From tomorrow, the annual Summer Reading Course at Sunnyfield English will start. From 4 pm to 8 pm for 4 days in a row with varied aged and leveled kids, I am planning to read some stories. With high schoolers, I am planning to go virtual world trip, starting with this article on Day 1:
http://www.gogobot.com/awards/top_summer_destinations
Then on Day 2, learn more about some destinations on the list with Wikitravel such as
http://wikitravel.org/en/Barcelona
http://wikitravel.org/en/Hawaii
http://wikitravel.org/en/Helsinki
The destination will be student's own choice.
Then on Day 3, they will present the place they choose and share reasons why they choose the destination. Then we will decide which one is the most suitable destination for our own tour.
On the last day, we will share places to go and things to do in the place we decided to go on tour in the previous lesson.
For the elementary school kids, we will read books with summer-related themes.
Day 1: http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/EBooks/Kippers%20Diary/index.html#
We will write a week diary after reading this.
Day 2:http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/EBooks/The%20Sing%20Song/index.html#
And of course, we will sing a song: http://youtu.be/BqVkRSO2h_M beacuse we will eat ice cream on the last day :-)
Day 3:http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/EBooks/Submarine%20Adventure/index.html#
We will draw things we can see under the sea.
Day 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1tzreJ-v2A
Finally: one of my favorite story, Swimmy. We will talk about this story and eat ice cream later on!
This is my plan and as you may know "Plan" is a subject to change :-)
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
Reflecting the first semester
Last Wednesday was the last teaching day in the first semester at elementary schools as ALT. In the last classes at 4 schools, I introduced a game that is similar to the horse racing board game.
- Divide the class into 6 or 7 teams of 4 or 5 students, depending on the number of the students.
- Put 20 to 30 quiz cards with questions that you wish to review on the blackboard for students to choose from.
- The first players from each team decide their team name from 6 to 7 animals ( it can be anything like fruits ) via Janken.
- The second player come up to the front and pick a card or a lot. (I made a lot of french fries shaped lots and put them in a gigantic red container and wrote MEGA potato on the box.)
- They go back to their seats and answer the question according to the number they draw. (the members of the team can help the player to answer the question if necessary.)
- The team can go forward when the player can answer the question. In case the player draw a lucky lot with a heart on it, the team get to go forward one more.
- When the team got to the goal, they are assigned to say,"Goal!" in chorus.
I was told by one of the school masters that I don't have to teach anything but have fun with kids as I use English. Well, it is not that simple and easy when I need to have all the kids understand the rules of games in English. But by the second week of teaching, I figured that some of students can make brilliant assistant teachers for me and ask them to help me to explain the rules to kids who look completely lost. I also found out which students can make brilliant leaders and make classes more enjoyable and informative. Those key students are much better facilitators than any teachers.
Thanks to those amazing facilitators / leaders, my classes got more fun co-contrractive learning space.
I had a bit bumpy beginning because of the extreme lack of support and information about how to conduct classes with what materials. In fact, nobody can tell me when, what, how I should teach at the beginning. All I know was I was supposed to teach 5th and 6th graders and student books I am supposed to use. Later on, while I was searching some information on line about the assigned textbooks, I found accidentally the syllabus and lesson plan for each unit at the MEXT site. While I was reorganizing the bookshelf to find available materials for the classes, I found DVD for the textbooks. This mess turned out to be kind of like a daily treasure hunting game for me and by the third week I started enjoying digging and discovering unexpected materials. By the 4th week, I started making my own materials using their PC and password I also found at the back of the PC desk on my own. The user name and the passwords were written on the post-it and stuck on the back of the desk of the shared computer.
Now I got most of mysteries figured out and the most challenging task is to get to know the teachers I work with. They have very very little time to communicate so that I have to find the best time to start talking to them. I sometimes feel like I have become CIA agent, trying to figure all the unknown codes at work. It would have been easier and better if I had more support from the board of education and schools. But easier doesn't mean more fun. I think I am getting much better and unexpectedly fun stories to tell :-)
To be continued
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Supermoon night
Supermoon to rise tonight.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/23/world/supermoon-to-rise-on-sunday-night/#.Ucar_JiilhM
I see the moon and the moon sees me
And the moon sees somebody I wanna see...
Being a mum gets overwhelmed from time to time because of all the emotional roller coaster she deal with on daily bases. On such an evening, stop everything and just looking up at the moon with her little girls or boys and singing away would bring a big smile back on her face. How many times would you look up at the night sky and gaze at the moon? How often would you talk about the moon and the memories that are inspired?
Tonight might be one of the suitable one for storytelling night with a supermoon.
Have a lovely evening, everyone!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
On my day off
Yesterday was one of those days that I don't enjoy looking back because of the despair I felt at work. I hear some abusive words from kids. Where do those painful and abusive words come from? Don't they come from the mouth of us, grown-ups. It is the chain of harmful words. I hear teachers say, "Why don't you understand such an easy instruction?" "Are you an idiot?" "Shut up!" without any reasons explained to the kids. I completely understand classroom management in a large class is challenging and stressful especially when you need to deal with that all day long. And those 6th graders can be a pain in neck. But abusive words can't stop anything. In fact, they feed only negative and painful vocabulary to the dictionary of our kids. It is true that the world can be brutal and harsh and kids might need to deal with that but I keep thinking what if kids didn't know those harsh and abusive expressions but knew more and more encouraging, supportive and soft words like music to our ears. Words and moods are much more contagious or influential to us than we imagine. For instance, when I feel relaxed and fine, my words become more inviting and cheerful. when my words become more cheerful, Momo, my daughter acts better and nicer. When she is cheerful, more laughters happen among us. And the other way around is the same. I am not saying that we should ignore something unpleasant or abusive incidents in our lives because there are always some. But by focusing on such events, you become bitter and gloomy and your words usually coincide your mood. Then the painful chain of abusive words take place.
In order to have kids listen to you, perhaps giving them a little time to calm down especially after exciting activities is a better idea than throwing bitter and abusive words at them like, "Shut up! Otherwise, you are out!" " Shut up! Get out of here! You don't know when to stop!" I had enough of those heartbreaking words at work. It really break my heart because those words kill all the pleasures kids had during the activities that they felt excited. It is like feeding kids cake and telling them how bad the eating cake is. It is such a wrong message. One of the teachers say, "Ok, we had fun, Now let's listen to another one. Ok?" He has much better classroom management. It makes sense to kids. And I don't have to stand like an idiot while my team-teacher is screaming at those poor kids. I heard one of the teachers shouted at a girl, "We don't need a person like you! Get out of here!" It was harsher than what the girl mumbled. I felt so awful because she said something childish ( but she is a child and that's what she is supposed to say.) like, "You had a hard luck."to one f her classmate in a pair work. Maybe the teacher meant to shout at me for doing something inappropriate. But in any cases, shouting at the girl in front of the class and killing all the joy all the students were sharing at the moment was inappropriate to me. Whatever the problems she has in her daily behavior, I can't imagine such abusive words can grow anything healthy. I think inspiring and nurturing words can only touch our soft part of the hearts and grow more of empowering words there. What this girl need to empathize how her classmate would feel if she calls him a had luck. Empathy is something kids need to learn in the course of their development. And it is our responsibility to make sure that they learn empathy.
Some days, it is so challenging to be careful with my words. I get tired and stressed out and my words become unkind. For those days, I should remember the face of every kid when the harsh words were poured onto her / him - the most confused, embarrassed and despising faces. After all, I can't change anything nor anyone but myself. I would love to have a circle of musical and inspiring words around me :-)
In order to have kids listen to you, perhaps giving them a little time to calm down especially after exciting activities is a better idea than throwing bitter and abusive words at them like, "Shut up! Otherwise, you are out!" " Shut up! Get out of here! You don't know when to stop!" I had enough of those heartbreaking words at work. It really break my heart because those words kill all the pleasures kids had during the activities that they felt excited. It is like feeding kids cake and telling them how bad the eating cake is. It is such a wrong message. One of the teachers say, "Ok, we had fun, Now let's listen to another one. Ok?" He has much better classroom management. It makes sense to kids. And I don't have to stand like an idiot while my team-teacher is screaming at those poor kids. I heard one of the teachers shouted at a girl, "We don't need a person like you! Get out of here!" It was harsher than what the girl mumbled. I felt so awful because she said something childish ( but she is a child and that's what she is supposed to say.) like, "You had a hard luck."to one f her classmate in a pair work. Maybe the teacher meant to shout at me for doing something inappropriate. But in any cases, shouting at the girl in front of the class and killing all the joy all the students were sharing at the moment was inappropriate to me. Whatever the problems she has in her daily behavior, I can't imagine such abusive words can grow anything healthy. I think inspiring and nurturing words can only touch our soft part of the hearts and grow more of empowering words there. What this girl need to empathize how her classmate would feel if she calls him a had luck. Empathy is something kids need to learn in the course of their development. And it is our responsibility to make sure that they learn empathy.
Some days, it is so challenging to be careful with my words. I get tired and stressed out and my words become unkind. For those days, I should remember the face of every kid when the harsh words were poured onto her / him - the most confused, embarrassed and despising faces. After all, I can't change anything nor anyone but myself. I would love to have a circle of musical and inspiring words around me :-)
Friday, June 7, 2013
Story-based class at elementary school
After reading a story, Ketchup on your Corn flakes? in some of my classes at an elementary school, I started wondering how I can integrate lots of activities that stimulate interactions among students and shared reading activities. Based on my experiences and some literature, I have become a believer of impact of narratives and the power of shared reading. But I also hypothesize that only shared reading might not be able to attract students' full attention. I saw some sleepy faces and yawning if the book lasts more than 5 pages. That's how short their attention span is. Kids got more stimulating activities such as online games, movies and so on. Simple activities such as reading don't give them instant stimulation in spite of all the imaginative and creative stimulation you can get once you are completely engaged in the world of narratives. Reading requires bit of patience and practice in order to feel the absolute freedom to play in the world. Once you get the grip of how you can free your mind on the pages, you can be addicted to it for sure, however, like everything else, you gotta experience the magic on your own. Those kids, who had no enjoyable shared reading experiences with their parents or care takers, have no patience nor stamina to wait for the magic take place in their hearts. And only in the area, I might be able to give my hands to kids. Via introducing some books they can be engaged and having fun time in sharing the story, I might be able to create the similar bed time experiences that I and my daughter got as babies - The smoothing feelings and the excitement come along with the stories told by the caregiver, the guardian of your tiny life. It might be the warmth and the tender tone of her / his voice babies cling to first. Then, they can built the love of reading later. How powerful force it can be to make your kids bookworms or addicts for narratives in a positive sense. With this foundation based on love and trust, kids can freely fly in any worlds they may live.
I must thank my daughter for this realization and also being a light to guide me where to go in the midst of a tempest. I also thank my mum to give me a good nose of story hunters. Shared reading with my mum got me fall in love with picture stories and children's literature has been one of my favorites. I also had nothing but books to entertain myself when I was indoors during my childhood. Outdoors, I got the wild and thrilling nature beckoning me back then. I really appreciate her to provide such a wonderful environment.
It is impossible to create such a rich environment in classrooms but I would be extremely happy if I can share at least a bit of pleasure of shared reading with some kids. In my dictionary there is no word like "too late" especially when it comes to reading. You can fall in love with narratives anytime in your life according to Storytelling Animals since craving for stories is one of our very primitive instincts. Nothing can take that from us. (Well, unless some extreme cases with physical or psychological damages.) This human tendency explains a lot for addictions for games. Games are animated stories that you can join and experience instantly. But they lack the magic, the freedom of mind. Readers can animate each character of a book as they like. I can't get such a freedom in movies and games due to the fixed images and sounds. Only in texts, you can get the absolute freedom. In the sense, storytelling or shared readings are also limited but such activities can be a great bridge between the ready-made animated images and self-genarated images. When stories in your mind get colors, sounds and motions, you can be absorbed in the world endlessly and the pleasure is priceless. But it is hard to explain because you gotta experience that.
So, I think I can define my mission is to be a bridge between ready-made imagination and self-generated imagination. Hope I can be a solid one that doesn't fall down via sharing engaging stories with kids as we play lots of pre- and post-reading activities.
I must thank my daughter for this realization and also being a light to guide me where to go in the midst of a tempest. I also thank my mum to give me a good nose of story hunters. Shared reading with my mum got me fall in love with picture stories and children's literature has been one of my favorites. I also had nothing but books to entertain myself when I was indoors during my childhood. Outdoors, I got the wild and thrilling nature beckoning me back then. I really appreciate her to provide such a wonderful environment.
It is impossible to create such a rich environment in classrooms but I would be extremely happy if I can share at least a bit of pleasure of shared reading with some kids. In my dictionary there is no word like "too late" especially when it comes to reading. You can fall in love with narratives anytime in your life according to Storytelling Animals since craving for stories is one of our very primitive instincts. Nothing can take that from us. (Well, unless some extreme cases with physical or psychological damages.) This human tendency explains a lot for addictions for games. Games are animated stories that you can join and experience instantly. But they lack the magic, the freedom of mind. Readers can animate each character of a book as they like. I can't get such a freedom in movies and games due to the fixed images and sounds. Only in texts, you can get the absolute freedom. In the sense, storytelling or shared readings are also limited but such activities can be a great bridge between the ready-made animated images and self-genarated images. When stories in your mind get colors, sounds and motions, you can be absorbed in the world endlessly and the pleasure is priceless. But it is hard to explain because you gotta experience that.
So, I think I can define my mission is to be a bridge between ready-made imagination and self-generated imagination. Hope I can be a solid one that doesn't fall down via sharing engaging stories with kids as we play lots of pre- and post-reading activities.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
It's been a while...
I've been dealing with the way too many new things at work on top of preparing two presentations without having chilling & reflecting time on my own. For the first time in a while, I had a peaceful afternoon nap on my favorite sofa. I realize how tired my body and soul has been. I guess that's what happens when you suddenly start dealing with more than 100 different types of humans at work. Before this new work, I talked with only my family and some of kids at my own school. The average number of people I meet was about 5 to 6 a day. They are all familiar faces and I know what to expect. But from a few weeks ago, as my new work begun, suddenly I deal with 40 to 50 people a day and I don't know many of them. For the first time in my life, I realized why I couldn't handle school life so well back in school days. It is just too much information to take in. At workshops and presentations, I meet new faces and share the time but I often feel like those occasions are for meeting kindred spirits and making new friends. After all, those participants who bother to join my workshop or presentations share the interests or at least have a bit of interest in what I say. So, it has been inspirational and empowering for me to do presentations. However, this job as an ALT is a whole different story. Many of participants (students) got little interests in what I say. In fact some of them including teachers show no interests in me, an ALT. For them, I am just an intruder of their fun school life. One day, she marched in from nowhere and started telling something they didn't care. To make the matter worse, she asks them what she can do for them. What a nightmare for them! I feel sorry for their confusion but I hope they will eventually understand my intention is not bad at all. In fact, I genuinely would like to get to know them because we are there, sharing the time and space at the same time for some kind of funny and amazing coincidence. It might mean nothing if we ignore the fact that the chance to be in the same classroom at a certain time is very low almost like the level of miracle. I just can't help getting a bit too excited about that. It might be a good reason or some kind of universal mystery going right now. If so, I don't want to miss a thing. Having this crazy idea in my mind, I've been 100% open to whatever I feel at work. With all my senses I take everything going on around me and it's been exhausting. I feel so alive and appreciate the opportunities offered to me but still I haven't got used to such an intense circumstance.
On top of that, at Sunnyfield English, I have nearly 10 new students joined to our learning community last month. I'm so ecstatic but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed because of the flood of information I would like to take in. Unfortunately, the capacity of my heart is limitless but that of my head is quite limited. Considering the chaos in my mind, however, things have been rather smooth. In fact it has been unexpectedly good. I appreciate everyone's generosity and patience.
From next month, I will have a full schedule, 5 days a week at elementary schools, 3 days a week at Sunnyfield English in the evening plus my own study and life. I know there are bunch of people who got much busier schedule but please imagine I am a total beginner for juggling. I can toss and catch only a ball at a time. But now I got 5 balls in my hands to juggle. I am a big believer of "Practice makes perfect" and would keep on trying to juggle well. But in a mean time, I need a group of cheer leaders.
Would you be one of them?
On top of that, at Sunnyfield English, I have nearly 10 new students joined to our learning community last month. I'm so ecstatic but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed because of the flood of information I would like to take in. Unfortunately, the capacity of my heart is limitless but that of my head is quite limited. Considering the chaos in my mind, however, things have been rather smooth. In fact it has been unexpectedly good. I appreciate everyone's generosity and patience.
From next month, I will have a full schedule, 5 days a week at elementary schools, 3 days a week at Sunnyfield English in the evening plus my own study and life. I know there are bunch of people who got much busier schedule but please imagine I am a total beginner for juggling. I can toss and catch only a ball at a time. But now I got 5 balls in my hands to juggle. I am a big believer of "Practice makes perfect" and would keep on trying to juggle well. But in a mean time, I need a group of cheer leaders.
Would you be one of them?
Saturday, May 4, 2013
New journey!
How many times have I said "Really?" ever since the year of 2013 started? There were various kind of "Really?" depending on the circumstances but most of my "Really?" so far this year have been the one used for expressing joyful surprises. The first "Really?" happened when I was invited to the speakers workshop for TEDx Tokyo teachers. The second one came when I was invited by ETJ Saitama as a presenter. The third one was when my partner found my first textbooks became available online. Those "Really?" expressed my astonishment at surreal moments.
Having lived in a peaceful yet humble place with my daughter and enjoying the slices of English world with cute little kids in our neighborhood for more than a decade, I got used to my little Cheekish la la land where we got nothing but our imagination to play with. I had such a blast time sharing all the fantastic picture books and stories kids told me about their daily findings. In such a little la la land, there is no such a thing like fear. To get up-to-date information about outside of our world, all I need was to have a chat over cuppa with wise friends from time to time. Nothing radical happened. It could be boring but surely peaceful days. I wished this make-believe style of living with kids would last forever as long as I live. My only fear was that one day my daughter would say. "Mum, don't you wanna know what is going on outside? I wanna find things out!" The day didn't come within one day but little by little she stayed outside of our land longer and longer and finally she left me in the little land on my own. Those neighborhood kids also grew out of the land and left for the much bigger world. Looking at the empty seats, I moaned and moaned as if it was the end of the world for a while.
One night, I sat alone in the little classroom looking at those pictures of my kids on the wall. Every one of them looked happy and smily. As I started reading those picture books we shared, I got on the mental time-machine and went back to the days of laughters. All the kids were still small with chubby faces and the sticky hands, asking me what to play for the day. So, I said, "Mr. Wolf?" Kids went "YAY!" After playing in our garden for a while, we got back in our library and shared our favorite story, Goodnight, Moon. I said "Goodnight" then kids said "Good-bye" instead with big smiles on their little cute faces.
Good-bye.
Their voice echoed repeatedly in my mind and I looked at them and finally said "good-bye." Good-bye to our la la land and my early motherhood. It was time my own life started again. The early motherhood was filled with full of little surprises, findings and laughters. It was absolutely fantastic but I didn't want to stay there alone. All the kids left there to explore more complex and perhaps beautiful world. So, why don't I? After all, we learned together how to be courageous in the face of challenges and fear and stay curious via playing and sharing so many stories in the la la land, the place where the reality and the innocent fancy meets. After the time-travel, I promised to myself to be out of sentimental self-pity and enjoy the life fully.
"Really?" The latest one was happened at the end of last month after I had a job interview at Kunitachi city hall for an ALT position. It was the first time for me to do 5-min demo lesson without any preparation at all. More than a decade of make-believe life with kids has intensified my crazy imagination or something, somehow I was oddly excited to get all the serious looking men open up and talk to me in the foreign language. Surprisingly the magic I learned in the land worked! Learning how to say "good-bye" opens the door to a new journey. I would visit 4 different elementary schools in Kunitachi city. What kind of stories those kid will share with me? What stories I can introduce to them? What kind of magic would I learn?
There are so many things and people I appreciate but today I thank to those kids including Momo, my daughter, who shared multi-cultured and colored stories with me in the last decade. They got me ready for the new journey to find more stories.
Having lived in a peaceful yet humble place with my daughter and enjoying the slices of English world with cute little kids in our neighborhood for more than a decade, I got used to my little Cheekish la la land where we got nothing but our imagination to play with. I had such a blast time sharing all the fantastic picture books and stories kids told me about their daily findings. In such a little la la land, there is no such a thing like fear. To get up-to-date information about outside of our world, all I need was to have a chat over cuppa with wise friends from time to time. Nothing radical happened. It could be boring but surely peaceful days. I wished this make-believe style of living with kids would last forever as long as I live. My only fear was that one day my daughter would say. "Mum, don't you wanna know what is going on outside? I wanna find things out!" The day didn't come within one day but little by little she stayed outside of our land longer and longer and finally she left me in the little land on my own. Those neighborhood kids also grew out of the land and left for the much bigger world. Looking at the empty seats, I moaned and moaned as if it was the end of the world for a while.
One night, I sat alone in the little classroom looking at those pictures of my kids on the wall. Every one of them looked happy and smily. As I started reading those picture books we shared, I got on the mental time-machine and went back to the days of laughters. All the kids were still small with chubby faces and the sticky hands, asking me what to play for the day. So, I said, "Mr. Wolf?" Kids went "YAY!" After playing in our garden for a while, we got back in our library and shared our favorite story, Goodnight, Moon. I said "Goodnight" then kids said "Good-bye" instead with big smiles on their little cute faces.
Good-bye.
Their voice echoed repeatedly in my mind and I looked at them and finally said "good-bye." Good-bye to our la la land and my early motherhood. It was time my own life started again. The early motherhood was filled with full of little surprises, findings and laughters. It was absolutely fantastic but I didn't want to stay there alone. All the kids left there to explore more complex and perhaps beautiful world. So, why don't I? After all, we learned together how to be courageous in the face of challenges and fear and stay curious via playing and sharing so many stories in the la la land, the place where the reality and the innocent fancy meets. After the time-travel, I promised to myself to be out of sentimental self-pity and enjoy the life fully.
"Really?" The latest one was happened at the end of last month after I had a job interview at Kunitachi city hall for an ALT position. It was the first time for me to do 5-min demo lesson without any preparation at all. More than a decade of make-believe life with kids has intensified my crazy imagination or something, somehow I was oddly excited to get all the serious looking men open up and talk to me in the foreign language. Surprisingly the magic I learned in the land worked! Learning how to say "good-bye" opens the door to a new journey. I would visit 4 different elementary schools in Kunitachi city. What kind of stories those kid will share with me? What stories I can introduce to them? What kind of magic would I learn?
There are so many things and people I appreciate but today I thank to those kids including Momo, my daughter, who shared multi-cultured and colored stories with me in the last decade. They got me ready for the new journey to find more stories.
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