Planting acorns - Luna's Reading Tree

Current progress

Back in April, to coincide with the start of  a new academic year here in Japan, we endeavoured on yet another project: Luna's Reading Tree. As our students develop their reading skills, we wanted a reminder within the classroom of their progress as means of evaluation for both student and teacher. Conveniently, it also adds to the decor!

As part of our reading curriculum, the Oxford Story Tree series has been a staple to many of our young learners as their first steps to reading in English and beyond. Having only become acquainted with Kipper and the gang relatively recently, I've thoroughly enjoyed their grand, and at times bizarre, adventures alongside my students.

The first step

Part of the reason this series has been such a hit with Luna is the language progression, each story builds on the vocabulary from the previous titles to allow students to expand their vocabulary without getting heavily bogged down with too many new words. Each series also comes with an audio CD, to listen in class or at home, and a workbook focusing on the key words from the story. Both bring a great wealth of additional materials/content for children to internalize the language.

The entire series spans 7 levels, with each level represented by a different colour, while at Luna we use the first four levels: red blue, green and orange. We believe this provides enough of a platform for our students to begin discovering their own titles and genres to explore.

The secret room looking lonely

Luna's Reading Tree represents all 28 titles, in the forms of leaves, from the 4 series, differentiated by the different colours. Each time you complete the story along with the workbook, you add a customised acorn to the relevant "leaf" to show off your accomplishments. Our goal is to have a luscious tree budding with vibrant energy, although our initial plan may not come to complete fruition as the Oxford Story Tree series are no longer available to order in Japan.

Never fear though as we still have some tricks up our sleeves and an opportunity to discover other fascinating stories to spark our students' imaginations.

Workshop No. 4: Getting Maximum Results in Reading While Speaking

        My second in the series of reports I have written after completing the IIECT Teacher Training Program in Tokyo run by Ritsuko Nakata. As always feedback and comments are welcome. This workshop was presented by Naoko Saito & Junko Nakamura, entitled: Getting Maximum Results in Reading While Speaking

        The primal focus of the second workshop was how to develop the reading capability of young learners, an integral part of many young learners’ curriculum. Learning to read is no easy task, especially if you’re limited to 1 hour (or less) classes once per week, hence the significant importance of building a solid foundation by learning the English alphabet, the building blocks to becoming an accomplished reader, and their relation to sounds (or better known as phonics). From the alphabet we can build onto phonics and then progressing onto words and eventually sentences. If there is no foundation everything we build around it will crumble and fall, so it’s very important to get the basic right so learners don’t fall into bad habits early on. It’s also important to note that the students should know the meaning of the words and produce them orally before they attempt reading them. However, even just teaching the basic phonics sounds can be arduous and time consuming. This lead to the development of “MAT Phonics” so that students are able to, so they told us, learn all the sounds of the alphabet in just a few lessons. We were also told that in order to accomplish this successfully the students must already know how to say the alphabet correctly.

            The “MAT Phonics” method begins by teaching the vowel sounds in conjunctions with “MAT Vowel Actions”, these gestures helps young learners remember the short vowel sounds by replicating the shape formed by the mouth when saying these sounds. Next comes the consonant sounds. The consonants are split into four sound groups: “ee”, “e”, “ei” and “Mixed”. Once the consonants are split into their respective groups we implement something called “Phonics Math”, where we subtract the common group sound from the letter sound. For example the letter “b” belongs in the “ee” group and by applying “Phonics Math” we remove the “ee” sound to achieve the “b” phonic sound. Finally we have built our solid foundation and can move onto reading words and sentences by using these phonics sounds alongside some essential key words, some of which cannot be read phonetically (also referred to as sight words) that the students should already know such as; I, you, he, her, they, this, that, yes, no etc.

            Unfortunately I have had neither the time nor the opportunity to fully integrate these methods into my lessons. I have a habit on concentrating too much time on oral communication and not enough time on reading and writing, which is an aspect of my teaching that I want and need to change for the benefit of my students. On the other hand I have tried some of the suggested activities from the workshop, such as cutting up letters to piece together again and tracing the letters of the alphabet in the air with our eyes closed. I am very interested using the “Phonics Math” method but I am slightly weary that the concept may be a bit too difficult to grasp for some of the students. I guess there is only one way to find out.

            Although I did find this workshop useful and insightful, I am still slightly apprehensive about including more time to cover reading and writing skills during lessons. It’s something the students need to be exposed to on a regular basis so that they can progress, but I am fearful that there are not enough minutes in each lesson to cover everything satisfactorily. The MAT method mixes reading and speaking at the same time, and I believe this is the tact I must take to achieve a balance of reading and writing activities within my lesson plans. It is not enough just relying on the textbooks and workbooks as sources for reading and writing practice, I must diverge more from what I have become accustomed to by including supplementary reading resources such as the Oxford Reading Tree series or the Oxford graded readers.

Careful - hungry readers at work!

Everything I can chuck at my strong readers class they are catching at the moment. I am really thrilled with the processing they are doing.

A penny dropped in class last week  when we started a new unit in our text book and it was "easy"...we've already done this ie "stupid teacher!"

Nya ha! Different past simple verb /ed/ ending sounds locked and loaded in our heads, thank you very much. Let's move on, nothing to see here!

Irregular past tense verbs? That's not hard either, we bagged a bunch of them playing that 'mining the book' challenge thing two weeks ago! Felt like a zoo keeper throwing chunks of red meat at hungry tigers!

What I particularly enjoy seeing now is students flipping (not the teacher!) but their books - racing into text to find the answers they know are in there somewhere. Not so long ago they would not venture out of their depth; now they are leaping into the literarary deep end :)

My teaching life made very easy with confident, competitive, collaborative readers. Now we can really push the boat out :)

PAN-SIG press release

プレス・リリース

2011年3月22日
（NPO）全国語学教育学会（JALT）信州支部

第10 回全国語学教育学会　分野別研究部会（Pan-SIG）2011年　年次大会 　4月3日（日）　記者会見のお知らせ

　JALT信州支部では2011年5月21日から22日の2日間、長野県松本市信州大学で開催される第10 回全国語学教育学会分野別研究部会（以下Pan-SIG）2011年年次大会（後援：長野県教育委員会、松本市教育委員会、信州大学人文学部、JALT研究部会、協賛：JALT信州支部）に先駆け記者発表を行います。同日開催イベント「オックスフォード児童英語教師向けワークショップ2011松本」と合わせ、ぜひご参加ください。

Pan-SIG 2011年　年次大会　記者会見

■日時： 201１１年４月３日（日）　13:00～13:30

■出席：信州大学　教育学部　准教授　酒井英樹　
        JALT信州支部　会長　マーク・ブライアリー(信州大学　全学教育機構　准教授)
　　　　JALT信州支部　広報　ジ     ム・ジョージ（ルナインターナショナル代表）
　　　　JALT信州支部　広報　林　英美（メルク英語教室　主宰）
　　　
■内容： Pan-SIGの概要と開催趣旨、小学校英語活動の現状について、東北関東大震災募金協力について

■会場： ルナインターナショナル（〒390-0806 松本市女鳥羽 2-3-5 久星ビル）
       　TEL ０２６３－３４－４４８１
       　松本バスターミナルより松本電鉄美ヶ原温泉行きバス乗車、桜町バス停下車、徒歩約5分

■大会の詳しいご案内はこちらをご参照ください。→　http://pansig.org/2011/

■お申し込み方法：お名前、ご所属、電話番号、FAX番号、E-mailアドレス、を記載頂き、jalt@shinshu-u.ac.jpまでお申し込み下さい。

◆◇お問い合わせ先◇◆
（NPO）全国語学教育学会（JALT）信州支部
会長　マーク・ブライアリー（日本語可）　電話：090-4464-6391
広報　林　英美　電話：090-7265-6599
E-mail: jalt@shinshu-u.ac.jp

同時開催　オックスフォード児童英語教師向けワークショップ

■日時： 2010年4月3日（月） 10：30-13：00(10:00より開場いたします。)

■内容：第1部（10:30-11:20）ケビン・チャーチリー
      「Oxford Reading Treeを使った効果的な読み聞かせの秘訣とテクニック」

      第2部（11:50-12:40）バーバラ・ホスキンズ・サカモト

      「生徒一人一人をきめ細かく指導するためのアクティビティとは？」

                       

■会場： ルナインターナショナル（同上）
■ワークショップの詳細、事前登録はこちら→http://www.oupjapan.co.jp/kidsclub/otws2011/index_jp.shtml

At the end of November we welcome: Kevin Churchley...A letter of introduction.

I studied art at University. I did a lot of photography. There are a lot of artists I like but some of the best exhibitions I’ve seen are of work by Paul Gaugan, Henri Matisse, Howard Hodgkin and Herge’ (Tintin ). 
 

After University I decided to pursue a career in the emergency services. I became a swimming pool lifeguard, an ambulance man and then a fireman. All these careers were interesting and I met a lot of amazing people.

Kevin with OUP presentation helpers

In 1984 I saw a movie called Yellow Earth which made me interested in Asia and when I had the chance to teach in Japan in 1989 I took the opportunity and have been a language teacher ever since.

I have worked in language schools, big and small, public and private high schools and kindergartens, in 2006 I was a special needs teaching assistant in a UK primary school and I also write and present for the UK publisher Oxford University Press. One of my favourite series of books is the Oxford Reading Tree.

In 2005 I made a DVD published by OUP about teaching English to children in Japan.

From 1990-2004, I was an examiner for the United Nations Test of English Proficiency at their testing centers in Yokohama and Tokyo.  In 2009 I moved to Singapore and taught English to kindergarten, primary and high school students at the British Council and Hwa Chong International school.

I have traveled quite a lot in Asia and a little bit in Europe. I used to do a lot of sports especially swimming, squash and running but my main hobbies now are listening to music and reading. 

I also dj. My dj name is numonix and I play a kind of music called drum and bass. You can listen to this kind of music at www.humanelements.jp

Kevin Churchley.

Jim adds: Kevin will be presenting for Oxford University Press around the country in February and March next year, and will be adding a special date to the calendar in April - right here at Luna. Parents and teachers alike will want to see Kevin's very special classroom style and exciting ideas for involving young learners in their reading books. One of the major reasons we adopted OUP's The Story Tree series was because of the magic presentation I saw Kevin make years ago. I have known Kevin for several years, and I am delighted we have been able to tempt him back to his beloved Japan from Singapore. Please join me in welcoming him to our chilly town and to our warm school!

Another roadtrip

Last weekend was another busy one, as Tana's posting below also mentions.

King's Road English School in Tokyo was the venue for Cambridge ESOL KET & PET examinations on Saturday, and I need to thank Trevor for his professional approach to this important event for us. Hokuriku Gakuin University in Kanazawa also had KET & PET exams on the same day - their first Lower Main Suite session so an exciting, newsworthy event. Gavin & Sakiko were suitably nervous & well-prepared; candidates looked a bit nervous!

I drove over to help the school cope with their first time, but also to be one of the two oral examiners along with Maureen, who trained up earlier this month in Sapporo. Afterwards we were able to relax with a couple of staff, which was nice but frustrating - surrounded by inviting Scotch whisky and unable to partake - I hade to drive to Sendai that night!

OK, so I slept in the car near Niigata...Sunday I met a lot of interesting folks from Sendai itself, Miyagi, Yamagata and Aomori prefectures, plus my performing friends Kaj & Kevin, who you can see on the right here. Kevin is the best presenter I know, and you'll notice he is also a fan of the Reading/Story Tree which we use at Luna. One day we'll get him to come up here...I also met a Canadian lady who shares my surname, which is very unusual - especially in Japan. Maybe we're related?

I hope our KET & PET candidates all enjoyed their exams (?!) and that they are satisfied with their results when they come. Thanks to our OEs & invigilators, and hopefully next year we will have a few new venues around the country for more candiates to take the exams conveniently. Here's hoping - it won't be for lack of trying!