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 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
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Previous Entries are here
I’m getting a bit fed up of this. I’ve known the teacher at today’s school for quite a while and she’s really nice. Initially the school refused to let her have the travel expenses for me to come, which of course isn’t a good thing. But they came up with the idea of inviting the neighbouring schools and doing everything together. Nice solution! The plan was from 10 AM till 4 PM with of course lunch in between. As this is Okayama, where the teachers have to teach on their own and are hence very motivated, I thought it would be great and we planned to do the basics workshop in the morning, getting all the problems out of the way, the move onto some more funky advanced stuff in the afternoon.
So what happens? This morning I get told there will be 20 teachers from the neighbouring schools in the morning but most of the teachers from this school will now only attend in the afternoon. No, no, that’s no good! The teacher here knows that teachers can’t just jump into an advanced workshop. Without doing all the motivation and “changing your thinking” stuff, all that would do is alienate the teachers and convince them English was not for them. That’s the total opposite of what we are supposed to do!
So basically it meant I had to do the exact same “from the beginning” workshop twice! What a right waste of time ( and my voice!), again they could have just invited me for half a day and let me free the time up for another school!
I started off the morning in a bad mood ( there was no sound system set up either!) but flipped to being genki for the teachers - it wasn’t their fault after all. We did What’s your name? in German, which sort of worked but took far too much time. I think the false reassurance of doing it in English would have been better. Then Can you kick? and all the usual questions came up. One teacher said “My 3rd graders won’t speak”. I’ve never met a 3rd class who don’t speak so I asked what she was teaching. “Months” she said. Then quickly thought about it, “ah, I see, I guess I should be teaching something they find interesting?”. Which was proved later as the 6th graders outside were dancing along when we did the Come on Soccer song!
Then in the afternoon, I got another message saying that instead of 1PM, they’d changed it to start at 1:30. This is just getting ridiculous. The compromise of 1:15 was reached. I hate having to rush. Even if you spell things out clearly and agree it in writing they still change things!
Anyway I started again doing the same “from the beginning workshop”, taking exactly the same questions that every school asks, and the same ones we had this morning. Songs wise there were a few teachers who attended both, so we did the English version of “What’s your name?” to which they were “well yes, English is a lot easier”. Plus the Sports song. The big problem was the air-con, it wasn’t working! So we had over 40 very hot, very tired, very humid and very sweaty teachers! I felt sorry for them so we did the Creepy Crawlies song, which is very slow. The conversation then started turning round to how they can learn themselves, so after the Where is the Mr Monkey? song, which got the comment of, “Ah, so that’s how you make it interesting for the kids!”, we tried the video game and the Genki Korean food game. It really worked and there were lots of “ooh, now that is very good!” they quickly realised the CD computer games as something that would help them. We also did a couple of hip hop songs and the picture books, which they liked as well, but more for themselves rather than the kids! Then we finished off very sweaty and very tired with the war speech.
So again it worked out OK-ish, the teachers got a lot out of it, but it should have been a whole lot better. How on Earth can I get schools to not say at the end of the day “Well, yes, now I think we should have done it how we planned!”.
Wow, what a difference when people pay to attend. Today’s teachers were absolutely fantastic. We had a ton of questions, tons of attention, lots of activities and a fantastic buzz at the end of the day.
Activities wise we did:
* Write up a list of “joys” of your job ( for the bad days), and the problems ( to work on your good days)
* Wie heisst du? ( to see what it’s really like to learn with Genki English songs)
* Korean food game ( to see how the CD games make learning possible, or even preferable at home, how grammar should be experienced, not dissected)
* Soccer + Can you …? ( to see how themes build on each other) + game
* Time 2 + game ( to see why it’s important to practise before the lesson!)
* Where is Mr Monkey? + game
* Where is baby monkey?
* Genki Picture books. ( don’t worry about US vs. UK English, this is the only theme it occurs in!)
* Can you do it?
There were also many of the main points of Genki English:
* Teach what the kids want to say, not what the book wants to teach.
* Figure out the aim of your class, why, how, when and to what level will the kids go?
* Activities concentrate on what the kids don’t know. If you stick to only what they do know and they don’t improve.
* Rule one: Can you do it? Yes, I can!
* Rule two: Losing means try again!
* Rule three: the most important one, and I think you remember it…
Questions wise we had loads for example…
* I’m too shy.
“Shyness is the degree to which you can, or cannot, communicate with other people“. Not shy = can communicate with anybody. Shy = can only communicate with a few. It’s the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in English classes, don’t use it as an excuse. Build the confidence of your students using the ideas we showed in class. Find out what their passion is. Everyone has at least one thing they can talk about non stop. Use lots of claps in class.
* How do we reconcile having to prepare for tests and teaching English?
If you have two masters, you’ll get pulled to the left and to the right, but never move closer to either. Choose one or the other. Or have two classes, one for each.
* How to improve things with only one lesson a week?
Homework that the kids want to do. i.e. reviewing with the songs or learning new language with the computer games ( student packs). You saw how quickly you learnt something completely new.
* Then what is the role of the teacher if the kids can learn on their own?
“Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself” - Chinese proverb. The teacher’s role then is to check what the students are saying, give feedback and confidence and set challenges and activities to improve themselves.
* What to do when the kids are fed up with an activity?
Change it. If they know the English, move up a level. If they don’t, keep the same target language and change the activity. “Stupidity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein
* The parents are always pushing for tests.
Sit them down at least twice a year. Ask them what they want, how and why and what and when. Explain about what and why the tests are as they are. They’ll come to the same conclusions you have. If not, fire them. Parent support is essential and your time will be better spent where it will be more effective. When they sign up, set out in the contract what your goals are for their students, what you promise to do, and what they promise to do ( or not do!) to support their child’s learning. Parental support is essential.
* How do you speak so loud for so long?
Take a voice training or singing course! It’s an investment in your business, because if you lose your voice, you lose your job. I’m only genki when motivating the kids, the new English comes from the computer and in the games I’m just the referee.
* What to do if you’re ill and can’t do a lesson?
This was the only tough question! The best idea I could think of was to make a contract with several other teachers so that in the event of illness you’d cover each other’s lessons. In a worst case scenario you could have your kids join your friends class for the day.
* What do you think of events?
Business wise they are great as they are a chance for students to bring friends who may enroll in your school. Educationally, if you have English based activities it’s a great goal for the students to be work towards. Goals are vital.
* How do we teach different kids of different levels in the same class?
Split them up. If the class is too slow or too fast it’s not fair on anyone.
* What about reading and writing?
Once the kids can speak most of the things they want to say, introduce phonics. Then a graded readers series. Writing I’ll leave to you to decide!
* I have to teach my company’s curricula. How can I fit in Genki English?
Most teachers in this situation use it as a magic spice to liven up what they “have to” teach. Adding in the Genki English songs and games can usually make even the most boring textbook a lot more interesting.
* How to link in with junior high school?
Forget it. You can teach to a level way above JHS level in a very short time. Aim low, get low. Aim high, get high. Look at the homework the senior high school students were doing yesterday, basically the same as we did in an hour with the elementary school kids!
The other main things that came up were to do with motivation, kids quitting and getting them to talk etc. Basically things that having the GE curriculum built around what kids do want to say rather than what the teacher wants to teach, helps solve most of these problems.
The other questions I’ll get round to writing up as blog posts in the future!
We also went through the “Pro Rules: How to be the best teacher in the World” presentation.
Then we all went out for a meal. The girls who had organised this weekend looked shattered, but they’d done an amazing job. And all the teachers were gushing so much about everything today. Wow, I thought it went well, but even more so after dinner. So today was amazing, gave me a big confidence boost to work even harder and it will be great to spread the word out to even more teachers. If you have a blog or are on Mixi, I’d really appreciate the help in letting more people know for next time!
Thank you everyone, I wish all the teachers in Japan were just like you. Your students are very, very lucky people!
Tomorrow I have a full day 9000 yen workshop for private school teachers here, so today they asked me to do a paid for show for their kids. I haven’t done any of these in a long while, but we had hundreds of parents and kids attend today, which is an amazing turn out.
Due to the size of the hall though we had to split it into 3 groups. Usually I’d insist on having everyone together ( it’s easier to do and less work for everyone!) but the teachers today had invited me before so I agreed, and it’s also a chance for me to try out some new ideas. I was planning on doing the new I like animals 2 song ( there’ll be a beta version to download in the CD Owners Forum next month), but the parents chatting at the back made anything new almost impossible.
It’s really important to have balance in a lesson, to have quiet and loud parts, fast and slow, pure fun and slow reflection, but you need everyone’s attention when doing this. Calming kids down is really easy ( have a look at the Online Workshop Video) but one group of parents were just ignoring everything me and the staff said to them about shutting up. And of course as soon as one person is talking, a few others start, then a few others and it’s impossible to do anything slow or reflective as you lose everyone’s attention. Plus the room was too jam packed for any games so it was non-stop mega genkiness for 55 minutes! But actually the kids did really well.
We did…
* Rocket Launch ( the long version )
* Genki Disco Warm Up Song
* Rock, Paper, Scissors
* Under the Sea
* Favourite food + family picture books.
* Come on! Soccer song
* and Thank you.
Which for an hour is pretty fantastic. Plus the kids were playing around on the computer games before hand so quite a few parents bought CDs.
Then after lunch it was the same thing again, but this time what a difference! These were total model parents, the best you could wish for. They were quiet when they should, and loud when they should, jumping around, joining in and laughing with their kids. It was exactly the same content, but with hardly any effort from me as everyone was enjoying themselves so much. They really got into shouting out answers for the picture books and it was as close as you’ll ever get to a perfect model show.
Then 30 minutes later was the last one, but this time for upper elementary school graders. Now I really, really don’t like to do shows for this age of kids and the success rate is pretty low, last time I was here it was just painful for everyone! This time the teachers wanted to do What do you do? and the name card game. So I sort of agreed, but on condition that we could test the kids first, there’s no point doing a game like that with so many kids if they either a) don’t know the English or b) aren’t bothered, as it will just descend into chaos.
So my first test was to see if they were in the mood to laugh or not. So I taught the Genki Disco Warm Up without saying a word. I just pressed a button to get the computer to say the words, then made a face expression as “hmmm, what does that mean?” and the kids did the actions, to which I did a big “Ah, now I see!” face. And they were killing themselves laughing. So test 1 OK!
The next test was to see if they can answer questions quickly. Very often with private English school kids you’ll ask them a question and they’ll just tilt their head and maybe give you an answer 20 minutes later. Obviously no good for the name card game. So we did the Genki English version of Karuta. And they were good, I could rush round the hall asking anyone and everyone spoke up strong and confident without any hesitation. Good, step 2 passed.
Now it was time to make sure they know all the English for the game,. You usually do this using the song, but of course 5th and 6th graders usually don’t like songs! The one exception is when you split them into two groups and get each group to sing louder than the other. The guaranteed always works song for this is Where are you going?, the teacher sings the “I’m going to the beach” line, the first group repeats “beach”, then the second group repeats it. Even the toughest as nails, too cool for school group always go full out to beat the other team. And they were great. They did already know the English, I was just getting them genki. Which nicely led into doing the same trick with the “What do you do?” song, the teacher says the line, the first group repeats, then the next. And they were even better. No gestures of course ( I tried but to no avail!), but big loud voices which is the main thing.
The final incentive of a pack of cards to the top three players in the game got the last of the “not bothered” boys into a “I want that prize!” mode and everyone did really, really well. No cheating, great pronunciation and loads of confidence. Nice.
Not that it was a perfect lesson by any stretch of the imagination, but I was just glad we made it to the end and didn’t have the parents asking for their money back. But then afterwards the kids’ teachers were beaming saying it was the best lesson of the day. So I guess you can’t complain!
So there you go, a very tiring, but very good day. Oh yeah, and for some reason some of the teachers and their students turned up in summer kimonos today, which after being out of the country for so long was a very cool thing to see!
Instead of seeing today’s school as part of the messed up 3 day workshop plan, I simply looked on it as a “from the beginning” workshop for a new school. This is another one of the Ministry Of Education’s pilot schools for this year ( are there any schools that have not been pilot schools?) and all the usual easy to answer questions came up such as curriculum, pronunciation, confidence etc. but there were some strange twists as well.
For example as part of my “English is easy” skit I start off by asking the teachers what they would do if a kid was in a swimming competition and half way through said it was too hard and they couldn’t go on. In most schools the teachers say they would cheer them on, tell them they could do it, to “Ganbare” in Japanese. Then I go on to say how strange it is that when the same kid says the same thing about English, teachers always say “Yes, it is hard isn’t it!”. Usually this gets a laugh and lots of lightbulbs going off as the teachers see that motivating the kids for English is just the same as motivating kids at sports and other subjects. But today only one teacher said he would cheer the swimming student on! The others said they would say nothing, if the kid wants to give up that’s their problem. Wow, I’ve never heard that from elementary school teachers before. Isn’t that what the role of teacher is, to introduce the skills and abilities, but also to instill the confidence and spirit to believe in themselves? Apparently not here.
But anyway, there was also a question that the kids couldn’t remember long conversations. I sort of misunderstood this at the beginning and started talking about how you have to review and add the previous time’s English into the current lessons. But what they were talking about was the school curriculum that has them forcing the kids to remember long set piece conversations for shops and restaurants. That led nicely into how to decide topics not by what teachers want taught, but by what the kids want to talk about! I read through the report of this city last night and they have 38.7% of their 6th graders hating English, and now I can understand why. ( Mind you it’s not too far off the national average!).
Anyway we went through things like the soccer theme where you go from very simple things the kids can use straight away ( e.g. kick, throw, etc.), to building them up, just like lego, to include longer things they can also use straight away ( Can you catch?, Can I play etc.). Then onto the projects.
Then there was also a curious thing at the end during the war speech, one of the teachers wasn’t making eye contact. Afterwards we had a chat and she said “But another school of thought is that instead of teaching our kids to communicate with other kids in other countries, why not just make everyone here into a good Japanese”. To which my reply was, “Well what about all those kids that have parents from different countries or cultures who might not want that?” to which the reply was “That’s who I’m talking about”. Hmmm… the teacher was quite serious and civil about this, but err…. isn’t it better to concentrate on making them good people instead?
Anyway, they are thinking about having me back for a workshop for the whole city next year, so we’ll see what happens. Then an hour’s standing on the bullet train to Kyoto and now I’m about to head out for the prep meeting for tomorrow.
Oh, and last night we were migrating the site to new servers, sorry about any disruption. And my email has also changed to a new system ( hopefully less spam), the address is still the same and I still do reply to every email, it just takes a couple of days sometimes!
Well maybe I was a little harsh on the school yesterday, today they actually tried really well. I expected only a handful to turn up, but we had more than yesterday. Work wise they got to present one more lesson each and although not perfect by any means at least in the feedback sessions they were saying things like “right, I need to read the lesson plan!” and “I should have practised the song more first” which should help them out in the future. We didn’t end on the “we can do it on our own, we don’t need you anymore Richard” stage that usually happens after a three day workshop, but they improved and the war speech at the end ( which was cut the first time I was here due to a guy running round the school grounds with a knife!) got them thinking about bigger targets than they had before.
Now we’re off out for sushi.
Yesterday I was seriously thinking of cutting out the free workshops for public schools and charging for them all. The reason being that I’ve had to spend the last 3 days organising hotels and planes and visits for the upcoming Summer tour. With all the projects underway at the moment it’s just not an efficient use of my time. Ironically in Thailand and now in Hong Kong I have whole teams of people who sort everything out. So really I need an assistant to handle Japan, but this person would obviously need to be paid so I’d be effectively subsidising the free school workshops. Now I don’t mind doing this in countries where they need subsidising, but not in super rich Japan!
I initially started offering the public school workshops for free so the budget wouldn’t be a problem and any school that wanted help could ask for it. Many schools have taken advantage of this and I’ve worked with some wonderful teachers. But there are also schools like today….
This is the 3rd time I’ve visited this school. To be honest I was a little surprised when they asked me back as last year they canceled the morning part of the workshop just as I arrived. “A nice holiday for you!” they said, which would have been nice had I not just cut short a university course I was teaching to come here! But this year they, along with the school next door, invited me for a full 3 day workshop. Great, a quick review in the morning then a day and a half at one school and a day at the other where the teachers can practice teaching and really improve. So I was a little suspicious when on Monday they said “Oh, just fly up Wednesday morning”. “But there aren’t any planes that will get me in for 9 AM”. “That’s OK, we can cut the morning short”. Hmmm, well I agreed ( figuring they just wanted to save a night’s hotel fee) and as they already had had two workshops before, an hour in the morning should be enough to get up to speed. In the end it went well.
So in the afternoon I put them in groups, they chose a theme, read the lesson plan and practised and then presented the lesson to everyone else. In most schools the first time through is really bad, the second time is much, much better and when they come to do the third theme they are usually super confident and can teach anything you can throw at them. Today they were taking ages and ages. I was really worried that we were going to end the day on the down point of only having done one theme. So I double checked the finishing time and instead of the usual 4:30 or 5 it was to to be 3:30 instead! Not good. So I asked about tomorrow, and they had decided to only do it in the afternoon. Why did they need to take 2 days of my time? It’s peak time at the moment for workshops, they could have simply put everything together in one day and I could have gone to another school tomorrow. Hmmm.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. They were taking so long to teach each theme, and lackluster wasn’t the word for the total lack of enthusiasm some of them showed. I’m used to teachers not being confident, which we can work on with time, or being confused, my Japanese instructions aren’t always super clear, but this was to the point of “we don’t want to be here” type mood. After the super gratefulness showed by teachers in Thailand, or the energy showed by the teachers in Okayama the other month I was really quite shocked. So I asked them “what’s going on? Is it a case that you had to fill your training quota and instead of a boring old guy from a university you thought you’d invite me for free?” to which one teacher said … “Well, yeah”.
Full marks for honesty, but oh my goodness what cheeky beggars!!! I have a hard time fitting in all the requests for workshops, but I still took the time to fly up here, and I still strongly believe that good education isn’t just for the people who can afford private teachers but that normal elementary school teachers are so important as they give the chance of a quality education to every child regardless of income, but this type of “we don’t care” attitude is just astounding when they’ve invited me to their school. Now there were some great teachers today who tried like crazy. But there’s no way I’m going to stand there working my best for people who don’t even care about their own jobs or their own students, never mind being respectful to a visitor.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t contact another school in time I’d go somewhere else tomorrow. I asked the head teacher whether it’s worthwhile coming back tomorrow and he said it probably is worthwhile. And the good teachers deserve a second chance so I’ll get genki, smile a lot and do my 100% best again. But if they are like today I think I’ll just film the lessons and put them on YouTube!
So I think the days of doing workshops for free are coming to an end. Things are usually worth what you pay for them, so from next year the workshops will be priced at what they are worth. Teachers who need help will still ask for it, and hopefully those that don’t care will retire early!
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