Lesson 3-2 The Second lesson - Continuing with numbers 11-20, a listening quiz...

After our usual greetings, some of our classes still began with the "Hello Song" and then the new 1-10 "Numbers Song." In the numbers song we added that little fun clapping activity of not saying a number and clapping instead. (Reminds you of the "Bingo Song" doesn't it... "*-i-n-g-o... *-i-n-g-o...and Bingo was his name-o!")

Just to check their responses when greeted with "How are you?" we still picked up a few students randomly. All the students were still performing very well and the students have seemed to acquire the target language.

After that, we played Janken again but this time everybody played the ALT in a kind of showdown to see who would be the last student standing. We still review the TL of saying "I win!" if the student won or "You win!" if the student lost. In a couple of minutes we soon had the last student remaining as "champion" and go a little prize (the ALT's very rare signature on the back of the textbook which this writer doesn't give out to students very often.)

Luckily, we didn't have one of those famous Eigo Noto skits for this lesson. Instead, we had a little quiz for the Let's Play 1 portion. It's a counting exercise in which students will have to figure out how many times a certain diagram of squares will fit into the 'main' bigger diagram of squares. I'd love to show you in a picture, because as they say 'a picture is worth a thousand words" but in this case may be worth a thousand words of copyright infringement so I'll let your imagination work on my above explanation.

 

 

The quiz may be a little confusing for some students so as a teacher you may want to walk around the class and check on some students to see how they are doing. Just give them a little "boo-boo" if you see that they made a mistake.

This last picture shows the kids how to solve the puzzle if they haven't figured out how to do so already. Most of my students said they had done this for the first time so it might be a little confusing for them.

Finishing off and flowing into the "11-20 Song" we reviewed our numbers first and reviewed what was done last year. That meant looking back at numbers 1-100 and especially in 10's to 100, 11-20, and -ty vs. -teen. We also did a number chain game having the students speak in order from 11-20. (I've only mastered how to plug in one audio file per page so I'll put some links at the bottom for these extra audio samples.)

We then did the "11-20 Numbers Song" and since we mastered the dance in the last class, now you've got to master the vocals with 11-20. The kids had fun and got used to it after a few trial runs. The HRT teachers improved their dancing techniques too.

We also did the "Janken in other languages" audio quiz as a supplemental for those classes that missed it in their last lesson.

We finished this lesson with the Let's Listen portion of "Guessing What." Most of the students complained this was way too fast the first time I taught this lesson, so for me next classes I made it a point to tell the students not to complain until the CD finished playing. Also, I told the students we have other kids in the class that may have gone to "jukus (cram schools)" or "eikaiwas (English conversation schools)" that might want to challenge this quiz. We also told the students for the second time around we would play the CD a little more slowly and give the kids a chance to catch up. The students agreed and the quiz went smoothly for my next lessons.

All in all, most young learners of English in Japan usually express their dislikes very clearly and sometimes loudly enough to disrupt the "feeling" of an English class so you've got to prepare well in advance. Listen to the CD's, consult your HRT's and decide what to do. As for me, giving up may be an option but I never let my kids do that. If its difficult its difficult, so what!? There's no reason to lose any sleep over it. I tell the students to "just try it (yatte mitte!), and stop taking the "easy road" all the time. It's blunt, but it seems to work and we talked about the difficult sections and the accents for certain numbers for the remaining time.

Eigo Note Book 1 (Unit) Lesson 3 Third lesson is now ready...

Please be sure to check out my Eigo Note Blog for Grade 6 and my experience in teaching English with the Eigo Note 2 Textbook.