Friday the end of the week

I only had two classes today, so I came to school later than usual. The first class was the 8th Grade. I needed to pay close attention to these students because eventually, I'll be their formal teacher on Saturdays.

We did dialogue from the book that they have. Then I also did the pictures for the listening comprehension part. We use what is called the schematic approach which is introducing things about ourselves or something they are familiar with first, and then going along with the tape and other assisting material so it's not cold when they get it. We warm up to the point.

Something that I notice about this class is that they already have most of the answers because they have friends from previous classes give them the answers. So they don't have to pay attention to the lesson, which in turns doesn't help much at all. So I've got to find another approach that remedies that problem. They seemed to have a little problem with word forms like run - ran, watch - watched. And things of that nature. I think it's because it was cold. They don't link things from class to class. Nothing is consistent in Japanese Education. As long as the topics are covered, they think it's ok. But nothing ever flows into the next week which really worries me about the student's education. Then we ended the class on British Terms versus American Terms.

The 11th Grade class today was pretty good. I didn't have to do much because they pretty much understood what was going on. The assignment was to give a speech about making something, like telling a recipe. I think something that works really well, is when everyone is involved. Like having the class ask the question and the person at the front answering the question. For example, we did "What can you make?" and the person at the board would say, "I can make..." and then continue on with their speech. So everyone would have to pay attention. Sometimes we were all off on it and the person at the board was just waiting.. because no one asked.
I think it worked well, and it's only been the second time we've met so they are doing very good.
After all my classes I stuck around till around 4:30pm. I could have left at 1pm, but I was just trying to learn as much as I possibly could about the culture of the teachers. They will be my first students, because there was a typhoon coming to Tokyo the next day so they cancelled school. That's the first time in four years that they did that. So it was a big deal. They moved all the regular scheduled classes to October 23rd, which was when I was supposed to start teaching the 8th Grade. That's big news to me, so I did my article for the school newspaper introducing myself. And then I was talking to other teachers about my plans, only releasing snipits of information to keep them wondering. I think I'm doing a pretty good job with being mysterious, yet informative. They don't know if I can teacher or not, and to be honest, I don't know either. But hopefully things will work out for the best and that They will learn something from my classes. Shit, I hope so, I would like to move up on the totem pole.