Lesson 6-2 The Second lesson - I want a new TV, a new computer...

This lesson felt a little more relaxed (except for one little incident...) since there were mostly listening exercises for this one.

We outlined the hour like this:

1. Greetings and Introduction

2. Modeling and Repeating (fixing the accents review) page 36-37

3. Let's Play the Ohajiki Game "one more time"

4. Chant "What do you want?" ("I want more travel time...How about you?")

5. Let's Listen 1 page 38 Matching Pictures

6. Let's Listen 2 page 39 Guessing What

7. Review on verbs am, like, have, want.

The main point:

After doing the usual greeting and introduction, we felt it was good to do the nouns with the kids again just to make sure their accents were taken cared of. Kids in Japan sometimes do like to speak with a katakana accent and who's to blame them. It would seem only natural to speak in your own native accent wouldn't it?

But the kids did quite well and they put together that audio file for me just to show the world the katakana accent. Fixing it was worth a try and the kids were really good about it. They were a little slow on the first try, though.

Flashcards may help at this point, and it seems the kids pay a little more attention while you are holding them up.

Today's lesson was mainly a listening one, so we thought of playing the Ohajiki game again to spice it up a bit. We got a few games on the audio player as well. I've posted them here and also in the first hour post.

Ideally we would have liked to use the Cd rom for the quizzes and the kids were a bit restless today so it might have changed the mood. While I was introducing the countries on page 38, there was an incident from one of the kids.

There are a few countries on the page with speakers from them who are to comment on their country's popular foods and the kids would have to match them. Korea is in there and I'm sure there aren't many kids around this age holding a grudge with any country. But Korea does rhyme with "gorilla," from the 18 nouns on the last two pages, so it sparked a student to work it up a little too much and it caught on to a few others.

So, what is one (an ALT or JET) to do at this point. Should we stand aside and pretend not to notice, or say a few words. I chose the latter.

My main message to the kids was that, yes, this is Japan, and a close neighbor to Korea, but generally we don't have many or if any Korean people in the classroom. So, does that mean it is ok to joke about another country. I explained that in my own view we (ALT's) don't usually approve because we grew up in a different situation. So, what if you (students) had made the same joke in an American or any English speaking country's classroom. What do you think would happen? This is an International Studies class isn't it? Well, the kids (who did it) were told that yes, there would probably be people of Korean decent in the classroom and yes, there would probably be people that had Korean friends in the classroom, so a lot of people would not really appreciate those comments. Yes, Korea does maybe rhyme with gorilla, but let's not go overboard with it, shall we? (The students behaved a lot better in the next class; I'm writing this after that "next class" so it is very true and they are generally really good kids.

By the by, I think maybe the gorilla should be edited out of the textbook, but then again it only happened in one class. The kids were ok after that "talk" and they know me pretty well enough to understand when I get serious about some things.

So, we continued with the next page and did that. This was very easy to do and not very challenging for the kids, but it is a confidence-building exercise in essence. I was hoping to have enough time to do the "making my own parfait" activity but the games had taken up a lot of time.

There wasn't much time left over but I thought there would be a good chance to review the first basic verbs up there in point 7. It was just a very basic review. The first part was simply me speaking with:
"I am ..."
"I like ..."
"I have a ..."
"I want a ...(PSP)"

Then, asking the kids if they had understood the meaning of it all. And reviewing the meaning for those few who had forgotten. Not really a great method. The old "translation" method. But... there wasn't much time left, though, and I really wanted the kids to get the importance of these verbs and try to remember them. I had introduced "want" in the beginning of unit 6 by using PSP and other things such as a DS, a Wii, an ipod, a PS3, (they don't want the PS2 anymore...). Things they can relate to quickly in order to shower them with a few ideas. And we finished off there.

Well, as of this writing, I have already finished teaching the next lesson with the "parfait" activity and it is a lot more fun to teach. The writing I will still have to do but I'll post up the video sample for those of you out there who are interested.

Also, I did get an email asking if there is a list of words for the textbooks. I'm not really sure where that is, but they are best to be found in the teacher's books.

So, unless anyone out there has a clue and can send us some email, we will all have to sift through the teacher's books if we really want that list. Well, might come in handy... someday.

Hope your lessons are fine...and watch out for the "gorea kids," ok...

The ENB

audio: Japanese accents fixed, chants, (mixed between 6-1 and this lesson...)

Eigo Note Book 1 Unit 6 Lesson 3 is now ready...