Due to a conflict with my upcoming Japanese driving test, the elementary school that I usually go to on Wednesday had me come in and teach today. I’m really glad they did, too. I don’t want a week to go by without teaching these kids if I can help it. Today was all about greeting friends and talking about our feelings. We had been practicing similar things for a few weeks and so this class served mostly to wrap up the unit and give the kids another day of practice.
We started off the class by playing sound clips of two pairs of people greeting each other. The students had to choose which picture in their book matched with which clip. The biggest difference between the two clips was the way in which the pair introduced themselves. The first pair was meeting for the first time and introduced themselves to each other. The second pair were friends and simply said hello to one another. We checked to see if the students understood and explained that when you know the person you’re talking to, it’s okay to just say hello followed by their name. I practiced with my kids, the first few returning my greeting with blank stares. Finally, I approached one of my genki (energetic) girls.
“Hello, Sena,” I said.
“Hello, Eric sensei.”
The pattern established, we started the first of three activities for the day. It was called the line game and was somewhat like the telephone game I used to play as a kid. In it, students turned to the person behind them, greeted them, and asked how they were. Once they were finished, the next person in line turned to the person behind them and so on until the end of the row. The last person in each row had to run to the front and greet the first person and then sit back down in their seat. The winner was the line that could finish fastest. There were a few students absent today, but with a few adjustments (including my participation) we were able to fill in the empty spots. I was seated next to a student named Moeka, who was just about the most adorable thing ever during this game. Her group came in second both times, and each time she let out an emphatic “Yay!” accompanied by a wonderful smile. It made me doubly happy the second time as I was on her team and got to share in the moment.
The next activity was conversation practice where the students walked around the room and greeted each other while filling out a chart in their books. The chart had room for six names and spaces to show if that person felt fine, happy, hungry, or sleepy. As all my kids in this class have name cards in English, I asked that they try and write their friends’ names using capital letters. At this point, the students have had little if any practice with writing English, but I was happy to see that they all tried and was really impressed when a few remembered how to write the names without relying on the name cards. Not having a chart of my own, I took a hands-off approach to this activity, simply walking around to make sure everyone was practicing in English and helping anyone who was having trouble.
The last game was only meant to be a time filler if the class happened to finish early, but ended up being a real hit with some of my kids. We had them all push their desks to the back of the room, pair up, and play rock, paper, scissors. The winners all formed a small circle and the losers formed a larger circle around it. We played the hello song and had the two circles march in opposite directions. I didn’t tell them to, but most students also sang along, which made me happy. When the song finished, the two groups faced each other and greeted the person in front of them. We played three times, and then class was over. A few of the students wanted to play again, most notably Moeka, who was very vocal about it, but we told them there wasn’t enough time and maybe we could play again next week. Stay tuned to find out if we do.
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