A tale of Little Red Riding Hood and Momotaro!

Last Friday (10th of December) Sasabe held their annual play done fully in English! I was blown away, by the set, costumes, and the performance in general. It was done beautifully! It's amazing how the set and costumes were made fully by the teachers, they looked wonderful and well done!

Miriam-sensei and all the teachers at Sasabe did such an amazing job! I even got to see a student of mine perform. From recognisable songs tweaked to help students' memorisation to the confidence the students portrayed! They split the students into 2 groups, 1 group performed Momotaro while the other Red Riding Hood! Parents to teachers were proud. By the end of the performances, there were no dry eyes in the hall (me included!) 

        Momotaro

I was able to ask Miriam-sensei a few questions on how they prepared and how long did they practice it for! She said the teachers prepared it back in Spring, with the scripts and songs of choice while the students only started practicing at the beginning of November! With the help of Jim-sensei, students watched recorded videos of the play and they were exposed to the script in both Japanese and English early on! 

"Once the kids have an idea of what the play is we read it through line by line, students follow along and repeat until we get it right. We do this as a whole class, no roles are assigned as yet and once we have assigned roles, some lines are modified or shortened to help specific kids." - Miriam-sensei

Surprisingly, the roles are only decided two weeks before the play. Amazing how the students were able to be in character in such a short amount of time. With lots of encouragement and help from peers and teachers, students were able to stage a loud and big performance! To help with memory, songs are played in the background during lunchtime for easier practice afterward. 

Little Red Riding Hood

Miriam-sensei even shared her proudest moments throughout the whole production, just the students' determination in remembering their line made her extremely proud especially when they went on stage without any hiccups! I can definitely understand how proud she must have felt seeing her students on stage saying all the lines! 

Miriam-sensei told me that she was nervous from the start of practice (back in November!) and was worried if they will ever have time to finish everything. The students are practicing the whole day and exhausted from it. But once they got the hang of it, it was like a breeze just because the students were extremely motivated to stage a perfect play. It was a joy to watch the kids perform and their parents being able to witness the students' excitement as well as motivation. Miriam-sensei said "Overall, it was a great experience although a bit tiring for the kids I believe the students learned a lot and had so much fun in the process"

Was definitely a beautiful performance by the kids and was I happy to tag along to see it! Once again, great job, and congratulations to Miriam-sensei, Jim-sensei, the teachers at Sasabe, and the students!