In the Morning...

Wanted to share an activity we enjoyed this afternoon at Luna, reading one of Patrick Jackson's excellent Potato Pals little readers "In the Morning" - all about routines, so why not bring out the inner child in us all?!

We enjoyed ourselves; hope you do too!

Thanks for the inspiration (end permission/encouragement!) Patrick.

Everybody Up author Patrick Jackson pops in!

Five yard scrum - Potato Pals' ball

You can imagine my shock to hear a lot of grunting & groaning coming out of Damian's classroom the other afternoon. What the hell is going on? Open the door to find him locked in hand-to-hand combat with @patjack67 and his son, recreating a scrum from the epic England v Ireland tussle last weekend at Twickenham!

The books he has written for Young Learners (which we use) are called "Everybody Up" (not "Scrum V" or #carrythemhome ). His readers series for very Young Learners, Potato Pals, are acclaimed worldwide - and were piloted by Jim at Luna pre-publishing (and reviewed in a local yakitori with OUP!)

We are accustomed to having  the great and the good of Planet EFL visiting us at Luna. Over the years we have welcomed a number of authors such as Barbara Hoskins-Sakamoto and Ritsuko Nakata (Let's Go, by OUP), Setsuko Toyama (English Time - also OUP)  to the school. This is the first time one has turned up on a school day and joined in with our students! A staggering privilege, especially as the next classes both Damian and Jim were going to teach use Patrick Jackson's books!

Luka meets Patrick Jackson in HER class!

Our YLs were delighted to practice their greetings, and to review their "Hello" song with him...no, he did not sit at the back and brood about how we were wrecking his books! Got stuck right in with some singing and dancing, and showed no sympathy when Jim's knee went, bouncing around to "Everybody Up"!

Here is Patrick's account of his trip up here 
https://www.facebook.com/patjack67/posts/10153844384625494?stream_ref=10

Listen - http://www.fotobabble.com/m/bElTVHM1VTYzcVU9

As you can see, we had a very jolly afternoon, and completely out of the blue (we would have baked a cake!) hosted a leading light of the EFL world in our dripping wet building. Made Damian & Jim feel 10 feet tall, and impressed the living daylights out of our mums (who have just paid for their shiny new books with Pat's name on the front)&

Thanks so much for the flying visit - I'm afraid the rain today has killed your snowman though. Hope your socks dried out on the train?

Tokyo bookfair/Expo

An annual event that I strongly encourage our teachers to attend. We can join in workshops where authors develop ideas for using their books & materials; we can pick up new ideas for teaching different areas such as phonetics; we can find out about new trends and technology; we can discuss teaching philosophies with our peers; we can meet the publishers and see what is new on the shelf.

And quite a lot more. I have a lot of friends working in the profession - as authors, salespeople, teacher-trainers, etc - and the bookfair is a good excuse to socialise as well, network a bit, and make sure everyone knows Luna International is going strong. It strikes me as odd that other schools do not take advantage of this weekend, because even though I've been going regularly for the last 15 years, there's always something new to pick up.

This year my staff & I attended the following presentations:

• Magical keys to the world of the Oxford Reading Tree (Setsuko Toyama). Setsuko has presented at Luna in the past, and will be coming back in 2008. Luna uses the Story Tree series of readers, which are better for students. Have a look at the display in the school?
• Teaching reading to Children (Jason Good).
  
• Task-based learning and authentic news reports (Daniel Ferreira).
• Tips for teaching JHS/HS with 'My First Passport' (Jon Robinson)
• What students really need for the TOEIC (Grant Trew). Grant presented at Luna early this year, and is a source of excellent exam-taking skills... doesn't have to be TOEIC!
• Three worlds unite - using literature in the EFL classroom (Michael Stout). Several good ideas to connect readers with the 'real' world.
• What else can you do with stories? (Tomomi Katsuki).
• Fun supplementary activities for kids classroom (Hugh Graham-Marr)
• Thinking beyond the story - exploring graded readers (Richard Attwood)
• Developing confidence in early readers (Patrick Jackson). This the inspiring author of Potato Pals (new link on the right), who is a very good presenter & also coming to Luna in 2008.
  

Jim also went to a meeting of school owners, where a few interesting things were discussed - including the death of NOVA of course! We did of course have a couple of pints with old friends in the pub as well, where all the best business is done anyway. We met Trevor Jones, the owner of King's Road English School in Akasaka - venue for KET & PET exams in a couple of weeks.

All in all a very good weekend; think you'll agree Luna's teachers try harder than most.

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