Helping kinesthetic students!

 Has it been 6 months since I started working in beautiful Matsumoto?!

Well, today I wanted to share an activity I did with my students (twins!) who are kinesthetic learners! They cannot sit still and if they do, eyes heavy! I learned it the hard way the first few months here!

The twins have school in the morning, football practice right after, and straight for English classes, no wonder they are exhausted! So changed it up this week! We played Twister (advisable to be only done for students from the same household only, sadly we are still in a pandemic!)

On a dark cold Tuesday, boy these kids were sleepy! A great day to conduct this activity! We assigned a colour and body part with a part of a sentence! We were learning chores and advert of frequency! So why not combine them! 

Red = always                                     Right hand = after school

Green = never                                    Left hand = before school

Blue = sometimes                              Right hand = after school

Yellow = usually                               Left hand = before school

Students are required to make a sentence following where their body parts land! 

Example : (Left hand on blue: I sometimes wash the car before school)

And the other student will ask: What are your chores?

Trust me, students were falling down easily and they had a blast! They practiced and made use of their target language well! The rest of the lesson went smoothly as students were perfectly energised and no more falling asleep!

Takeshi's Blog Profile

 About me

I'm Takeshi Tachikawa and live in Tokyo. My age is 37.

Likes and Dislikes

I like to spend time with my family. I dislike arguing with everybody.

Hobbies and Interests

One of my hobbies is playing smartphone's games. I play the game for 3 or 4 hours a day. However, I think I should get interesting in outside activities.

My New Year's Resolution

I think I should use time effectively. it's why I spend 3 or 4 hours a day to play the game. So I decided the two resolutions, which were reading books and listenning to English programs on the radio. I want to replace two hours from playing the game to that.

Posted for Takeshi

Kenza's experience

I woke from a nap to find out that Luna had two classes that Friday without a teacher. I realised that they were desperate, and were struggling to find anyone who could help, so I talked to Jim and Laura and volunteered to stand in as I realised this could be an interesting experience.


The only previous teaching experience I had was about 2 hours of teaching a few teenage boys how to cook cauliflower soup a year ago. However, Jim had planned both lessons out and had everything prepared beforehand so I felt confident to go ahead with this unique opportunity. Meeting the half dozen or so students that Friday evening was really lovely and I could tell they were a special bunch of kids. It was challenging at times as I learnt everyone’s English comprehension levels, and also learnt how well I could communicate in English. In the end, I was glad that I had the experience.

The place where I can most concentrate

When I was a child, I used to study in living room while my family was watching TV or talking. After growing up, when I was university student, I used to go to casual restaurant like a Gusto, Denny’s and do homework and study assignments with my friend or alone. Now I am an officer but still go to casual restaurant and do homework when I have it. My favorite place is Komeda coffee. I can concentrate to study while listening people talking or BGM of the restaurant. And it is also necessary to have some drinks when I concentrate doing something. If I have to think about something difficult or complicated, I always prepare a cup of coffee and start thinking. Sometimes I have some sweets if I felt tired. The best time of working is after 5pm when most people went home because anyone don’t ask or talk to me.

My Emergency Pack

When I think about disaster, the earthquake is coming up. Nagano prefecture is the one of most famous area which earthquake happened in Japan. People who live in Nagano used to experience the earthquake. In case I would experience the big earthquake and need to survive independently, I would need the following items:  Water bag or water  Food  Rope  Scissors  Blanket - as much as thin  Sanitary goods  Underwear  Towel  Battery charger  Mobile battery  Mobile phone Maybe some foods/water and blankets would be provided from local governments. Therefore, it is most important things are mobile phone and batteries. If I have mobile phone, I can use it as a flashlight. Sanitary goods is also important for women because the local governments would not provide or found easily due to lower priority than food or water.

Mining graded readers - the collective

Last week I mentioned that I/we had been 'mining'  our young learners' graded readers in class.

I very much felt that was a work in progress, and more could be achieved - I set out with the same broad lesson plan in mind for another group, using the same level readers from OUP story tree series. I wanted to see if the same approach would work again, if there'd be a different result.

As per last time, I asked students first of all to figure out what kind of words they were looking at eg "Jim eats fat green frogs" - nouns/verbs/adjectives? Admit a bit of L1 to help them suss this out, but not a lot. And, as per last time, then asked them to find ten examples of each in their reader.

Well, kids being kids, when I asked them to get out their reader, there was the usual time out while pencil cases clattered to the floor/indecision about which book I meant/chatting opportunities...I had asked them to get out book 1 (they'd read all eight titles, and done the accompanying workbooks/listened to the CD narrations), so maybe this one was rustiest in memory.

Lightbulb moment: let them choose their "favourite" - quickly! First come first reserved - can't have the same book as another learner. Bingo! Decisions made pronto.

Now the students are responsible for the choice they made. I overheard a sotto voce discussion on how that choice was made (in L1) - "choose the book with the least pages". Aha! File that info away, see what we can do!

Also as per last time, I set a target of 10 nouns/verbs/adjectives - I was worried they would be lazy. Stupid teacher! This inhibited them from compiling a jumbo list - yes, they ignored my 'rule' and kept compiling, just writing smaller to squeeze stuff in! OK...I can work with that ambition too!

As they had all chosen a different book, they all had different questions about the words they were considering. Even with only four students I was getting dizzy. Bombardment nice, but I don't want to be the focus of this - figure it out yourselves, together! And so they did. Net result of that was a constant barrage of Qs at classmates "Hey, is treehouse a verb?" - "Erm. Yes, like dog. Is like a verb - it isn't "-suru" in Japanese. I intervened when one or two things crept up (like assuming all words had to be either noun/adjective/verb - my fault again...up/in/this etc started a need for a column with 'other'!)

So, now I have four kids speed reading four different books, scanning, skimming, analysing - and beautifully, interrupting each other & co-operating all the while (essentially side-reading the other three books & relighting all those memories of stories read). I was sitting there unbusy, glowing in pride - and mad as hell that one of this class announced (via mum) that 4 nights of ballet practice a week was not enough NO!!!!

I called time when they had all more or less got to the last page of their chosen reader (awesome - they were getting pissed off because there weren't enough adjectives!)...always interrupt a good activity just before it runs out of steam! The easy finish = "How many verbs etc did you find?". I realised this was not going to be fair as some of them had got very enthusiastic/lost count and written down more; there was some repetition too (which helped us figure out why go = goes, for example). All good - we are learning TONS.

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Solution. Remember the board/word game Scattergories? It's another EFL goldmine of a game, especially for end of term. Basic premise is that if you have written down an original word ie one that no other student has done, you score a point. (Part one winner was the student with the most words total; and sub-champions for each sub-category - everyone a winner). And then the penny dropped, as we read out all our words...Ayaka was going to win all ends up (even though she had complained the most about her book because her book was the 'hardest'?) Book 7 trumps 1,2,3! Oh, the books get harder? She had all our words and then some?

Gorgeous. The smile on Ayaka's face. Triumph!
Gorgeous. The dawning of ambition!
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OK, I got excited about my kids killing a lesson plan as we went? Oh yeah! What they did ticked a dozen boxes all over the place, with materials otherwise 'dead'.

This 'mining' activity will work with adults - especially if they are all using the same reader - give them the same chapter and a time limit? Let them choose their fave character if there is dialogue....and that is their word pool. Or their favourite chapter, or even number pages - whatever!