My Father’s Dragon

Sayuri meets her dragon!

 When I read this fabulous story for the first time, I was an elementary school student.  I fell in love with this lovely front cover picture at first sight, and as soon as I started reading it I was so much into it I had to read it all the way through, again and again for ages.  Over the year though, I forgot about until I saw an advertisement about an exhibition for the original illustrations of this book at PLAY! Museum in Tachikawa.  “I have to go there!”

Tachikawa is a well-planned, beautiful city with the Museum just a 10 minute walk from the railway station.  We arrived a little earlier than the opening time, but the smiley staff welcomed us and let us wait in the cool foyer.  At reception we got a sticker and lovely paper-craft pictures of dragons as souvenirs.  The receptionist told us we could re-enter the Museum anytime that day, using the sticker.  We were even allowed to take photos inside.

My first photo had to be with the beautiful Boris the Dragon at the entrance!  He was so lovely, just as I had imagined.  I was over the moon - I felt like my lifelong dream to see the Dragon had came true!!

As well as the original pictures, the exhibition room was full of black and white animals made me feel as though I was on ‘Wild Island’ with Elmer Elevator, the main character.  The original pictures were drawn into so much with pencils and their captions were put with which were shaped like twigs, lollipops, chewing gum, bird feathers, which were iconic items in the story.

There were also crocodiles lined-up like stepping stones which Elmer had used as a bridge in the story.  In the display the crocodiles groaned when we stepped on them, which was so much fun.

The Museum shop was really exciting too.  There were so many lovely items like T-shirts, postcards, books, posters, socks, lollipops, water-dorm, etc, etc…paradise!  I bought books, T-shirts and other trinkets! Shopping done, we went to the Museum cafe and enjoyed interesting dishes inspired by the exhibition.

‘My Father’s Dragon’ and the subsequent Ruth Stiles Garnett stories, ‘Elmer and the Dragon’ and ‘The Dragons of Blueland’ were written in 1944, being translated into Japanese and published in 1963.  I had only ever read them in Japanese before, but now I’ve got an original English version which I’m looking forward to reading and seeing the Dragon I love.

The most dislike story is "The Room in the Tower"

The most disliked story is “The Room in the Tower”. 

According to this story, the writer had a bad dream many times. In his dream, he met with a man who was from his old school, but he didn’t know him well. If I’m the writer, I won’t want to see a person who don’t know very well in my dream. Of course, I don’t want to meet a stranger in my real life. 

I imagine that he couldn’t only sleep very well due to the bad dream, but also, he couldn’t spend his life lively during he had a bad dream. It is important for us to sleep, so his situation was terrible. I don’t want to be annoyed by the bad dream. Because I cannot wake up easily when I had a bad dream. Also, I couldn’t refresh my body and brain. It’s hard for me to work a day. I believe there are some bad effects without enough sleeping time.

In the end, he was nearly killed by old lady. The lady was painted on a picture, but she appeared in front of him and put her hand his neck. It was really terrible.  

When I read this story, I felt weird from the beginning. I thought that this story was written like “Déjà vu” story, however, the end was such as ghost story!!! I cannot understand what happened after that. 

After finishing of reading, it left me a bad aftertaste. 

A little bit of Project Based Learning

How do you make pentagons?

Just because you didn't turn to the next page in the text book, does not mean your lesson went nowhere!

Learners need a change of gear, a change of task, a change of procedure...whilst they can recycle the language they've been exposed to & need another way to exploit (they don't know they want to do this, by the way...they do know they want to do something not English, maybe, involves some art and yes please, a game on top :)

The basic premise, nicely embedded in Everybody Up 2 is an arts & crafts detour to review learning in units 1 & 2. Themes/topics = jobs, the five senses, and places around town. Some drawing, review of spelling & flipping back & forth through our text books = priceless refreshment of learning. None of this explicitly teacher directed, but rather, learners realising what they need to do & help each other out & find 'short cuts' (aide de memoire?).

The hardest part = how do you divide a paper plate (left over from our BBQ!) into equal fifths?

End of the day, don't sweat the details (we do not have protractors...and bannish erasers from any task like this!); just get on with it - primary objective is the language output (next week, conveniently open/observation week at Luna). 

We're ready - bring in the parents :)

So, what we actually accomplished is a nice little ambush; students "have" all the language embedded  into their paper plate, subliminal cues & rehearsed structures etc.

All I have to do next week is arrange the extra chairs & maybe provide the odd prompt, notice if we've got something to fine tune (the week after open week, without parents critiquing) and give high 5s.

 

Teacher says - almost nothing? Let the kids play!

Teacher said 'rip it up'!

It's been a while since I've shared our classroom activities here. My students inspire me, and I love how the simple things work best - we are more or less back face to face & done with blended zoom lessons - where we couldn't use physical resources...

Any teacher of young learners will tell you that the physical interaction of learners with their own resources, and their physical interaction with each other is priceless - and we are more or less mask free too (not a policy, just the mood).

You can see we are continuing to use online resources - really cool presentation tools & 'distracting' audio/video components. And of course you can see our students all have their own text books = physical resources we at Luna think are irreplaceable. 

You can see flashcard chaos? 

Let's get organised!

I see students managing their own stuff, sorting and saving - and helping each other. Gentle corrections and lots of unsponsored vocabulary spoken...I mean, no teacher talk time, but students prompting, checking, repeating. Teacher's job = shut up & listen! Sure, a few subtle corrections & non-verbal encouragements, nudges & thumbs up, but hey, the students are doing all the heavy lifting! All the non-involved (but attentive) teacher needs to do is a little bit of fine tuning of pronunciation/word substitution & make sure we all have the same number of cards.

Pro tip? Before you take flashcards out of the books (eg Compass's Sounds Fun or Oxford Phonics World) ask students to 'tag' their own cards with their own unique colour - a pink dot in all the top left corners, for example. Why? Well, any card game you play = they will need to unsort quickly! And give then a zip lock bag to keep their precious cards, and elastic bands if you want to save even more time & bundle sets/units together - I don't...the "sorting hat" scramble is another opportunity for learners to queitly/quickly re-process vocabulary & categorise/sort it. Another little win, sensei!

I think I'd estimate teacher talk time in these lessons at about 2 minutes/hour. As a game player - setting the standard/modelling output & answering "Jim sensei, what's this?" questions, & joking along (H told me to 'Go away!' instead of  'Go Fish!') fully involved - but as a peer & actually trying to loose the game itself. 

I have a cunning plan!

How much Japanese did the teacher need to speak? Nope, none.

How much Japanese did the students come out with? Precious little, apart from 'social'or game play reactions.

How much explanation went into the games? None - we started, and guess what, the students figured the rules/goals out for themselves & stress-tested their ideas - and then refereed when Jim-sensei tried to blatantly cheat!

 

Saori writes from her study abroad in England

 

Bath - World Heritage Site

Dear Mr. & Mrs. George

Hi Jim & Yukari, greetings from London

Time flies, already three months have passed since I arrived in the U.K.!! I've just finished taking lesson in Bath. I had been staying with my host mother for six weeks. She was very generous ...so I was lucky.

I could make a lot of foreign friends. And I could know different culture. I've already had many good experiences.

Besides, I went on a trip. For example, Oxford, Cardiff, Cotswolds, Weymouth, Bristol and Cheddar Gorge. In October, I'm going to Venice to meet my friend again. She was my flatmate.

I think that living in England is a great experience to improve my English skill. I feel my English has improved more than before. I'm going to another language school in Winchester on 4th of September. I'll do my best!! I'd like to show my growth by next meeting. Next time (when I come back to Japan), let's talk about what's going on recently.

I'm looking forward to seeing you again.

Best regards,

Saori

The old wooden name tag

Recently I found an old wooden name tag with my name and class room on it, which reminded me of my first summer holiday from elementary school.  So let me tell you about my bitter-sweet memory, and the shadow of my mum that still effects me deeply.

Do you like swimming?  Actually I do now, but I certainly didn't use to as I was afraid of water.  I would hide in the toilets during swimming class, and go home with my never-used-dry-swimming suit, and secretly put it in the laundry.  In the summer holidays, students had to go swimming almost everyday, with their neighbourhood friends.  When you arrived at the school pool, you needed to put your name tag on the board to show who was there.  

The author, with THAT wooden peg 

One day, when I was hiding in the toilet as usual, my teacher showed up with my mum and found me there.  I was terrified and froze in shock, bursting into tears with the horror of punishment for my bad behavior and embarrassment.  However, my teacher was rather gentle and sweet, and asked me why I was there.  After I explained my aquaphobia, he took me to the pool-side and showed me how relax and be comfortable in the water, on a hot summer's day.  He led me through the cool shower gently and took me to the big pool step by step.  Almost everyday after that, my teacher came to the swimming pool and made sure I was there safe and sound.  Gradually, my fear of water disappeared and I could even swim a little by the end of the summer holiday.  My place was very close to the elementary school, and I spotted my mum spying on me from behind the wall around the pool, with her parasol in her hand, everyday without any doubt.  I thought I couldn't hide anything or anywhere from her.

Thankfully I'm not afraid of water anymore and I can swim for a long distance, but I still feel my mum's eyes watching me everyday, even after almost half a century...she's watching.