and then relaxed at home for the evening. It was a busy day for both of us, but it went pretty well. I’m hoping tomorrow goes just as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At school today I had four classes in a row. That made it really hard to get prepared in the hour or so that I had set aside for prep time. I did manage to get everything done, though, and when the first students showed up I had everything in place. The first class was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-kI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}