Back to normal Tuesday

Second period was with 8^th grade ran and we did their test on their speeches. They did fairly well, but they didn’t memorize their speeches. It would have been better if they had memorized it. That’s their weakest point. Some students haven’t finished yet. I don’t think that they have practiced enough for it. Some students need to be a little bit louder to be heard and their stance needs to be improved too. Some students have a hard time in this class because they have a heavy accent and that makes it hard to hear them speak.

Third period was with 8^th grade kiku and they did their test too and we evaluated it. They did a fairly good job with it. Some students need to study a lot for it, but I think that some of the students have a chance to win the contest. They need to be a little louder though and to enunciate a little more. Most of the students need to improve the way that they pronounce some of the words, but most of the time it was very clear. I didn’t see many glaring mistakes during the speech test, but they need to memorize it a little more.

Fourth period was with 7^th grade kiku, and we just worked on making riddles. They were working on body parts, but had forgotten most things that we have studied before. They don’t connect things from class to class, which is something we don’t understand. It seemed as if they were either struggling with the information or just being lazy. I think that it was a mix of both and that really slowed us down today. They could have improved a little more if they had actually worked on the material instead of just joking around.

Fifth period was with 11^th grade fuji. It was the last time that I will ever teach them. As much as I really enjoy that thought, I also am saddened by it. Since I won’t teach the 12^th grade (unless they ask for it) and this will be the last oral class they will have since they will graduate March 1^st. We played English Jeopardy and we set things up in the classroom with PowerPoint and projector and everything. I wanted to make it a big deal since it was the last time I would have to do it for them. We had some projector problems with the students disconnecting the power quite often. It is bad for the projector. That slowed us down for a little bit. The other problem that I had with this activity was that one group was just blowing everyone else away and they just took up all the points. I’m thinking that isn’t good and it made some students very discouraged. I would like to see it more evenly distributed, but I think that was only particular to this class. It had its own dynamic.

I had to give an after school test, which is really really late since the test was ages ago. The semester technically ended today, which made me late to pass back all the papers since she was so late to give it. She did fairly well, even though she had about 5 minutes to study and to memorize it. I was surprised that she could even do it. She’s the type to be lazy about school work and this was not an exception. But she did it and it is now all over with.

After school we had English club with the 7^th graders. We played crazy eights with them and they were learning about categories and colors. They enjoyed the game. After club, I had to sort papers to be passed back to the students. I stayed till around 7pm to make the groups all sorted out. The problem was that we had a lot of papers to hand back and that’s why it took me really long to get it finished. Actually it still isn’t finished, but I didn’t want to get home very late.

I had dinner at a curry restaurant today at Yokohama station and went home soon after that. I didn’t bring my computer home so I didn’t waste time doing nothing and it was nice to get all that weight off of my shoulder. My bag had broken and I had to carry it, so it is a bit of a hassle. I have to figure out a way to carry it around from place to place since my bag is broken.