My Last Senior class

Today was my last day to teach the senior class at my school. The plan of the day was something that I’ve been planning for a very long time. I came up with the idea way back in the day, but I only started to work on it recently and though that this would be the perfect opportunity to unveil it. It’s a pretty conservative school, but they are open to use different methods of teaching and learning. Most of the other classes that I teach, we use more traditional learning methods like lecture and repeating, but with this senior class, I’ve been able to try a few things.

From what I’ve been reading on the internet, most of the other Native English teachers get to play games all day. I think that games are only a good tool to use, if it serves a higher purpose. I wouldn’t use it all the time, and since I’ve been used as only a part-time teacher for the students I’ve had the opportunity to use games. I think that when you play games all the time, you get the students off track on the way that other teachers will teach them and sure they might like the games, but you in fact hurt all your counterparts at the school, because they wouldn’t be able to teach the way that the students are used to. So it’s good and bad at the same time.

But since these students only get me to teach them for 2 weeks and only 3 times each week, I figured it would allow me a chance to prove I could make things happen for them. Today’s lesson was a game I concocted after watching TV a few months ago. It was during a baseball game between the Japanese all stars and the American baseball all stars. I used the concept of baseball from that, but how I incorporated it into an English lesson was through something else that came into my life just recently. In Japan, all the students must take an English test named the Eiken. There are many levels to the Eiken test ranging from fifth to first, first being the hardest. Most students only go up to second grade, and hardly get to take the pre-first or even the first grade level.

So what I did was take questions from the Eiken tests at each level and gave them a different base value. Since questions from the fifth grade are too easy, I made it a practice round. The next level, which is fourth-grade, would be a single, and the third would be a double, and the pre-second would be a triple, and second a homerun, and I included questions from pre-first and made the value a grand slam. I made a PowerPoint presentation and put it on the computer and projected it on a screen so that everyone could read the questions. I added a little twist to the game play though; the person up to bat had to face me as I was reading the question. Therefore I would test their ability to listen. Next year and beyond, in order to get to a university, there will be a listening comprehension part to the entrance exam. So I was getting the students prepared for that.

At the beginning it was pretty difficult for them, but once they got into the swing of things it started to pick up. It can get boring at times, just like baseball so you’ve got to be careful with it, especially when a lower level student gets a tough question. You can’t really tell who is at what level and when it comes to listening, you really have no idea. But I think it was a success and will probably use it again some other time. I was very worried that it wouldn’t go over well because it could be really difficult. I gave a reward for the winning team and I believe they all enjoyed the game.

English club today was a little interesting. We met in the Language Laboratory even though we weren’t supposed to. There were a lot of laptops there for a computer class and they didn’t want any students in there, but being the westerners that we are, we didn’t care and still met there anyways. We just talked mostly about the wedding plans and looked at pictures that CP took while she was in Australia. It was interesting to see her family pictures. I also showed my limited family pictures. I asked my sister for some more, but since I don’t have the internet I’m not sure if she had sent some or not. Club ended around 5:30pm, but I stuck around to finish my lesson plans for Tuesday.

I was working the last minute details for what I was going to teach the 10th grade students. I finally figured out a way to get everything that I wanted to get done for the day. It will be tight, but I think I can manage to squeeze everything in, all but one class. I finally have started talking to the other teachers more. Which I feel is really good. I’m more accessible than I was before, partly because I didn’t leave school till around 8pm. And when I finished all my work, I got news that they had shut down the Tokyu-Toyoko line because of an accident. That’s twice in a week. That’s a total of 4 accidents that has affected me since I’ve been in Japan. I still managed to get home at least, but was limited in the dinner that I wanted to get, so I just stopped off at McDonalds. Even when I got home, I started working on finishing my paper work.