Class Report: Gestures

Here in Japan, the school year is still in its first few months.  My elementary fifth graders are still being introduced to only the most basic English expressions.  In fact, yesterday’s lesson wasn’t really about English at all, but non-verbal communication.  In elementary, the focus in English class is on communication, as opposed to junior high, which is focused on mastery of grammar.  This is part of what makes the elementary classes so fun.  There is just a lot more interaction with the students, more doing as opposed to showing.

The gesture class basically breaks down into three parts.  For the first, the homeroom teacher and I had the students make groups of four.  One person in each group would make a gesture while the other three tried to guess what it was.  We let them know that Japanese was okay, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a few of my students trying to guess in English.  We had each student do two gestures and then the game was over.  After the groups were finished, I asked for volunteers to show their gesture in front of the whole class.  Honestly, asking for volunteers at that age is hit or miss.  Again, I was happy to see at least one student was excited about the idea.  Riko, one of my more energetic girls, showed us a gesture for swimming.  I asked if anyone else wanted to go, and when the response was still a room full of blank stares, we decided to have each group choose one volunteer.  Most did this by playing janken (rock, paper, scissors), with the losers being the ones who demonstrated their gestures.  There were some pretty good ones too, like playing the recorder and table tennis, which was done with two students.  After each group had a turn, I thought there might be some students who were feeling a little more at ease with the idea, so I asked for volunteers again.  Riko’s hand shot up, but she was still the only one.  She was so excited about it, though, so we had her do a second one.

The next part of class was a short skit by the homeroom teacher (HRT) and me.  It was meant to show the differences between American gestures and Japanese ones.
    Me:   　“Sensei!”
    HRT:     “Me?”
    Me:       “Yes. Please come here.”
    HRT:    “What is it?”
    Me: 　 “How are you?”
    HRT:    “Me?  I’m fine.  How are you?”
    Me:  　“I’m very happy.”
Throughout the skit, I used only American gestures, and my HRT only Japanese ones.  We performed the skit twice then asked the students if they noticed any differences between what we did.  One girl, Rino, was able to pick up one the differences in how we indicated ourselves.  For those who don't know, in Japan this is done by pointing your forefinger toward your nose.  We went on to explain the differences between the gestures for calling someone over and how the Japanese version may be confused in America for the exact opposite, leading to another humorous skit in which the HRT used the Japanese gesture and I walked away sadly.

To finish, we had the students try and combine everything they’ve learned up to this point to have short conversations in pairs.  The HRT and I demonstrated and reviewed some target sentences with the students.  They could call each other over, introduce themselves, and ask how the other student was doing.  We only had about five minutes at this point, but it was great seeing the kids interacting with each other.  I joined in too and though the students who talked to me were clearly nervous, they did really well.  I was very happy with how this lesson went.