I happened to be in Fukuoka again today so popped along to the Fukuoka teachers group, ACET. I’m sure this must be a particularly talented group of teachers, but if other teachers groups in other parts of the country do similar things in their meetings, there must be so many great new teaching ideas still out there!

Today’s theme was songs. Every member had to bring one along and present it to the class. Two people had decided to do the Genki English “Under the Sea” song which was quite funny as they didn’t know I’d be there! It was very interesting to see how they change the song and spread it out to cover one whole lesson. Usually I pre-teach the vocab then get everyone to do the song. But here they introduced the vocab, then had the kids listen to the song and put the words in order. Then when everything was finalised everyone sung it together. The new actions they had were amazing, I have to find a way to get them on the site!

Some of the other songs were sort of run-of-the-mill-made-for-teaching-but-not-sounding-too-genki ( including one that had “I’m fine thank you, and you?” as the set answer to “How are you?”.). But some other highlights were:

The Wiggles & Hi-5. If you don’t know these two, do a quick google search, they are huge in Australia and have great music production. I’ve always found their songs to be great but to have too much English to do in lessons. But here the teachers took a different approach. Instead of teaching the English, they simply taught the dance moves ( you can get them from their videos). Then they do the song at the beginning of each lesson for several weeks. Eventually the kids naturally pick up on the English. Very nice, and if you have weekly lessons, I’d say give it a shot. “Hoop dee doo” was the CD they were using.

Skipping songs. Again concentrate on the skipping side of things, then as the weeks go on the kids pick up the English. Works very well, especially for someone like me who has never skipped before!

World Cup Janken. This was a great game. Print out lots of mini cards with the names of countries who are in the World Cup. On the back of each card, put either a rock, paper or scissors symbol. One kid chooses a card by saying something like “I like England” or “I think Croatia will win”. The other kid does the same. Then they do the Janken chant and at the end, instead of choosing the rock, paper or scissors themselves, they turn the card over to see who wins!

Magic Water Bottles. This was a fantastic idea that had everyone gaping in amazement! You get three or four kids to the front and give them a 2 liter bottle of water. You then do some exercises like, “Left, shake, shake!”, “Up, shake, shake!”, “Down, shake shake”. And magically the bottles all turn into mega bright colours! Everyone is shocked and it’s a great way to introduce the colours, plus ask questions like “Well, how do we make purple?”. The trick is that you put a touch of paint in the cap of each bottle. As the kids shake it, the paint mixes with the water and hey presto!

Finally at the end I did the “Where’s the ….?” hip hop song with the new worksheet. That worked really, really well. So well in fact I think I’ll do worksheets for the other themes as well.

So thank you all very much for making me feel so welcome again, and keep up the good work, you guys are fantastic! And if any of you teach near Fukuoka, I’d definitely recommend popping along to one of the ACET meetings, the next is on July the 9th.