富沢小学校 Tomilishブログ

5th grade students have just had their second class on the topic `Who is your hero?`. In this topic they are studying how to introduce someone who they admire while using the phrase `He/She is good at ~`.

After our usual greetings the teachers demonstrated the greeting game. They each pretended to be a famous person and used the phrase `I am good at ~.`, that the students had studied in the last class, to give hints. The other person had to guess who they were.
"Guess who?"
"Hint, please!"
"I am good at skating. I got 2 gold medals at the PyeongChang Olympics."
"Are you Takagi Nana?"
"Yes, I am!"

After watching the demonstration it was time for everyone else to try.
"I'm good at skating. I got gold, silver and bronze medals at the PyeongChang Olympics."
"Are you Takagi Miho?"
"Yes, I am!"

The students pretended to be many different famous people and characters.
"I am good at climbing. I am thick eyebrows."
"Are you Imoto-san?"
"Yes, I am!"

"I am good at table tennis. I am from Sendai."
"Are you Fukuhara Ai?"
"Yes, I am!"

After the greeting game Ms. Emily introduced her hero.
"This is my hero. She is Ester Ledecka. She is good at snowboarding. She got a gold medal. She can ski, too. She doesn't have skis. Her friend gave her skis at the olympics. She got a gold medal in skiing too!"

After this the teachers modelled asking each other `Are you good at~?` questions. We practiced the questions with the students and they asked each other questions in pairs. The students found it hard to say "Yes, I am." to the questions so we decided to do an another activity where they had to pretend to be someone else.
The students had to pretended to be one of the characters and their partner had to ask questions in order to guess who they were.

"Are you good at cooking?"
"Yes, I am."
"Are you good at dancing?"
"No, I'm not."
"Are you Nemo?"
"Yes, I am!"

The students found some of the answers very funny.
"It says Anpanman is good at swimming even though water makes him weak!!"
Everyone decided it would be interesting for the students to create their own version in the future.

Good job everyone!

In this week's Upper Grades Tomilish Time both 5th and 6th grade students have done activities using the digital textbooks.

5th grade students have been studying the topic `Who is your hero?`. We used the digital We can!1 textbook to listen to people introducing what they and other people can do.
Christina can cook but she can't sing well.

In the first activity the students had to circle or put a triangle for the activities the people could and couldn't do.

In the second activity the students listened to someone explain about other people and took notes on what he said.

6th grade students have been creating Momotaro skits. In this Tomilish Time we used the Hi,friends!2 textbook.
First students watched some other people perform a Momotaro skit.

After watching the skit, they listened to the chant for that Lesson.


Lastly, they did some planning for their original skits in their groups.
Nice job everyone!

2nd grade students recently had their ninth English class of the year. The topic was `The Big Turnip`. It was the first time for the students to study about this story.

We started class by doing the silent greeting game. It has been over a month since the students have had English class so it was a very good way to get everyone back into English class. We all had to be careful to smile and make eye contact.
Great eye contact!

After the silent greeting it was time for the greeting game. This year during English class 2nd Grade students have been studying the phase "Do you like ~?" so the students used that in the greeting game.
After the teachers demonstration, one of the students and Ms. Emily demonstrated together.
"Do you like yellow?"
"Yes, I do."

After the demonstrations, it was time for everyone else to try.
"Let's start!"
"Hello!"

After the greeting game the teachers asked the students to nominate their classmates who had done a good job. Everyone watched and thought about what was good.
Great eye contact!

After the greeting activities, the teachers talked to each other.
"Do you know `The Big Turnip`?"
"No, I don't."
"I'll tell you!"

Ms. Emily used the wooden blocks to tell the story. The students recognised it as `大きなかぶ`.
"1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2! Pull! They pulled the turnip!"

The students listened carefully.
It was the students first time to see the story using the wooden blocks.

Once the mouse arrived to help the turnip came out! Everyone cheered.

After listening to the story once, the teachers asked the students what character names they had heard.
"What characters did you hear?"
"Dog!"
"That's right!"

Sometimes the teachers made a mistake to check the students knew what each character was called.
"Dog, please."
"Here you are!"
"No!! That's `cat`!!!"

Next, everyone listened to the story for a second time and tried to pick out English words or phrases that they had heard.
"What English did you hear?"
"They said `1, 2, 1, 2` when they pulled the turnip."

For the third time listening to the story, everyone said the English phrases together. Some students acted as the characters too.
"Oh! A delicious turnip!"

"Hello! My name is Grandpa!"

"1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2"

It was fun to act out the story while Ms. Emily read it to us. In the next class everyone will act out the story in groups.

We finished class by reading a book called `The Big Pumpkin`.
The story is very similar to `The Big Turnip` but it is set at Halloween. The students enjoyed comparing the two stories.

Everyone is looking forward to acting out the story together next time!

3rd grade students had their third class the topic is `Who are you?`. In the first two classes we read the picture book `In the Autumn Forest`. In this class we looked at the story in more detail in order to start preparing to do skits.

As always, we started class with a greeting game. Just as last class, we used the phrase `What is your favorite ~?` that we have been practicing in Tomilish Time.
"What is your favorite sushineta?"
"It's maguro."

After that we sang the `Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes` song, did the `Please Game` and then we refreshed our memories together about the story.
"What animals do you remember?"

Then, we listened to the story again.
We checked that we remembered correctly.

We also matched the animals to the body parts.
"Oh! We could see the rabbit's ears!"

We checked the answers together as a class.
"What part of the snake did you see?"
"Long body!"

Students also wrote down some English words that they heard. This will help them in future classes when they make skits.
"Turtle. Splash!"

The last activity was to try to say the words at the same time as the digital book. Then everyone thought about the skits they would make and what animal they wanted to be.

In the next few classes we will make skits. I wonder what animals will appear in the skits!

3rd grade students had their second class the topic is `Who are you?`. In the first class we listening to the first half of the `In the Autumn Forest` picture book. Everyone was looking forward to the second half.

First, we started with a greeting game. We used the phrase `What is your favorite ~?` that we have been practicing in Tomilish Time. After the greeting game the teachers got some students to give a good demonstration.
`In the Autumn Forest` does not have a chant so we have been using the 4th grade chant (you can see it on the T.V.) as a signal for the end of the greeting game.

Body parts appear often in the story so next we sang the `Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes` song and played the `Please Game`.
Mr. Shuhei was the first person to give instructions.
"Touch your head, please."
"Touch your back, please."
"Touch your nose!" "He didn't say please! Don't move!!"

Next, it was the students turn.
"Who wants to give instructions?"
"Me! Me!"

"Touch your head, please!"
"Touch your back!!"

After the game the students reviewed the animals that had appeared in the story so far.
"We listened to the story up to the fox. Let's see what animal appears next!"

On the last page of the story there is a big picture with many little animals. "Let's try to find all the animals!"
Everyone got close to the T.V. in order to search for the animals.

Here are just some of the animals that the students found.
They found even more animals in the picture after this.

Next, the teachers asked the students if they had noticed anything about the animals in the story.
One student noticed that all the animals have the letter `a` before them in the story. "Are you a cat?"

Some other students noticed that the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac appeared in the story.
All the students noticed many things about the story.
Nice job everyone!

6th grade students have just had their first class on a new topic. This will be their last topic for the school year. They have been studying Hi,friends!2 Lesson 7 `We are good friends`. As the students have to make original skits in this topic we decided to do it last so that the students could use as much of the English that they have learned as possible.

At first the teachers split the students into 3 groups per class of around 10 students. Then they explained the rules of making a skit.
Every student has to have a speaking part. There are no narrators. They can add original characters and storylines. The skits have to have a happy ending. They have to use gestures and actions to make difficult English easy for everyone to understand.

After everyone understood what they had to do, it was time for all the groups to begin planning. Our goal for the first class was for all students to decide their characters and a rough storyline for their group.
"You can be Peach Boy."

The teachers helped everyone to think of ideas.
"You are very good at janken. Why doesn't Momotaro janken the demons instead of fighting them?"

Everyone tried hard to think of interesting and funny skits.
"Nice idea!"

"..and then Doraemon arrives and fights the demons!"
"That's a funny idea!"

After the groups had a rough idea of their storyline they tried to work out the movements of the characters and their lines (セリフ).
Can you tell what they are doing?

Do you know what characters they are?

Everyone is looking forward to seeing the finished results!

In Tomilish Time the students mixed with students from other grades to ask each other "What is your favorite kyushoku?". 1st and 2nd grade, 3rd and 4th grade, and 5th and 6th grade students mixed together.

We started with greetings.
"Good morning, everyone!"

Then, the two homeroom teachers did a demonstration.
"Hello!"

After the teachers demonstration, we had a teacher-student demonstration.
"What's your favorite kyushoku?"

For the last demonstration two students showed everyone what to do.
"It's curry and rice."
"Delicious!"

After the demonstrations it was time for everyone to talk togeether.
After asking about school lunch, 5th and 6th grade students tried to ask each other many extra questions.
"When is your birthday?"

2nd grade students tried very hard to lead the 1st grade students.
"I like wakama salad."

3rd and 4th grade students tried to find someone with the same favorite kyushoku.
"Me, too!"

The teachers stopped everyone half-way through the activity and asked some students to give a good demonstration.
They have good eye contact!

They use great gestures!

Everyone tried to think about the good points of the demonstrations and tried again to talk with many people.
Clear voices!

Nice gestures!

If the students couldn't think of what to say in English there were many teachers to help them.

Nice smile!

Great gestures! Both of the teachers are hungry!

Good job everyone!

This year 5th and 6th grade students have been studying some topics that are not in the Hi,friends! textbooks. Recently 5th grade students had their first class on a new topic. This will be their last topic for the school year. They have been studying the topic `Who is your hero?`.

After greetings we started class with a `Who am I?` quiz. Everyone pretended to be a famous person or character and the other people had to guess who they were.
"Guess who?"
"Hint, please!"

"I can skate. I like Pooh."
"Are you Hanyu Yuzuru?"
"Yes, I am!"

"I like blue. I am a robot."
"Are you Doraemon?"
"Yes, I am!"

"Guess who?"
Nice gestures!

"Hint, please!"
Great eye contact!

5th grade students have been working hard at English so they are able to give many different hints.
"We can make interesting quizzes!"

"We can give many hints!"
Nice smiles!

After the game, some students who had interesting quizzes gave the quiz to the whole class.
"Guess who?!"

After introducing the goal for this topic (to be able to introduce someone they admire) we listened to the chant for the topic.
It was the first time for everyone to hear the chant so we just listened to it a few times. Everyone tried to pick out some words that they recognised.

After the chant the teachers gave a demonstration on how to introduce their hero. We like to show the students the final goal conversation for the topic in the first class of a topic. This helps the students to know what they will learn.

After the demonstration the teachers asked each other questions using a new phrases `Are you good at ~?` and `I am good at ~`. The students listened and tried to think about the meaning of the conversation. They realised the difference between `good at` and `can`.

Next, everyone practiced the phrases.
"Are you good at playing volleyball?"
"Are you good at cooking?"

Finally the students practiced asking and answering questions in pairs.
"Are you good at playing soccer?"
"Yes, I am."

Good job everyone!

Both 5th and 6th grade students are getting ready to start new topics in their English classes. This will be their last topic for this school year. In Upper Grades Tomilish Time this week both grades did some easy introduction activities to their new topic.

5th grade students are about to start the unit `Who is your hero?`. In this class they had to think about someone they admired and write about their good points (in Japanese).
They will use this worksheet in future classes to help them to make an English speech about their hero.

6th grade students are about to start Hi, friends!2 Lesson 7 `We are good friends`. The students did the activity on pages 26 and 27 of the textbook where they identified many different fairy tales and traditional stories in the pictures.
"What stories can you see?"

"Hmmm...oh! I found one!"

Then the students listened to the English hints and identified the stories.
"What's that? Wow! A big peach! A peach is coming!"
"I know! I know! It's Momotaro!"

"That's right! Good job!"

Good work everyone!

6th grade students had their last class on the topic Hi,friends!2 Lesson 6 `What time do you get up?`. In this class all the 6th grade students gathered together to interview each other. It's a fun way to end the topic.

After greetings we had teacher talk. Ms. Emily and Ms. Emiko were talking to each other.
"Today is Valentine's day. I made chocolate."
"Me, too!"
"Let's give the chocolate together."
The male teachers were waited excitedly for the chocolate. They asked each other about their favorite chocolate. "What's your favorite chocolate?"
"Guess what?"
"Strawberry chocolate?"
"No. It's very very sweet."
"White chocolate?"
"Yes! That's right!"

When Ms. Emily and Ms. Emiko gave their chocolate they both gave it to Mr. Takeyuki. Mr. Nakamura didn't get any chocolate. He was sad.
Mr. Takeyuki told him that he could buy chocolate at the supermarket.
Everyone laughed. It was a funny Teacher Talk.

Next, the students did a greeting game asking each other about their favorite chocolate.
"What's your favorite chocolate?"

"Guess what?"
"Pocky?"
"That's right!"

After the greeting game the students did the Hi, friends! chant.
"At 7. At 7. I get up at 7."
Nice gestures!

After practicing the questions as a class it was time for everyone to interview students from other classes.
"What time do you eat dinner?"

"I eat breakfast at 7.30."
"Oh! I see."

Halfway through the activity the teachers got some students to give a good demonstration.
"I eat dinner at 9."
"Wow! So late!"
Good reactions! Well done!

The students tried to think about the demonstration as they continued with the second half of the activity.
Nice eye contact!

Good job 6th grade students!