A full Friday

I woke up this morning feeling great and that’s how I went through the whole day. I really had something going on today because I was just knocking things out of the way and once by one. It was a great feeling and it was just a great day. I didn’t even eat anything till lunch time and I still had a lot of energy to take me through the day. That was such an awesome feeling. I came into work today with a lot of praise. I had solved the memory stick problem and all the English teachers were happy and grateful for that. So I was stoked from the beginning. I think that everyone was impressed with it since the top computer people at the school couldn’t figure it out. I had six classes today.

First period with 7^th grade fuji was about animals. We worked on the paper from last week for a little bit and then we introduced a new paper that dealt with filling in missing letters of the animals that we knew from last week. They had to match the picture with the name too. When we finished that we played a game of snaps with the cutouts of the animal pictures.

Second period with 11^th grade kiku, was on their travel abroad test. They did surprisingly well with the exceptions of a few words. They couldn’t say clothes and want correctly, so they needed to work on that. Everything else was great. They memorized everything even though they did stumble a little bit, they were pretty good. They did a better job on this test than on any other test they have done in my class. I think that they are getting better at speeches, which is a good thing to say the least. We finished early and played a game of hangman with a word that they needed to practice. I think that they liked the game until they realized it was a way to teach them a vocabulary word, but that was as time ran out.

Third period was with 7^th grade ran and we did pretty much the same thing as the first period class today. We worked on the animal paper that they had last week, which they hadn’t finished yet either. They were supposed to, but they didn’t. So we worked on it for a little while till they finished it. Then we worked on the new worksheet and then we played the snap game. It went well in this class.

Fourth period with 9^th grade ran was about food and ordering. They of course didn’t really care too much about the topic or anything else. We made up a dialogue and they had to perform it in front of the class. They had a little example and then they had to go at it. It resembled one that they would experience in America. I think that it was ok and some of the students cared and understood, but overall it wasn’t a very pleasing experience.

Fifth period with 10^th grade yuri went extremely well. I think that after only having 7 minutes to prepare for the class and getting the lesson straightened out right before the class started wasn’t really a good way to get things going, but I guess it would be better to learn before class and in class, which has happened before. The lesson again changed from last week to this week. They are really capable of a lot more than I thought that they would be able to. They had harder questions and had to go through more information. They also had to provide reasons why things were a certain way in this class compared to the other day. The topic again was on the environment. We reviewed vocabulary and then we introduced some new ideas and if they were good or bad. Then we played the puzzle game matching pictures with verbs and seeing which goes with what. Then we did a little survey that got the students up and talking with each other. Many used Japanese, which wasn’t really recommended, but then most used English to ask each other. I thought it went well, but the Japanese English teacher thought it was better than usual. So I’m happy to hear that. I was surprised at how well the students could form their ideas about good and bad and their reasoning was interesting to hear too.

Sixth period with 9^th grade kiku was on the topic of food and ordering. We did much of the same thing in the 4^th period class today. We went over a sample dialogue, but she went a little long on the explaining the dialogue and poking fun of waitresses in California. She did a good job of getting all the nuances and I’m not sure if the students were able to follow or not. I think that they were since they are a high level class, but they didn’t pay attention to much of anything till they had to go up to the board and actually do it. Their performances were particularly good even though the dialogue itself was a little drawn out and repetitive. It did take up a lot of time too. I think that the time could have been better spent on having the student speak more.

After school I was helping out a teacher work on a letter for a student who is applying for a school in England. I will help with the correspondence from our school to their school. I started to make a business letter to respond to the school. I was looking for a way to get the logo of the school onto the letter, but I couldn’t do that at school, so I was looking at it and only working on the few things that I could at school. I was also helping some students with the reading of their speeches for the speech contest. They are getting much better and sound very good giving it. It will be tough to judge them come this March, but I think that it will be good for them.

I came home and started working on Saturday’s lesson. I really want to make it a good one and I hope that I will be able to get something going for her. I want to help to inspire her to work harder and to believe that she can accomplish her goals. I over all had a very good day. I bought dinner on the way home and ate it at home, but I was really stuffed from eating too much. I stayed up very late, for my standards, working on the lesson for tomorrow. I wanted to get something good down so I could have a lot of material to go through since we will only have a few more classes left and I want to make them worthwhile.