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OMFG THOSE PICTURES ARE OF WORDS
My downstairs neighbor, aka my landlady, moved out today. She'd only lived here for like FOUR MONTHS. When I went outside to go to work, I saw this big truck full of her furniture and I'm like "Uhh... hi... hikkoshimasu ka? Are you moving?" And she explained that yes, she was moving to Nerima to live with her boyfriend and they are getting married next month. I guess that would explain why I haven't really seen or talked to her much recently... but WTF? Well, uh, I guess there goes one out of the two people in this neighborhood that actually talked to me... I was a little freaked out while riding my bike to the station, I guess.
Something really funny happened today at work, but I utterly cannot really convey it in words.
During my kids' class, see, we've been doing these loooong word (5-6 letters long) listening/spelling things lately. And I noticed they're having trouble, for two main reasons... 1) they've never seen these words before and 2) they're still weak in certain phonics.
So I've started pre-teaching them the listening words. I know that's probably against what I'm supposed to do, but whatever. Two weeks ago I simply wrote the words on the board when the kids came in, one of them tried to read them, the others ignored it, they struggled with the spelling. Last week I made picture cards for the words (picture on the front, word on the back) and played "Slowly Reveal" and then did the puzzle-spelling game, and it seemed to help a little bit, at least with the word "lips".
Today's words were "tennis", "basket", "candle", and "parrot". They had "candle" at Christmastime but I wasn't sure on the others. So, for a game, I put up blanks on the board and got out the word card picture of the tennis racket, and sure enough they were all like "woooo, writing words on the board wooooo" and went up and tried to write it, the girls writing 'tenis' and the boy writing 'tens' I give them the word, they correct it. Fine. We do basket, the girls get it right, the boy almost gets it. Etc. We go through this twice, so all of them have now seen, heard, and written these words.
I put the picture cards up at the top of the whiteboard with magnets and just leave them there, and we start doing the normal workbook stuff.
Ten minutes later we're in the phonics section. The CD says, "Number six. BASKET. BASKET. BASKET."
The boy has this huge "a-ha!" moment and says, in Japanese, the equivalent of "OMFG! I LEARNED THIS!" and starts busily scribbling in his workbook. I'm really proud of him.
"Number seven. CANDLE. CANDLE. CANDLE."
Then he looks up at me and I can't remember exactly what he said, but he was SO EXCITED that he had heard the word earlier, and was all like "HEY THAT PICTURE IS UP THERE ON THE BOARD," that while gesturing wildly towards the board, he accidentally threw his pen, which went flying across the room and hit the whiteboard with a loud thump.
He ran over to get his pen and then also tried to reach up for the cards (which of course I had placed well out of kids' reach) and kept jumping up and down while saying, in Japanese, "TEACHER, I CAN'T SPELL, FLIP THE CARD AROUND FOR ME."
I'm not supposed to laugh at my students, but I just lost it. Some combination of how excited he was at realizing that OMG THOSE PICTURES ARE OF WORDS! and the pen flying and so on...
So I get him to sit down and continue and he yells, "NUMBAA EIGHTO, PARROT, PARROT, PARROT."
Recounting this later I'm still laughing, but I think it's a "you had to be there" sort of thing.
Oh, also, I taught my kids the word "cute" so the one girl who calls everything kawaii would have something to say in English. We'll have to see if it sticks with them or not. I ended up giving them some of my UFO catcher thingies, the fuzzy Stitches, and then I gave fuzzy Mickey Mouses to my 7pm class.
Another thing I did today was finally make a curtain for the back corner of my room where I've just been throwing random stuff, and where I often change clothes... went to Daiso, got a 50-70cm curtain rod for 100 yen and a 85cm by 140cm piece of cloth for 200 yen, and 8 curtain hooks for another 100 yen, and voila, instant curtain, for the equivalent of around $4.
I forgot to eat dinner all evening and was starving after work. I've been going to Kawaguchi station most nights to hang out at the arcade and play Pop'n and UFO catchers. Tonight was no exception, but before the arcade I also went to the place I think of as Cheerful Katsudon and had some yummy katsudon. Yay. Came home, watched megaspo and Guren Onna, which is sadly coming to a conclusion fairly soon. And I really should go to sleep... Saturdays are the early days. :(
Something really funny happened today at work, but I utterly cannot really convey it in words.
During my kids' class, see, we've been doing these loooong word (5-6 letters long) listening/spelling things lately. And I noticed they're having trouble, for two main reasons... 1) they've never seen these words before and 2) they're still weak in certain phonics.
So I've started pre-teaching them the listening words. I know that's probably against what I'm supposed to do, but whatever. Two weeks ago I simply wrote the words on the board when the kids came in, one of them tried to read them, the others ignored it, they struggled with the spelling. Last week I made picture cards for the words (picture on the front, word on the back) and played "Slowly Reveal" and then did the puzzle-spelling game, and it seemed to help a little bit, at least with the word "lips".
Today's words were "tennis", "basket", "candle", and "parrot". They had "candle" at Christmastime but I wasn't sure on the others. So, for a game, I put up blanks on the board and got out the word card picture of the tennis racket, and sure enough they were all like "woooo, writing words on the board wooooo" and went up and tried to write it, the girls writing 'tenis' and the boy writing 'tens' I give them the word, they correct it. Fine. We do basket, the girls get it right, the boy almost gets it. Etc. We go through this twice, so all of them have now seen, heard, and written these words.
I put the picture cards up at the top of the whiteboard with magnets and just leave them there, and we start doing the normal workbook stuff.
Ten minutes later we're in the phonics section. The CD says, "Number six. BASKET. BASKET. BASKET."
The boy has this huge "a-ha!" moment and says, in Japanese, the equivalent of "OMFG! I LEARNED THIS!" and starts busily scribbling in his workbook. I'm really proud of him.
"Number seven. CANDLE. CANDLE. CANDLE."
Then he looks up at me and I can't remember exactly what he said, but he was SO EXCITED that he had heard the word earlier, and was all like "HEY THAT PICTURE IS UP THERE ON THE BOARD," that while gesturing wildly towards the board, he accidentally threw his pen, which went flying across the room and hit the whiteboard with a loud thump.
He ran over to get his pen and then also tried to reach up for the cards (which of course I had placed well out of kids' reach) and kept jumping up and down while saying, in Japanese, "TEACHER, I CAN'T SPELL, FLIP THE CARD AROUND FOR ME."
I'm not supposed to laugh at my students, but I just lost it. Some combination of how excited he was at realizing that OMG THOSE PICTURES ARE OF WORDS! and the pen flying and so on...
So I get him to sit down and continue and he yells, "NUMBAA EIGHTO, PARROT, PARROT, PARROT."
Recounting this later I'm still laughing, but I think it's a "you had to be there" sort of thing.
Oh, also, I taught my kids the word "cute" so the one girl who calls everything kawaii would have something to say in English. We'll have to see if it sticks with them or not. I ended up giving them some of my UFO catcher thingies, the fuzzy Stitches, and then I gave fuzzy Mickey Mouses to my 7pm class.
Another thing I did today was finally make a curtain for the back corner of my room where I've just been throwing random stuff, and where I often change clothes... went to Daiso, got a 50-70cm curtain rod for 100 yen and a 85cm by 140cm piece of cloth for 200 yen, and 8 curtain hooks for another 100 yen, and voila, instant curtain, for the equivalent of around $4.
I forgot to eat dinner all evening and was starving after work. I've been going to Kawaguchi station most nights to hang out at the arcade and play Pop'n and UFO catchers. Tonight was no exception, but before the arcade I also went to the place I think of as Cheerful Katsudon and had some yummy katsudon. Yay. Came home, watched megaspo and Guren Onna, which is sadly coming to a conclusion fairly soon. And I really should go to sleep... Saturdays are the early days. :(
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This really made me smile. :D