Today was a great school. And it started off with a great set of teachers. The gig today was a show in the afternoon and then a teaching workshop afterwards. However the teacher who I’d been in touch with also asked me to do a demo lesson for just her class in the fourth period. Fair enough, for such a genki teacher I has happy to oblige! She asked if I had anything on Halloween, and as it happens I have the perfect lesson….

So we started off going through the halloween song words. It’s been a while since I’ve done this theme and it was my first time for this particular set of fifth graders, so I kept it a bit slow at first. But they were well into things ( of course after doing a bit of a warm up). So next I asked them to pick of gestures for each of the words ( always best to ask the kids!), and they got into that. So a couple of times through the song. They were a little quiet at first, so, of course, I told them that the school last week was so much better, and bang… they suddenly became so much louder and genkier the second time through!
Then it was time for the game, which I decided ( again ) to use the Harry Potter Game – basically because it is so good! It started off small with the Voldemorts just saying “Bat”, “Vampire” or whatever, and the Harrys using the word to get free. Then the next round the Harrys had to say “I’m a bat” to get free, then the next round was the Voldemorts saying “You’re a …” and of course the Harrys crying out “help!”. So by the end of it it was total chaos with kids running everywhere, and more importantly speaking a whole load of English.

Cool.

Then the show in the afternoon, which ran a little out of time as I had to spend 20 minutes re-wiring the sound system along with one of the university lecturers who came to watch. And after the last couple of weeks, I really cut back on the content, only doing Rock, Paper, Scissors, Left & Right, and What’s your name?, which gave plenty of time for all the motivation stuff and left the kids on a very genki high at the end of things.

Then a quick dash to set up the teachers workshop, first of all assuring them that what I’d just done in the show isn’t what they’re expected to do everyday! And then a standard 1 hour beginners workshop which they really got into, and gave some great feedback to later. Excellent. Then afterwards a really long chat with everyone who came to watch including a very nice lady from the Board of Education who wants to invite me back to do a workshop for the whole city next year. Great. It was another one of those days where I feel it’d be great to be an ALT again!

So I came back to the hotel, shattered, and finished off reading “Rainbow Six” on my phone, a great book, but a silly ending.