Friday, a rather good day
The first class today was 2nd period with 11th grade kiku. The plan is to give them their movie report papers. I was able to get them their papers and most were able to finish. They have a unique characteristic about them that they always complete their work even though it’s not the best. They will do enough to get the job done and it will get their message across, but I don’t think they pay much attention to grammar. They are a good class though. We were lucky that we got most of them checked before class finished. They have about 3 weeks to memorize their speeches to be able to present them in a well-organized manner. I think I’ll be a bit stricter on the grading for this test because the listening test was a breeze for most of the students.
The 3rd period class today was 7th grade ran was a day of hobbies. We spent the whole class working on a piece of paper that we worked on before in other classes that listed hobbies that went with the appropriate verb. I think it was too hard for the 7th grade level and the English ability would have had to been at least high school. The explanation was a bit hard to follow too, but we pushed the students to do it and do their best to get it done. During the last few minutes we practiced their English drama for Beauty and the Beast.
The 4th period class was 9th grade ran. The only thing that we did today was practice the drama for Annie. They were damn good. It came as a shock at how good they actually were. I knew going in that they really like to work on the English drama, more than they like English, or any other subject matter, or even school. But they were adding in their own lines and tell each other how to say the lines and act it out. It was really self-teaching in this class, and they did a very good job. I would say the best in the Junior high school. They did need some help at some points, but they were pretty spot on with all the lines and with all the gestures. They were a bit scary how good they were with playing the antagonist and protagonist.
At lunch I gave a listening test for one of my students who got a perfect score. As much as that’s good for her, that’s bad for me because I made the test too easy for them. But at first I thought that it might be too hard, but later I realized that it’s too easy. So the next test will be very hard to compensate for the easiness of this one.
The 5th period class was 10th grade Yuri was about weather. I know that it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s important. But today we sped through the lesson in the book. I mean we did cover a lot of information today. We covered like 6 pages in the text book, when we usually only cover one or two. And then we played the weatherman rap CD and that’s where we finished. They were doing well today and trying to speak English with each other. They did a very good job and I think that is one of the reasons why today is a good day. I wasn’t prepared to teach this class, since I wasn’t really motivated myself to teach such a poor lesson, but I do what I have to do.
The last class of the day was 7th grade fuji. We also did the lesson on hobbies today. It took up the whole period because they didn’t quite understand what they were supposed to do today. They had the sheet of paper, but they got it before we could really explain. It was difficult for them to get started because sometimes they just don’t care about it. But they were able to do it, at least for the most part, but some of the students have to finish for their homework. At the end of the class we did the English play for Beauty and the Beast.
After school I just had to hang out for a little bit. The beginning I was giving a listening comprehension test for the students who were absent on the day that it was given originally. That only took up 10 minutes and then the students were free to go to their clubs. I on the other hand had another 1.5 hours left before English club started. I was just doing various things to kill time before English club started. All we did today in English club was fix the mistakes on the reports for Batman Begins. They forgot to leave space for a picture, so they had to erase and start over again. We managed to finish it today, so two of the 4 reports are finished. That’s good and I think that the club is making very good progress to complete it for the Culture festival.
I came home and stopped by Saizeria to have dinner. It wasn’t very bad at all, but there were too many students there and I think that contributed to the noisiness of the restaurant though. But I was only there to eat anyways, so I didn’t really mind.
