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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 |
 Pringles
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Cicada
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First visit of the year to Koyo Elementary School. Koyo is unique among the seven elementary schools in that I only have lessons with the third years and above. This is an excellent idea, I think, but of course the other schools would never consider anything similar, firstly because that would mean thinking, and it's easier to do nothing, change nothing, improve nothing, and secondly because they have this good-in-theory-but-flawed-in-reality view that all the classes should be treated equally, even if in doing this everyone suffers. The reality is that the first and second years don't know enough about Japan to be able to do anything related to international understanding, and even if we were to do simple English that fact is that the children are still learning Japanese, so English is basically pointless. Therefore it makes more sense to skip the first and second years, and give more time to the thirds and above (after all, the first and seconds will sooner or later get international understanding lessons this way)- but only Koyo has bothered to think about this.
Anyway, with seven visits to Koyo this term, we decided to look at each continent. I started with a general introduction (how many continents?, which is which?, and so on), and then went on to give the children a quiz on Antarctica. The children tend to complain that they don't know the answers when faced with a quiz, but I always explain that that's the whole point: I want them to use their common sense and what they do know to choose the most likely answer to the question, and in this way learn something; there would be no point in setting a quiz if the children already knew all the answers. The final question was about the flag of Antarctica; there isn't one, and this led neatly into getting the children to design a flag.
I also ate school lunch with the sixth-years. As ever, school lunch was uninspiring: the standard unguessable dishwater-coloured soup-like stuff, some sort of meat concoction, rice, and milk. Oh, and there was half of a tinned peach. I don't mind school lunch every now and again (especially as it's only 190 yen!), and it's good to spend time with the children outside lessons, but I think I might get a little (or completely!) fed with school lunch if I had to eat it every day.
Anyway, the lessons (all three of them!) went well, and I think the children enjoyed themselves. There are a few difficult boys in the third and fourth year class, and a girl in the sixths who just sits there in some sort of daze and does absolutely nothing, but generally I like the children in Koyo a great deal. After the lessons had finished, I spoke to the teacher who looks after international understanding, and he agreed that the lessons had gone well. He suggested giving the names of the continents in English, and that we could have used a globe rather than just a map, which I think are reasonable suggestions. I have no problem whatsoever about introducing simple English in this sort of context.
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Photographs
Another day, another set of photos posted to the internet. These photos are of the plum blossoms in Shukkeien, a Japanese garden in Hiroshima, at the very beginning of spring this year. There are also some general pictures of the garden itself, too.
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Breakfast Show Staple Randomhaiku of the day (from The Genuine Haiku Generator)
forbidden soft hard
crow softens, carnivore falls
madly, lions ebb
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 8:37:35 pm.
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