I haven’t had a day off for a while, plus my net connection was down for a couple of days so I had time to visit Pompei & Vesuvius this week. Both are really good. You can walk right up to the volcano cone in Vesuvius and Pompei is just huge. Mind you I…

Although it might seem like I was a quite harsh on the “Eigo Notebook” the other day (and I’ve been told that the latest version is quite different from the one they published on Friday), there are actually some really good ideas in there. One of them is to combine Days of the Week with…

If you’re just starting a new term, new class or even school year, here are a couple of articles I wrote last year that may help with some ideas: First lesson of the year, if you speak the lingo First Lesson when you don’t speak the lingo First Lesson in Junior High School If you…

The Ministry of Education (MEXT) only has information in Japanese about their new curriculum and “English notebook”. So I figured I’d better translate it into English for ALTs who can’t read Japanese: MEXT “English Notebook” curriculum in English Overall it’s not as bad as many of us feared and at first glance it looks quite…

文部科学省の『英語ノート』に合わせた小学校英語活動のページをご覧ください。 I’ve just done a Japanese page with some extra ideas and comments for the new 5th & 6th grade curriculum. I’ll get to work on the English one this week!

Just a quick word to let you know that the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) has just released on their website preliminary details of the new 5th & 6th grade compulsory English curriculum. http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/gaikokugo/index.htm The site is in Japanese but also includes worksheets, flashcards etc. to go with the new “textbook” (which they are calling…