Note for AR after yoga practice

http://zenithresearch.org.in/images/stories/pdf/2012/May/ZIJMR/1_ZIJMR_Vol2_Issue5_May%202012.pdf

After 20 min. short yoga practice on the heck-tick Monday morning, I started thinking about the recurrent question I have, "Can yoga practice make an effective task for English learning for kids?"

Since most of the obstacles for them in acquiring anything is all the destructions about them- games, cellphones, TV and all the digital equipments and etc. I often think, "If only less destructions around them, they might be able to focus more." This is one of the reasons that one of my friend, who is also teaching English for kids, took a Yoga teacher training course and became a certificated Yoga teacher.

A few years ago, I did yoga daily for 60 to 90 min and found it so effective on my physical and psychological health. I had a terrible migraine and a posture but as Yoga became daily practice, both of serious problems got better.

Lately, the terrible migraine came back and I realized how long I didn't practice Yoga. Sitting in front of Mac and rear numerous papers are bad enough for my health. My mood swing got terrible as well. I can hardly feel relaxed lately. Of course, it is something with some changes like new jobs and new living style but it was the same back then. I was all stressed and feel low all the time and Yoga was one of the solutions I tried. And only yoga seemed to work. I felt much calmer and better concentration with better results. I was an undergrad on corresponding course and needed substantial concentration and memory for my study. It took lots of will power to study something on my own with only books.  sometimes took classes during summer or spring break but most of the time, I had to motivate myself to do all the work I was supposed to do. Even super motivated student loses her motivation from time to time and Yoga and its philosophy behind helped me to get through.

Yesterday, I didn't do any work for I needed a day off and I wasn't so motivated. I felt sluggish, dull, exhausted and low this morning again. I wasn't sure the cause or causes but didn't like the feelings at all. Then, I went back to the basics, Yoga practice like I did a few years ago when I was in the miserable state of mind.

Good idea!  Here I am with full of inspiration and motivation for the possibility.

Yoga is a gigantic subject to tackle and I don't really know if it is even measurable for concentration or memory within a short time of period. But I am sure it is worth researching a little.

I will start asking some questions to my friend who is a yoga teacher.

Reflection of yesterday

Phew. Tough day with emotional roller-coaster. I had 4 classes but many kids didn't show up for it was the first day of 3 days holiday in Tokyo. Which got me the severe guilt-trip but I managed to do my best and discover some of treatable issues with one student.

She, Student Y, struggled so much to catch up other two students and I suggested that she should be in a lower level class. Yesterday was the first time she was in the lower class. Fortunately, other two students didn't come and I had a chance to explain to her why her class was changed. She looked happy and was motivated to do the best she could. She was quite engaged and worked really hard, much harder than before, to read one of the books of ORT stage 1 one word by one word. Obviously books in the previous higher leveled class was inappropriate level for her. She was slow but showed a promising enthusiasm to tackle the book I introduced.  I am so sure that she could be much better and fluent reader if she doesn't give up on herself. She needed more comprehensible input and output. Via some pre and post reading activities, I hope she will find the joy of reading not the sense of pressure to read.

As far as the children in the current English education in Japan are concerned, they need to acquire reading and writing skills in order to achieve reasonable grades if not the best. It is undeniable fact that they deal with lots of tests on the two skills mainly. There are some listening comprehension tests at schools yet they take only 5 to 10 % of the whole score. Tests are still made to measure student's reading and writing/ spelling skills.

I often think the joy or love of reading should be cultivated before they started to feel forced to read. Otherwise, such a pleasurable activity such as reading would be nothing but a mere requirement for school work. That would be a huge loss in a long run since reading can be a life-time companion to feed your soul.

It has been painful to witness some children who don't know the joy of reading. This is one of my mission as a TEYL and a mum. At the moment I hypothesize that  ER plus IR with pre and post activities might get children a fluent and possibly life-long reader.

Who am I?

Mum is my identity but being a teacher for young learners is also my identity which often clash with the other one. Identity clash or culture clash within a physical body. It has been quite brutal especially when your kid is in bed.

TEYL requires 100% attention and energy from me but when my heart is not there, I feel guilty. This guilt doubled when I imagine my own child feeling sick in bed. We are lucky to have my mum around.She is also there for us to rescue this huge dilemma I have to face. Yet having an excellent support can't deny the guilt I feel. I still ask myself, "What the hell are you doing?" as I work with other kids leaving my own in bed.

It can be a starting point of AR for it might a huge issue for every working mum and finding out how they deal with this guilt might be valuable for a mum like myself. Brown asserts that we should come up with more friendly schedule for your family. But as long as I am in this business, it would be tough to get a substitute teacher unless I am in a crisis. Or is it just one of those misconception of this job?

Note: ER and spelling?

After participating in the meeting at TKC, I can't get rid of the comment, repeating over and over in my head. "Japanese kids don't need to learn English in English. " According to the "experienced" senior teacher, Japanese children need to do grammar-translation because that's the skill they are expected to achieve at school and  their ultimate goal is to get better grades on tests.

Whether I agre with it or not, somewhat it is true. As far as most of, if not all, my students are concerned, they are going to stay and make living in Japan. And their interest is how to make better living in this country. Considering the goal most of the children have (or have trained to believe), further research on "effectiveness" of ER is needed.

Since Spelling is one of the main area for the grades at Japanese schools, investigating on the connection between reading and spelling might be useful. The positive feeling I have towards extensive reading as a way of substantial and comprehensible input inspires a hypothesis that ER can improve spelling.

Krashen and Day have already claimed that there is a "casual relationship" between ER and spelling.

I wonder if it can make an interesting Action Research.

Gotta read some more!

Auch indeed!

One of the participants of Aston and I are setting up a study group and would meet every other week on Skype from the beginning of October. At the moment, my feet won't touch the ground with excitements.

On the other hand, I had a meeting with my co-workers and the owner of TKC and was miserably told off. According to my "senior"(Does it mean ONLY older?)  teacher, my idea is too unconventuonal. What all the students need is grammar-translation for entrance exam for uni. I couldn't believe what I heard. It is a language school for children who are fortunate enough to go oversea every single vacation and stay there for a month if they want to. They are also in private university-affliated elementary schools and those universities are considered as prestigious ones like Keio, Waseda, Aoyama, Seishin and etc. Which means they don't need to take entrance exam. They need to work on their academic abilities but as long as they get average grades at school, they don't need to worry about the severe and ridiculous entrance exam. Instead, they can look for something meaningful and worth trying for their future. Well, it has been my interpretation and the reason I supported my own daughter to go through the crazy cramming phase when she took the entrance exam for the Jr. high. 

Did I argue with them in the meeting? No. I was too disappointed to say anything. Well, I will do what I believe to support my students. That's why I am on a Master's course. The fact is nobody really knows what is the best for each student but at least exclusive grammar-translation lessons sound deadly boring if not harmful. 

So, plan B. I am going to observe my daughter, Case M, and one of my students from my own school. A girl from Tuesday class will make a good case study since she doesn't like reading in English, either and she often struggles when she reads aloud. I will call her, Case R because of her name.

Case R is a sister of my ex-star student. The ex-star student was straight A plus student in all the area. She was one of the best at the local Jr. high and got a scholarship to go to Sr. high. Case R often says she is not good enough compared to her sister. However, I do think Case R got much more social skills. 

She is so amicable and adorable. In fact, her intelligence might work better when she got out of school. In the real world, she can charm people and she might make some great carrier because of her EQ. She is not incompetent at all but the problem is that her mum doesn't believe in her, either. I hope she would make progress in her English proficiency and gain confidence like I did at her age :-)

Case M and R both got deeply rooted negative complex towards their ability. Especially the former one is part of my fault since I am the mum. I hope I would identify some ways to have them find their own strength and infinite possibilities and capabilities. 

Instead of recording the whole interaction with them, I would give them interviews and questionnaires at the beginning, middle and after the project. The project picture book magic will begin!

Case R on Tuesdays. Case M on Thursdays.  

Note: Reading Adventure Program/ Case study

While I was reading my module readings, I found about Clay M.M. and her program.
http://www2.aasa.ac.jp/~dcdycus/LAC99/MAR99/hashim399.htm
http://readingrecovery.org/reading-recovery/teaching-children/marie-clay

Since I've been wondering how effective Storytelling is for TEYL classes, using picture books for teens might be another idea to investigate. Besides, I am a huge fan of picture books and such classes will be so enjoyable for me. Choosing appropriate picture books might be a challenge but perhaps via introducing some of them I might be able to identify specific preference of my students. There is a girl who takes private lessons at TKC, my new work, might be the best person to start investigating with.
She is 10 years old yet started learning English when she was one and half. Her cousin is a returnee and  goes to an international school. She often see her cousin and read picture books with her.She has high level of reading fluency. But I would like to see what happens when she started reading intensively and extensively with picture books.

Another interesting case might be my daughter. 13 years old who is a bookworm yet become allergic to English ever since she started taking  school education. She read quite a lot of English picture books when she was younger. But as soon as she became 5th grader, she lost time for reading English books due to the entrance exam study. She continued reading in Japanese for pleasure but her reading fluency in L1 got much much higher than that of in L2. Then she gave up on reading in L2 due to the lack of time and perhaps enough motivation. I would like to find out if picture books magic can work on this serious case.

The first case, student A, comes to TKC on Tuesday (today). I have already introduced some of picture books with familiar stories such as Alice in Wonderland. She seemed to enjoy reading but I would introduce ORT for it is one of the most popular series among my students and would like to see what she feels.

For the case M, my daughter, both of us are free only on thursday night and that would be the time to introduce ORT again.

I would like to record all the interaction if it is ok.

Notes from AR presentation

Before I completely forget about little ideas of mine for AR project, which was emerged from the interaction with other participants at Yokohama JALT mini conference, I am jolting all down.

Got two ideas so far: Blog or Digital storytelling

Perhaps latter might be more interesting field to explore for my students, aged from 10 to 18. Younger ones I have should be excluded from this project. Obvious reason is their age. Paper version of storytelling or reading would be more appropriate.

I also would like to start adopting several ideas I got from the conference
- teaching and learning portfolio
- post-it notes in class
- making questionnaire
- Face Sheet for correcting data

Dr. Croker mentioned how to find topic/ focus on AR via making list of relevant categories such as bio data, tasks and etc. Perhaps mind-maping might also effective way to do so, however, finding  the focus for AR is not really a walk in the park.

I was wondering if digital storytelling makes a good task for young learners in and outside of the class. But I guess that is a question I can ask to them before I start the project.

It was a fantastic day with heaps of findings and things to try out with other participants and the presenter. Yo-JALT rocks!

Oh, another important note: November 2013, Yo-JALT AR poster session!

Hope I will be able to come up with "good" AR project and complete MET module by then.