A four class Tuesday

Today was also a 40 minute schedule and I had 4 classes today like usual. But when it’s 40 minutes it just goes by so fast.

The first 8th grade class today was working on finishing up their speeches for their show and tell. They only have one week left before they have to present, so we were getting all the English corrected. It wasn’t that they had a lot to say, but they had to get the meat of everything and they had to be pretty fluent. We don’t like to hear starts and stops in the speech; since it’s all memorized it should be easy. But I remember when I was doing this for Japanese, I just couldn’t do it. My strength was in conversational Japanese and not presentations, so I sucked at it.

The second 8th grade class did pretty much the same thing as the first period class. They were finishing writing their show and tell speech. I found that some of the bad students were working hard to get it finished as well too. Most had already finished writing, so we just needed to correct it and have them memorize it. I think that only giving them one week to memorize really isn’t enough time, but then we all know that they wouldn’t spend more time memorizing it if we gave them more time. Since everyone likes to wait to the last minute to study anyways. So that’s always a bummer as a teacher to have to face and deal with.

The fourth period class was with the 7th graders. We did a little lecture about the seasons and CP had pictures of each season and each student had one. Then they had to get into groups and ask each other question. They did a pretty good job and it took up most of the class time. The pictures were amazingly beautiful. One of her students that is a senior citizen took them because that’s one of his hobbies and they were just amazing. Some of the pictures were hard to tell which season was which, but the students needed to guess. For the most part, it was clear cut.

Fifth period was with my wonderful 11th grade students. Since I am in charge of their education, I’ve gotten to know them much better. But this class needs more work. A lot more work, which I will have a chance to get them up to pace because next semester I’ll have more classes with them than any other 11th grade class. Today, I had one more student give a speech about her favorite place. It wasn’t good at all and considering she had an extra week to do it, I was a bit strict. She left a lot of information out too, which didn’t make me too happy. Then I had the class break up into groups and we did the activity of where they have been and to write two sentences about it. They only got one down before class was over.

I stayed after school a little bit too, so I could practice for the choral competition on Thursday. The teachers will do the last song and I will have to join. I think that I’ve got it down, well enough to pass for it. But it probably won’t be anything wonderful or anything, but then again it’s in another language, so no one expects me to be perfect. I was planning on going to English club today, but it ended at 5pm, and that’s when the teachers’ song practice finished, so I missed it by just a little.

I came home and ate at Bamiyan at the Okurayama station on the Tokyu Toyoko line. It was pretty good, but the Mango juice needed some work. I’m not sure what it is, but I believe that I’m speaking correct Japanese, but it seems that whenever I speak correctly people don’t understand. It seems like it sounds weird to them, but I’m sure that I said it correctly and clear enough for them to understand. They just don’t understand clear Japanese. It’s almost weird that they don’t understand it. But I guess it’s the difference between British English and American English. It’s the same, but not really.