Dear,all.

I write about my five-days trip to Scotland.


Days 1, I visited the Stirling Castle. It is a castle stands on beautiful highlands and it is surrounded by eruptive rocks. Therefore, This was built to escape from enemies. It’s a famous historic building. I like historical structures.

Days 2, I visited Loch Ness. The largest freshwater lake in England. A monster that is said to live in Loch Ness is called Nessie. I hope I could see it. But I couldn't on that day.

Days 3 and 5, I stayed on Isle of Skye. An island of northwestern Scotland. It is called “sgiath” in gaelic. This means wing of island.
Isle of Skye has Dunvegan castle and Eilean Donan castle, and even the fairy pool as if it is illustrated in a fairy tale.


I usually drink Suntory whiskey but I enjoyed Scottish whiskey in Talisker distillery on the last day. But I got drunk easily, so I could drink a little bit of that.


Thank you for reading.

Raising the bar

Nothing like a spot of jealousy to get the students motivated!

In 2009, Takumi took Young Learners (Starters level) and did a really good job. He was the only one in his class brave enough to try...after wards he said it was fun and not scary at all! Of course not - the exams are very child-friendly and invite the children to normal classroom things like match pictures to words, colouring in, answering simple questions about everyday things. Everything very familiar.

Who's a clever Mover, then?

Fast forward to late last year, and Momoko this time took Young Learners - but the Movers level (next one up). On Tuesday evening after class she was presented with her certificate and the very first thing Takumi said was 'Right, I'm doing it next time!' Momo-chan got very good results in listening and speaking, and as good as we expected in Reading/Writing...

Come October 30th 2011, can guarantee the first name on the list of candidates will be Takumi! Question is though, will he match Momoko and do very well in Movers, or up the ante again and go for Flyers? Ideally, they'll both achieve knock out results.

For now, Momoko has the bragging rights - well done you!

Run & Spell

I've always loved doing running dictation and today was no exception. We'd spent some time on "The Dragon" already, reading the book itself and doing various activities around the book. And this was the ultimate test - a spelling test with a didifference. Yes, you can look at the words in the book, but the book has to be in a different room and you cannot bring the book back with you and just copy it down. Worked a treat! The students were able to remember (most of the time) and got all the spelling right when we checked at the end. I also asked them to point at various words on their page once we'd finished to check if they could recogonise words by sight, and was very pleased to see them working it out for themselves. For example what's the difference between "dragon" and "dolphin". A whole lot as I'm sure you'll agree!

Avatar intros

We've been having so much fun with these avatars in class. They're really good as they unleash students' creativity whilst providing an opportunity to show off what they can do. Added benefits are increased all over skills from team-work and decision-making to language performance, not to mention computer skills. Savvy classes for savvy students! Oh yeah!


Get a Voki now!




Get a Voki now!




Get a Voki now!