Live from Japan!

I am always amazed at how high I can get after teaching a lesson. When a lesson goes well, and the students respond positively, my energy increases. I get so excited, I feel as if I am on top of the world. (Of course the opposite is true, as well, when a lesson flops, it makes me feel like a total failure.)

The lesson I taught last week was one of those lessons. All the classes I taught it to, all 17 of them, responded really well. They had fun and I almost tricked them into learning and enjoying English. It wasn’t until the lesson was over that they realized that they were, in fact, in English class and it is supposed to be boring!

The lesson I was teaching was to reinforce the concepts and vocabulary we had learned in our previous lesson. The students had been learning about how to give directions. I wanted to give them an opportunity to use the new knowledge in a fun, and creative way.

Since Aaron and I have the same textbooks at our schools, we often can teach the same lessons. Aaron and I brainstormed together and came up with a Relay Race of sorts. Students were given a map (hand drawn by me – go figure that the cartographer didn’t make the map) and a game sheet. First, they had to read clues about the location of a particular place on the map. For example, the place is on Park Place, it is south of the Circle K.

Once they read the clue, with their team, they would look at the map and find the correct location. All the place names from the map (Park, Bicycle Shop, Shoe Store, Department Store, Fire Station, etc) were on notecards along the front chalkboard. On the back of each location was a word written in English.

Students solved six different clues and found the locations on the chalkboard. Each time they solved the clue they would add one word to their game sheet. Once they had solved all six clues, the words could be put together to make a sentence. The first team to yell out their correct sentence, won the game!

The students loved this lesson and there were several things that made it particularly successful. First, they were working together as a team of four people. In teams, they are able to balance each other out. Some students were stronger than others and they were able to learn from each other. Second, they were able to move around the room. Students here spend a vast majority of their day sitting in their desk. Giving them the option to move really adds to their enthusiasm. Third, the students were easily able to find and correct their own mistakes. When students would solve a clue incorrectly, their sentence would make no sense. It was obvious to them that a mistake had been made, without having to be told by a teacher that they were wrong. Once they realized it, they were able to get the clue again and correct their answer, and most times the incorrect sentence was quite funny. Fourth, the students had a chance to laugh together. Laughter always makes a lesson more successful because it makes the students more relaxed and less self-conscious about the English that they are supposed to be using.

Once the students had the correct sentence, they had to read it loudly to win. The sentence I had crafted for this particular relay race was:

English is always my favorite class!

Needless to say, the students thought it was HYSTERICAL when others around them started yelling out that Engilsh was their favorite class.

One student had been reading manga (Japanese comics) while I was giving instructions. I asked him two times to put it away. On the third time, I knelt down beside him and promised him that today English would be more fun than manga. After class he came up to me in the hallway and said, “Danielle-sensei, today English was more fun than manga. But not usually.”

I am glad that I could make English fun for him that day, and I hope I can again in the future.