We heavily used the electronic blackboard with this lesson and the kids were quite pleased to get involved.

Do you remember the old days when kids would "freeze" at the front of the class just to say a few words in English? Well, not anymore in (most of) my classes...

This lesson was based on the teacher's book pretty much. The main point of the lesson was to prepare the kids for the black box quiz that would be played in lunch-groups for the last lesson of the year.

We did do the chant and greetings and then we followed thru on the lesson as follows...

The kids were quite prepared for the black box quiz and played in lunch-groups for the last lesson of the year. Some classes did only three lessons and a few other classes were able to do the fourth lesson.

So, this year in 2010 we will start the kids off fresh with Lesson 8 for their first lessons of the year. Stay tuned for those posts in the near future.

"Yes, I know. The kids are really speaking to much Japanese in these exercises with the Blackbox Game, but what can you do?

They are basically just kids and they are having fun and got so excited for this game so I usually leave that part up to the HRT to put them back in line. I mean, I don't really want to push them to hard and make them "have to" speak English, do I."

After a long break for winter vacation the kids were in quite a good mood and we didn't have too many problems except for some kids that had brought their textbooks home for the holidays and forgot where they had put them.

So, about a third of the kids didn't have a textbook for this lesson. Well, no biggie, just pair the kids off with a partner who has a textbook and problem solved....

Reviewing the school subjects with the CD rom can be quite easy using the bingo activity screen (page 52) since all the Japanese school subjects are shown there.

You can use the mouse pen to drag or wiggle which picture textbook you want the kids to say in English. Hold that pic on the screen and let the kids answer your question... ...once you let go of that image...

...the quiz on page 54. One point here for the quiz is that we did not really explain to the kids what the quiz was really about. The kids had already studied the subjects in English and the Days of the Week and they were performing at about 80% fluency at this time.

What I basically wanted to see was how well the kids were able to use their reasoning skills at this point. ...

The last lesson of this unit, focuses on the students showing and telling Activity on page 55. It's really great when you have an electronic blackboard in the classroom since the kids can get very involved in the presentation by using the e-board as a tool.

Or, so than I thought. Actually, most of the kids spoke to the blackboard than the rest of the class. There were however some students that...

"I eat fruit and cereal in the morning." Well now we are really at the end of our rope so to speak. Just a few more lessons left.

If there are things you want to get done this is the time to do it. Phonics, grammar points, and what have you... asking the HRT on a date... maybe?...

Today's lesson was really meant to have some fun with the Bingo activity in the textbook.

It also included some speaking exercises prior to playing Bingo to consolidate the target language since the students had to ask each other "What would you like?" for their bingo game cards. All in all, the lesson was...

The students were quite strict and picky about their peers' menus. The top scoring student got about 15 "hands" out of 30.

So, I think they took this very seriously and didn't give any votes away based on popularity. Unbiased and unprejudiced involvement from the kids with a lot of excitement and comments. I liked it a lot! I should have taped all their comments. But I'll try to get a few translated...

"We have green tea, hamburger, miso soup, pizza, curry and rice, and a parfait." = 3 votes from the kids. Why only 3 votes for "Yes" for the "Would you eat that?" Game.

Well, the students said they would get an upset stomach for starters and the food items did not go well together. "Awanai" in Japanese... ...So I guess most kids in Japan are already used to International Menus...