Postcard from Sydney, Australia

 

Hi everyone at Luna!

I arrived in Sydney in the middle of winter, but the weather is beautiful! I stayed near the fabulous Harbour Bridge in a traditional little hotel above a pub...perfect!

I took a ferry to Manly, across the harbour and had delicious fish & chips on the beach. The view of the Opera House from the boat was magnificent!

I'm going to see a rugby match tonight, then travel south to see my brother's family. hope you are not missing me too much?

Jim

Postcard from...Taman Ayun, Bali, Indonesia

Hey all,

I'm sunburnt! Today I went snorkeling between Bali & Lombok - it was great :)

I've seen amazing temples & a palace; Balinese dance & gamalan; all kinds of animals including bintorung, and wonderful sunsets. Did I mention the food? It's so delicious!!!

Leaving tomorrow, and looking forward to hearing all your holiday stories xxx

Jim

 

It's like riding a bike

Before coming to Japan I hadn’t rode a bike in a long time. After a classic ‘no hands’ incident I swore off the concept indefinitely.

When I returned home to New Zealand from my stint in South America, I became worried for what was to come. Much like the fear of getting back on my bike, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to pull through with what I thought was expected. Although I had left home once before, heading into something where I knew exactly what was going to happen seemed a lot more difficult than heading into the unknown. But luckily for me, as I arrived in Japan, I was gifted a new pair of training wheels in the form of Jim, Yukari, and everyone who surrounds and forms Luna’s family.

It always starts off tough and there are always setbacks and learning curves, but it’s just like riding a bike. The expectations you place on yourself and those that you believe others have set for you are what inevitably limit you from your best ability, but if you keep riding, it’ll be like you never stopped.

P.S. Two months in and I haven't yet fallen off my bike. Progress?

Postcard from...Bulli Beach, Australia

Dear everybody in the freezing cold in  Matsumoto!

Unfortunately I'm leaving the sunny hot beach at Bulli today.

Pool, ocean, wildlife, sport, food, wine, Santa and my family. Extremely relaxing and loads of fun. Perfect end to a very busy year.

Best to you all for 2019.

Jim

(posted Dec 29th with Touchnote)

Luna's super Marios meet Super Santa!

As Christmas sneaks up on us, in tow comes our annual Christmas party!
A huge thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us and a special shout out to Yukari for the incredible organisation of food, venue and fun, Cedric, Matt and Naomi for helping to keep the whole thing afloat, Jim for being the backbone of the entire celebration, and Santa himself for taking time out of his busy schedule to help us spread Christmas cheer!

Complete with games, smiles and presents galore, it was a brilliant way to end 2018.
We look forward to seeing you back at Luna from the 7th of January.

Take a peek at the festivities with the link below:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskP7zoey

Merry Christmas everybody!

Postcard from Lincoln, England

Hello everyone at Luna!

Hope you have been looking after Damian and Laura?
I have had a very busy ie too short a week in UK.
I really wanted to show my nephew the Magna Carta in Lincoln Castle, but we had to settle for battlefield news from 1217!
This cathedral is stunning, built in 1185 no less! Reunited old school friends & my home city Sheffield and the Peak District.
Had an enormous fish and chips plus a couple of cheeky pints. Surprised?!

Jim

Luna's monster scrapbook

Cute and cuddly or stuff of nightmares?

Eeek! It's Friday the 13th and there's something horribly frighting I have to show you all! My students have been busy making a monster scrapbook, terrifying enough to give even the most composed of souls the creeps!

We began with a body as a starting point, and used a trusty die to determine how many of each body part we would add to our crazy creations. 6 heads with 1 eye, 4 feet with 4 toes, you name it, we had it! 

For the more advanced students, there was an additional twist where the activity was a dictation exercise, pairing an adjective (short, big, thin etc) with each body part.

Leave us a comment with which monster you think has the most resemblance to either Damian or Jim!

Augmented Reality (AR) - introduction to Aurasma

Have you heard of a really cool app called “Aurasma”? I used to be one the unfortunate souls who had no idea about the magic of Aurasma, until Jim kindly stepped in and enlightened me. So one cold December afternoon Jim calls me into his classroom as he has something to show me. He tells me to point his iPhone at a large drawing of Father Christmas on the wall. I was dumbfounded by what followed, I suspected witchcraft. The drawing came to life as an animated version of Santa popped up on the screen and began singing. After racking my brains, all I could muster was “How?” Jim, looking quite smug my reaction, then proceeded to fill me in on the magic of Aurasma.

The secret to Aurasma is that there are 2 key components; a video overlay and a trigger image. The video overlay can be anything you want, something you have recorded on your phone, any video format created through another app such as SockPuppets or ChatterPix Kids, even record something on the fly directly through Aurasma. Simple. On the other hand, setting up a trigger image can be a little trickier, especially if the resolution on your older phone camera isn’t up to scratch. The app is rather clever and is able to recognise images/drawings/patterns, and can then store them in its memory to be used as a trigger. Through experimentation, and getting fed up with spending more time than I would care to admit waving my iPhone around without much success, larger images with distinct outlines and plenty of colours helps with the recognition process. Having a steady hand doesn’t do any harm either.

Once you have prepared your overlay and set your trigger image, the final step is to combine them. Once you have made an “Aura”, you have the choice of making it private, which will only allow your phone to view your Auras, or public, which will enable followers of your Aurasma profile to access your content, as long as they have your Aura trigger on hand.

Now that you’re up to speed with Aurasma, you might be starting to form some ideas yourself on how to implement it into a learning environment. It was on the forefront of our agenda for a while too, and thanks to a bright spark idea from the man himself (Jim), we found a pretty cool way to show off our students’ work. His idea? Well, what I can tell you that is that you should tune in next week, where I will reveal our big idea to make Luna a truly interactive school. Watch this space! For the time being you can have a sneak preview of one our Auras starring Taisei.

Postcard from Moomin: Finland

Hi Jim,

I went to Finland the other day, and found this thing...it reminded me of you & Luna!

I hope you are all doing well :)

Best,

Sari xx

P.S. Helsinki is a very peaceful place, so I highly recommend you go there! (Prices are so high though...)

Jim reads: "We're going on a Bear Hunt"

February slideshow review

I noticed we were so busy digging snow outside or putting buckets under drips inside in the last couple of weeks that we didn't take any pictures. I'm sure you can all remember what snow looks like though...

Here's a peek of some of the fun we got up to during February - hope you like the slideshow!



If you want a copy please email me; you can also find it to share on our YouTube channel

Huckleberry Finn - after reading

Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer are very famous names. Why isn't Jim?

I think there are some reasons why Jim isn’t very famous name.
One is because of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer is name of story. So people have some chances to hear their name.

Second is that Huck & Tom are boys. So if readers are boys or girls, they may be able to be Huck or Tom when they read the story. Or they may be able to be Huck & Tom’s friends. And they had adventures with them. But Jim is older than readers. So people couldn’t to be him when they read the story, I think.

Third is because of Jim is a slave. I got some information about slave from the story of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In this story (“Huckleberry Finn”), Jim’s master was not a bad person. But I don’t have a good image for slave. People worked very hard. But they couldn’t get any money. And they didn’t have any freedom. I think Jim is a good person, but I don’t want to be a slave. Some readers may think so, too.

Fourth is Huck and Tom are active and positive person. So I think they are attractive. They are admired by readers.

Posted for Yuri

By these reasons, Jim isn't a very famous name, I think.

Nanako's dad & KET Certificates

This is a slideshow of an event Jim organised with Shinshu JALT last Saturday evening. One of Luna's dads was a speaker...and he was also one of our ex-student's surgeons, which is why this promise to present was made about six years ago!




Among the audience was the current National JALT President - I think the first time that this has ever happened...so while he was here, Jim asked him to present Yanissa with her Cambridge ESOL Certificate for K.E.T. (she passed "with Merit") and we are all very proud of her achievement. Unfortunately, Hokuto & Tomoro had other plans and were unable to attend the short ceremony. We gave them their certificates last week, and as you can see they also look very pleased - well done boys!

Happy New Year!

クリスマスパーティのご案内

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ルナインターナショナルでは、今年もクリスマスパーティを開きます。
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ルナインターナショナル

They came, and they danced!

It rained the whole day through and yet they still came! As the roads were closed around the city centre at 5pm, trolleys, kimonos and umbrellas appeared in place of the cars.

Our group was welcomely boosted this year with Eri's friends, and our pre-school gaggle of little ones and parents, braving the elements. As every year, Jim got a bear hug from a Yamaga gorilla, and we met lots of old friends and students along the way. Obviously the weather had dissuaded a lot of people from coming to watch, crowds along the route noticeably down, and the general mood a bot dampened.

Not our gang though, as you can see from all the photos on out Facebook group - if you have your own photos or videos to share with us, please do so. Tana didn't stop dancing all evening, so the Salsa is paying off! Eri assumed command with Yuki having to go home early. By the end of the evening we'd exhausted ourselves, as well as all the ale, and we said goodnight and thank you in the middle of eki-mai dori...for some the evening continued in a very nearby bar, until we eventually had to haul all the trash back to Jim's place.

CALL - some interactive stuff

One of my lads has been struggling to keep up with his mates, and I was getting worried he was starting to feel the heat - they've started taking the Mickey...so I wanted to change tack a bit but still concentrate on our target vocab - colours.

In doing so, I didn't want to be 'just colouring', which this can often descend into. Instead, used a good resource (Scholastic's vocab series is excellent) which had a dozen or so line drawings of national flags (European). First task was to colour by numbers (ie read the names of the colours) and to predict which belonged to the list of countries in a list below.

To check, we went to a database of flags and then searched by choosing colours, patterns & designs, and selecting the number of stripes etc. Lots of good speculation and genuine 'need to know'. Some of them they knew, some were 'new', and some we right but wrong - Japanese names for some countries are from that country's language (eg 'Deutz') rather than our English word (Germany). On top of that, some are hard to read - Germany again, or Portugal.

As you can see, we had a good time, and learnt something a bit different into the bargain. And, my struggler was in his element :)

Altogther now ....

Hey! Somebody remembered!

Nagoya - OE training

Last weekend Luna was invited to train a large group of teachers and staff from Meijo University in Nagoya. This was a big honour for us and one we were delighted to accept. Jim spent Saturday and Sunday at Meijo High School in downtown Nagoya, demonstrating how examiners should deliver the speaking tests of KET & PET; how they should manage time, materials, and unexpected situations, and how of course they should assess candidates' performances.

Easily said, but quite a task to bring a room full of teachers together to pool all their experiences and do something 'new'. On Saturday we focused particularly on making sure everyone understood what they were supposed to be doing and how, changing partners regularly and encouraging a free exchange of ideas and opinions (and there were plenty to be expressed!).

On Sunday, we changed things around a bit, to think about the impact the examiner's demeanor and physical performance have on the candidates, not just their spoken delivery of the script. We also thought about the exams from the candidates' perspective, and how the examiner should respond (or not) to manifestations of eg nerves, panic, stage-fright. Examiners were also shown how the new online resource for oral examiners will really make a big difference to their professional development as teachers and as examiners; we practiced using the site and explored the facilities that are now available 24 hours a day, every day of the year - and not just when Jim comes to town!

By the end of two, very intense days of study, a very tired but satisfied (and qualified) group of fresh oral examiners joined our ranks. Most will be examining at KET & PET levels next month, as the university initiates its adoption of Cambridge ESOL examinations. This is a really exciting step, with Luna very much at the forefront.

Jim wants to say well done to all the teachers who attended over the weekend, and to thank the staff at the school for looking after him so nicely. He is looking forward to meeting the next group of new OEs in April.

Super little Christmas party

Sunday afternoon was Santa-time!

Tana and Yuki put together an excellent afternoon's entertainment for our younger students. There were so many games and activities I can barely remember them all! Naturally burning off some energy featured early on, "Freeze" and blow football. Tana's artistic background is obvious, as you can see from a lovely pair of snowmen she created for the marshmallow game, and Rudolph who was missing his nose, (temporarily!).

The children also helped us build "Merry Christmas" and made secret snowman sweet-holders for their mums. Food was wolfed down in no time...Tensions rose and the boys were mad-keen to spy Santa. In the end we all yelled very loudly out of the window...in a flash he was here. His reindeer are really fast!

Everyone had a moment with Father Chritsmas to tell him how good they had been this year (???) and tell him their names - very important that they get the right presents of course! Once again, shock that Jim was in the room simultaneously!

Happy cherubs toddled off home with mummies and daddies, with Christmas on their minds - only a few big sleeps to wait now! Great job Tana, your preparations went really well! Thank you Yuki, Milton & Michiyo for helping make things work.

Merry Christmas - soon! (More photos here)