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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
To be honest over the last few months I’ve seen CD8 as a bit of a mismatch of themes to fill holes in the curriculum or to bring about themes that haven’t worked out until now. But today I played the songs for the teachers and they loved it. Out of all the songs we’ve done this week, every song on CD8 they enjoyed more than all the others. Wow.
Otherwise we finished off the three day workshop with some hip hop stuff, phonics and curriculum development (including dissecting other prefectures curricula, and they were quite stunned at how bad they were!).
Then after recapping the projects I finished with this video: “Do flowers fly?”. In India it’s used to show private school teachers how public school fails kids. In Japan I used it to show elementary school teachers why they shouldn’t become like junior high schools. At the end the teachers were crying. Education is important.
Breaking news: CD volume 8 is out early! We were supposed to be getting CD8 from the factory next week, but they’ve actually sent them on their way already so I figured I might as well get it on the site.
There are song samples, picture cards and new mini cards and all sorts on the website for you. It’s very late and I’ve been in workshops all day so if you do spot any errors or broken links then please let me know.
But enjoy all the new things on the site and also your CD Owners Club discount!
Normally day 2 of a 3 day workshop ends on a “will they really be able to do this?” note. But today’s teachers were fine right from the start. It does take a bit of getting used to teaching Genki English, especially the idea that pronunciation and learning something new actually matters, but once you’ve done a couple of lessons, even if it’s just in front of the mirror to yourself, then it becomes a whole lot easier.
It used to be that they could do all of Genki English in a three day workshop, but there’s so much material in the Teachers Pack now, I think it would take a month to get through them all. We also took some videos of games today which I’ll try and get up on the site for you tomorrow, once I figure out how to get HiDef video onto YouTube!
People often ask me if I ever get tired or feel like quitting. Usually, no. This morning, oh yes. Now I know why Japan is so bad at elementary school English….
This week I’ve been invited to do two and half days of training as part of the certificated Japanese elementary school teacher programme. I have a pretty much free rein on my stuff, but this morning for the first time I got to see one of the other sessions. It was appalling.
Not only were the examples riddled with English mistakes and on topics that kids find totally irrelevant, the CDs, from a Japanese publisher, were in-the-horr-i-ble-style-that-makes-you-talk-like-a-ro-bot. Even the basic teacher training points wouldn’t get much more than a “D” on any overseas training course. Boring, irrelevant and just plain wrong. Lovely, just all the things I rail against in my workshops. At one point we even had a grammatical analysis of “Liar, Liar pants on fire”…. It’s a shame because the lecturer is such a nice lady…
Luckily I had underestimated the teachers, as in my workshop they were totally on board with my, somewhat toned down from usual, comments about how to, in my view, correctly choose what and how to teach. Rather than just talk about what makes a good curriculum, lesson or material set I used some Genki German and Genki Korean to show how it should be done and how quickly it can be done. It was really nice for me to actually teach a language to adults for a change. I think I should do that full time, I could earn a fortune.
Anyway the teachers were cool and as bright as buttons, asking all the same questions as yesterday but also requesting ways of praising kids. “I hear there’s such a thing as praising kids too much” one asked, to which my reply was “You can never praise too much. False praise is counter productive, but when someone has done something well they have a right to know”. Yesterday I was listening to Zig Ziglar’s podcast and he was talking about one of the famous music teaching systems. He said the first thing they teach is how to bow, because if you bow people always applaud. And applause is the greatest of human motivators. Needless to say I gave the teachers lots of applause today as they were great.
Then it was out for sushi and a friend showed me what she was doing with the Genki English animal picture cards. For her baby sign class she’d printed out the cards, laminated them, cut them out and stuck them on sticks so they can bob around when the kids do the sounds they make! They were really good. She was saying how much the parents and kids love the old animals cards….. just as I was thinking of changing them for the new ones!
What do you think?
Today was the first board of education workshop of the year organised by one of the Ministry of Education’s test schools. They also opened it up to other teachers - including junior high teachers - so we had quite a nice turn out.
Content wise it was the usual confidence building & questions: What if I can’t speak English, how can I teach it? What to teach? How about 5th and 6th graders? Why teach English? What about katakana? etc. all easy stuff. I also tried out the new !, you, he, she, we are hungry song which worked a treat after “How are you?“.
One guy was arguing with me saying that it’s OK to teach pronunciation that’s wrong, which was a little tricky to counter, but other than that everything was cool. At the end the junior high school teachers were asking all sorts of questions, which was really nice to hear, I think they got just as much out of it as the elementary teachers. And apparently I got full marks on the evaluation sheets. Naoyama sensei is coming up from Kyoto to do their next lecture, I wonder how that will work out.
I also got asked twice about the GE artwork and why some of it looks “funny”. “The kids point at them and make comments” said one of the teachers. Well, that’s the reason why they are like they are! I purposely use stuff that gets a reaction from the kids. Unfortunately it’s the teachers who decide to use GE or not, hence why some of the newer cards are more “professional” because teachers like them better, but it’s the older funny looking ones that gets the kids talking!
Now it’s onto the first of 5 (yes 5!) trains to get to the airport to fly down to Okinawa for tomorrow. I’ll be shattered after 9 hours of travelling. Well, at least I didn’t have to catch two aeroplanes like was originally planned!
After not taking any photos in India last month and regretting it, I went out and bought myself a Casio EX-S10
This place is great with the oldest shrine in Japan, Shishiiwa (”Lion Rock”) and　”Oni ni Jyo” - Castle of the Demons - which was apparently where pirates used to live so they gave it the demon name to keep people away! Dinner with the teachers was also really nice, tempura, sashimi & Japanese beef and then a really nice chat with the local ALT.
Oh, one other thing, my hotel for today has a Japanese techno toilet. People ask me about these all the time, so here’s a video for you!
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