First Grade Lessons, Summer Break and a Baby

Hello!

I will keep this week's update a bit shorter but I will mention several different topics.

I did a four lessons with first grade students this week. This is the first time that I have worked with these students since the school year started in April.

Usually, whenever I do a "first lesson" with a group of kids (kids that I have never taught before), it will involve a self-introduction. I will tell them some background information on myself.

I have done this type of lesson a few times since last October, but I continue to tweak things. One change that I made with this lesson was to put more emphasis on teaching them how to say "My name is _____" and using "I'm ______" (inserting their name in the blank space).

I spent a few minutes practicing this with the class then had several students introduce him or herself.

The other part of the lesson is that we practice colors, which leads to an activity in which I have the students color the US flag, the Japanese flag and the Chicago flag. Usually, we will have time for the students to color one or two flags.

To give the students some extra practice writing English characters, I included a part where they trace they trace words related to the phrases that we learned during the lesson. Hopefully, it will help get them used to writing English characters and also maybe they will talk with their parents about it at home when they bring back the completed color sheet from school.

You can actually see some photos of me doing the 1st grade lesson on our school website at https://www.kobe-c.ed.jp/hsm-es/home/index/dekigoto. If you happen to click the link after Monday evening USA time, you might need to scroll down the page a little bit to see the update dated July 15th.

If you scroll way down the page (and back in time), you will see various updates and pictures from the school. You will also eventually run into more photos of me in the classroom somewhere in there.

Sorry for the low quality pictures - the school seems to do that on purpose in order to help protect the students privacy.

This was my last week of lessons before summer break. This coming week, I will still go to school for most of the week, but there will be no English lessons. I will participate in some of the other classes that the students do and work a bit to prepare materials for when school resumes after summer break (school finishes on July 21st and restarts around September 1st).

When the students come back in September, my school assignment will be changing. You might remember that I "visit" one school once a week (Mondays), then go to another school for the rest of the week.

I found out on Monday that this will be changing - I will just go to the Tues-Fri school every day of the week (Monday thru Friday). I will not be visiting the other school once a week any longer. This should mean less lessons for me to teach overall.

As Japan has loosened its border restrictions around COVID-19, more English teachers have been able to enter Japan and a new set of arrivals will come at the end of July. Because of our increasing numbers, our administration can spread the workload around a bit more evenly.

Because I am leaving the Monday school, I have to go back there during the week this coming week to give a short speech in Japanese to students and staff. I will be working on that the next few days. Even though I will give a "goodbye speech," it looks like I will still visit that school two more times before my assignment officially changes in September.

Other than that, one quick story was that the wife of a teacher I work with is pregnant. The wife actually ended up having the baby on Friday around 5am. The teacher missed the morning session of school, but was back by noon to do parent teacher conferences later that day.

It seemed funny to me that this would happen - I would have figured the teacher would be off for at least a few days.

No pictures for this week, but I will have some to share soon.

Until next time,

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