富沢小学校 Tomilishブログ

Now summer vacation has finished it's time for 6th graders to level up their English. This year instead of doing 35 hours of English, we will do 50 hours. This means that we will do some topics that are not in the current Hi,friends! textbook. One of these new topics is `My Summer Vacation`. The 6th grade students had their first class on this topic this week.

First, we introduced some new key words. The students have had 3 key words for the past year: eye contact, smile and clear voice. Since 6th grade students can do these things very well we decided to increase the difficulty. In this class we introduced two new key words. Can you guess what they are?
They are `gesture` and `reaction`. This year the students will be working hard to remember all five key words.

We started the class with Teachers Talk. All the teachers told us about their vacations. Ms. Keiko went to Fukushima and she saw Mt. Bandai. Ms. Emily went to Tokushima and she ate Tokushima ramen. The homeroom teachers all ate a lot of kakigori. After the talk the students had to guess what the teachers had talked about. Everyone realised they were talking about their summer vacations and using different words to talk about the past.

Next, Ms. Emily told us about her summer vacations as an elementary school student in Scotland.
She enjoyed playing in old houses. She enjoyed going to the beach, too. It was sunny until very late at night so she could play outside until 10pm.

After, that Ms. Emily wanted to know about how Japanese elementary students spent their summer vacation. In this unit we will learn how to talk about our summer vacations so we can tell her about them.

Ms. Emily and Ms. Keiko created a new chant using the karaoke version of the chant from Hi,friends!2 Lesson 5 `Let's go to Italy.`
What did you do?
I went to the beach.
I ate ice cream.
I saw jellyfish.
It was beautiful.
Thank you.

We will focus on a different sentence each class. In this class we practiced "I ate ice cream." First we practiced a little with flashcards. Next, the students go into pairs and asked each other about their summer vacation. "What did you do?"
"I ate Tokushima ramen."
After practicing in pairs they walked around the class and asked their classmates.

"What did you do?"
"I ate soba."
"Nice!"

Good smile!

Nice reaction!

Good job!

After the students had finished we asked them if they had discovered anything surprising. Some of their friends had eaten some unusual things. It was very interesting!

Great work today everyone!

This week 5th and 6th grade Tomilish Time started again after a long break for the summer vacation.

5th grade students studied Hi,friends!1 Lesson 3 `How many?` in July so they reviewed that again.
First they did the chant.
Mr. Suda is very enthusiastic! He loves chants!

Next, everyone thought about how they use their fingers to count. Ms. Emily told us that she counts in a different way.
Everyone tried to count like her but it was very difficult!

Next, we did the listening activity on page 10 of the textbook.
After matching the counting to the country the students tried to count using their fingers like the people from different countries. Spain and China were the most difficult!

6th grade students also reviewed numbers.
They chanted the numbers 1-20 as the teachers wrote on the blackboard.

Next, they played the `Don't say 20` game. The students got into groups and could say 1, 2 or 3 numbers. The person who had to say `20` lost the game.
It was a very fun way to review.

Lastly, the homeroom teachers introduced telling the time. They showed a clock and asked "What time is it?". The students answered "It's one."
As it was the first time we only practiced saying the hours, not the minutes.
"It's seven!"
You can't see the clock we used in this picture but he got the answer right!

Good work everyone!

Long time no see! （お久しぶりです！）
This week English classes started again for the first time since summer vacation. 5th grade students are studying Hi,friends!1 Lesson 7 `What's this?`.

It has been a while since everyone used English so we started the classes with some easy and fun activities. We played the greeting game using character cards. One side has a character (Doraemon, Mickey, Sazae, etc.) and the other card has a feeling (happy, tired, cold, etc.). The students swap cards after greeting each other.

"Hello! What's your name?"
"My name is Pikachu!"

"How are you?"
"I'm thirsty!"

"Here you are!"
"Thank you! See you!"

After doing the greeting game the teachers picked some good students to give a demonstration in front of the class. Everyone had to watch and think about what was good about the demonstration.
"Hello! Hello!"

"What was good?"
"They made eye contact and greeted each other."
"Good job!"

Next, it was time for the main activity. We did a quiz. Ms. Emily had made a powerpoint with many pictures. There were close-up photos and pictures with mosaic. She asked the question "What's this?". Everyone could here the question many times and get used to it.
"What's this?"

If it was difficult the students could ask "Hint, please!".
"I know! I know!"

"三角定規？”
The students could answer in Japanese. Ms. Emily would teach the English and everyone repeated it. "It's a triangle."

After that, we listen to the new chant.
Everyone listen a few times and then tried to follow along. Some students started to do the gestures, too.

Lastly, the students filled out their feedback cards. Recently students have been writing their feedback cards for the first and last lessons of the unit.
Students wrote about what they realised during the class. "バット and コウモリ are the same word in English, `Bat`!"

Good job everyone! It was a fun class!