During the kids’ shows one of the tricks I use to get the kids more hyped up is to tell them that the schools I went to the week before were so much better. It gives them a huge boost and really puts into practise the “Losing just means Try Again!” rule, I just say “You lost” and they all shout back “Try again!!”. Then of course people always ask me, “So which places in Japan are the best?”. I’ve now been to so many schools that it is really easy to tell the good schools from the bad, and until now the best schools have been are two in Nagasaki and one in Niigata!

One of those really good schools had their teacher transferred to today’s school so I got invited along. Actually it wasn’t so much for the kids, but for the teachers. Today’s school has the enviable situation of having 3 ALTs with each class having one lesson a week – cool! But… there seemed to be a big gap of expectations between the ALTs and the teachers, with the teachers being under the impression that ALTs are trained as professional elementary school teachers and hence not needing any help, and the ALTs who were desperate in need of some guidance! But after lots of chats the Japanese teachers did figure out the real situation with ALTs i.e. there is no training! And once they figured out that everyone was in the same boat they seemed really keen to get things into gear, set up a great curriculum and get the kids great at English. Cool! And the kids were already really good, so hopefully this year they should be fantastic! It was also cool to point out that if they give an ALT only 5th and 6th graders it isn’t really that much fun! So they are now thinking of giving the ALT some lower grades as well – which should be cool.

I was also asked to do a demonstration class. I was supposed to give a “model” GE class but as it was 6th grade that wasn’t really possible ( the chance of success with grades 1-5 is pretty much 100%, with 6th graders it’s about 40%!). I did prepare a few things, ( like the lines quiz, Spiderman game etc.) but mainly just ended up talking to the kids.

One thing I did was to use the list on the discussion board of English words that the kids can understand. I first asked them “how many English words do you know?” ( in Japanese of course) and they all said “none” ( even though they have English every week!). But this is the type of thinking the Japanese teachers instill in them ( at least until they see a GE teachers presentation!). So me and the ALT just spoke a long, long list of words and the kids had to give the Japanese. So they seemed very impressed, and surprised, that they could understand so many words!

So that coupled with the two rules of Genki English ( “dekiru, dekiru, dekiru” and “losing just means try again”) and they all had that look in their eye that said “hmmm, maybe I can do this!”. Which I thought was quite cool!

Then to finish the lesson we did Mingle ( eventhough they were 6th graders they were warmed up and into it!), Lines Quiz ( where the ALT had the great idea of saying “What am I doing?” whilst miming and getting the kids to answer in the correct grammar form. They knew “eat” but of course got failed for that. So one kid came up with “I’m eating”, then “You’re eating” got marked correct and the other kids soon picked up on how to answer the question. A great way to teach grammar in a fun way!!)

So overall a great day and I’m sure this school will be one to watch with some very good ALTs and now a teachers room full of genki teachers!