Teaching English – Writing Self-introductions (and scary self-portraits)

Recently our school had a PTA day where the parents come to school to watch some of the lessons. Perfect time to show off some student work! This writing activity was actually created by the other ALT at my school, Nathan, but the schedules got switched this year so I took over teaching 3rd grade. The students all had to draw a picture of themselves and write the answers to questions about themselves. Some examples are: What is your name? What is your dream? What is your personality? What are you good at?

I think it turned out quite well:

Corridor Display

However some of the students self-portraits were….strange. At least 3 of them drew themselves as cats, one was the cartoon character Doraemon and another was just a black ball….

Here are some of the scarier ones:

One massive eye

I don’t know what this girl is supposed to be…

AAAAAAHHHH! She has no eyes!

English Boards 6

Olympics / Sports English Board.

It’s only been up for a few hours and already it’s our most commented on English Board yet!

The pictures are of every sport in the Olympics. They are captioned in English and Japanese. The students (and teachers!) found some of the sports included surprising (BMX!) and were amazed that baseball was missing.

First Japanese Junior High School Lunch

Unlike most ALTs in Japan who work at Junior High Schools I don’t get school lunch. I work at a combined Junior/Senior High School (or Secondary School) so while the Junior  High students (and their teachers) do get a set school lunch we also have a cafeteria for the Senior High students and the other teachers. I did have the choice whether or not to get the JHS lunch and it is very cheap but with the set lunch it’s either get it every day or not at all. Since it sometimes has food I really don’t like (i.e. natto) I’d rather either eat at the cafeteria or bring my own lunch.

However this past Thursday one of our first year classes was closed down due to flu. I think around 9 or 10 of the 34 kids currently have the flu so the rest of the students were sent home for the rest of the week to hopefully stop it spreading to the other students. However this meant that on Friday there would be 34 extra lunches going to waste unless the teachers stepped up. This lead to about ten of us having the Junior High lunch on Friday. The other teachers found it very funny that we kept on being surprised by the littlest things: ‘Oh, the rice tin has the city symbol on it!!’, ‘You have to fold your milk carton?!’. I think it did lead to a bit of a decrease in productivity because there was only 10 of us consuming the lunch for 34 kids so we did get given quite a lot to eat!

Here it is! We had Mabo Tofu (bottom right bowl), milk, edamame (young soybean) croquettes, boiled veggies and rice (which also came with a little packed of dried seaweed for seasoning that I discovered after this picture).

There were extra helpings of everything in this picture but I seriously couldn’t eat any more! Also I think I must have the cutest chopsticks ever (Winnie the Pooh!).

English Boards 5

Spring English Board!

Any excuse to put up baby animal pictures.

What I ate: Japanese High School Graduation Edition

Some people were interested in the food we eat at special school events….so this is for you.

Lunch - Bento arranged by the school

Bento contents - one of the nicest ones i have had. No pregnant fish, no natto...great! The pink beans on the rice are sweet azuki beans so the rice was a bit sweet. On the bottom right are veggies (carrot, mushroom, peas etc), top right is some mini croquets, salmon, a pink sweet bean dessert wrapped in a leaf and some meat roll thing. In the middle is pickled vegetables. Top left is potato salad, prawn, meat wrapped around mushrooms and a fried tofu/meat triangle thing.

So that was lunch provided by the school. There was also cold green tea but I declined. After school we also had a staff party. Usually these are held at restaurants but since my school is so big for anything larger than department events we tend to have them in banquet halls of hotels. This time was actually in a venue for wedding receptions! There were many courses:

First dish: parma ham and salad

Second dish: Sushi (also spot the obligatory beer that comes with these events)

Third dish: Chicken

Fourth dish: soup. I think this was a kind of seafood chowder.

Fifth dish: Not really sure what this was...almost like oden but close to no broth

Sixth dish: Gyoza

Seventh dish: miso soup in the black cup, the other dish has rice, prawn, fish eggs and something pink and sweet...

Eight dish: Dessert. As usual it was super disappointing. These places are so fancy and they never have anything remotely good for dessert. Here we got two strawberries and a slice of grapefruit. Boring.

So there you have it! The food involved in my Japanese High School Graduation!

English Boards 4

Valentine’s Day / White Day English Board!

Love English Notice Board

Close-up

My original plan was to buy lots of heart shaped post-it notes from the 100yen store and have lots of students write ‘I love …’ or ‘I like…’ sentences. However, I forgot about this plan until today (the day before Valentine’s!) so this board is a result of getting into work this morning and thinking ‘Oh no! I should make a board before tomorrow!’.

Also you can see I have made reference to White Day was well (stretching the board out to last until mid March! Laziness!).

Strange Student Work 2

Here are some more examples of strange/funny student work:

Student with scary friends

I don't think that is quite what they meant to say

Not just once, but the same mistake many times!

I'm very cute!

English Boards 3

Latest English Board to show you made by Nathan, the other assistant at my school. I feature on it as a ‘famous person born in the year of the dragon’.

Happy New Year!

New Years Cards – Nengajo

In Japan it is common to send and receive cards at New Year. I’ve found one sure fire way of getting lots of New Year cards is getting your students to make them for you as homework over the holidays! Mwahaha! (Actually they can write to any English teacher so it’s interesting to see which ones chose to write to me)

2012 is the year of the dragon so you might spot a bit of a theme there with some of my favourites.

Happy New Year Dragon! This girl made amazing cards for all 3 of her English teachers.

This one is from my favourite 2nd year student. She is always super happy to talk to me. (Notice that she didn't write Ms. before my name either..tut tut!)

Cute!

I wish I could draw!

English Boards 2

It’s time for Christmas Boards! Or to be exact Christmas Board because I can’t seem to find a picture of last year’s one. I fear it must have been lost in the Great Dying Laptop Data Transfer of April 2011. Anyway here’s the one we did this year:

Isn't it festive? It's showing off Christmas and to keep it English-y the grammar point 'to want X for Christmas'. The presents have some teachers' answers on what they want for Christmas.

Close up on the actual English section. I do not in fact want a baby cat for Christmas (nor a baby as one of the English Teachers misread!), it is an example of 'creative writing' by Nathan, the other ALT at my school.

Do I have the honor of creating the tallest and thinest representation of a Christmas tree? Oh and yes, that Merry Christmas was a real pain to cut out!!