Elementary school visit!

I had my first elementary school visit yesterday. It was actually a lot of fun! First of all, I was at a tiny school. Like, 25 students total, in all 6 grades. Yeah, you read that right, 25 students. I taught the whole school at one time. They are all at about the same level, however, so it worked out. These kids are living proof that the younger you are, the easier it is to learn and remember a language. I actually think some of them are better than the students at my junior high school. Their pronunciation is better for sure, but that is an age thing. They are also not nearly as shy, at least not in groups. When I said hello, EVERYONE said hello back. When I asked how are you, EVERYONE answered! And they didn't just do the generic "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" I heard "I'm sleepy," "I'm fine," "I'm happy," "I'm hot," and "I'm cold." My students at sanchu don't even know all of those! Its also really cute to have a whole room of little kids saying "I'm~" at the same time. They are so energetic!

I started off by doing my introduction, just like where I am from, pictures of my family and my pets, etc. Easy things. They loved looking at the pictures and could not believe I have so many pets. (or had, rather, but I just left it as 2 dogs, 2 cats and 2 turtles.) They were adorable when they did their little introductions to me individually. At first they were a little shy one on one, but then they got into it and were lined up waiting to talk to me. hehe

THEN I taught them animals. However, they knew them all already, except rooster, which I threw in there so I could teach animal sounds too. We played a few games with the animals, my favorite being where they each had a card of different animals and they had to get into groups with the same animal without saying anything. One of the boys in the snake group got on the floor and started slithering like a snake! It was excellent!

Follow up with the animals and a small introduction to "American culture" (sorta... it was a stretch) was to teach them animal noises. I pointed to a picture of an animal and asked what its "cry" is. They would all do it, and then I told them what it is in English. For example, a dog in Japanese says "won won" vs "bark bark" And the piece de resistance, the rooster. In Japanese its something like "Kokekokkoo." THEN I taught them "cock-a-doodle-doo!" and they had a blast with that one. The JTE explained in Japanese like "isn't it interesting how the animals say different things in English?"

The last part of the day, I practiced with 5th and 6th graders only. They are going to Tokyo and wanted to practice a conversation with foreigners. If you are ever in japan and school children approach you, please speak English with them! They want to practice, and they're cute!

Some challenges from the day: The JTE does not speak that much English and I do not speak that much Japanese! We managed, however, so it should be fine from now on, especially as I learn more and more Japanese.

Ok, the end!