Rei the reader!

I want to read!

Adopting Oxford Phonics World as our 'go to' phonics resource/series at Luna International was a no brainer, especially with covid-induced needs for online resources/presentation tools. We love the clarity of the materials, the logical presentation & progression. I am not a fan of the North American drawl that undermines accurate pronunciation in the audio of some units...but, I am very picky.

Unfortunately, we now have little brothers & sisters not even needing to come to Luna because they've grabbed a sibling's classbook and submerged themselves into the learning!

Screen time smasher!

Big brother Yoshi I have known since kindy...and he's been learning with us at Luna as well for a quite while now. He used to hide behind his classmates & not say 'boo' to a goose, but no more - a confident reader, neat writer & speller, and almost glib with answering too easy questions! Loosing games no longer a 'problem' either :)

I've been told his five-year old brother Rei is #OPW fan number one! As you can see, he's an independent learner...and has had to have a home screen time limit for the OPW app imposed to 15 minutes (maximum!) daily. Oh my word - if only we had that 'problem' with our students :)

I blame his parents..

Not fair?

As you can see in the pic above & videos below, Rei is an independent learner already. So, dad will be out of a job soon (as well as me!). 

Just imagine if every five year old in Japan had this kind of leg-up from mum & dad before they even get to elementary school? Game changer! Goodbye 'romaji' crap & katakana cribbing. Well done mum & dad...and thank you dad for choosing Luna International again for your family...like your parents asked me to teach you & your buddies when you were at elementary school.

Turbo-charged learning like this could/should be a game-changer for Japanese children. Tragically, I doubt very many decision makers within MEXT or BoE have the first clue about how vital a grasp of phonics is...especially with the ongoing race to the bottom which is 'providing' language teaching to children in kindergarten & elementary schools (and JHS/HS) from the lowest bidder/freshest face on zoom or YouTube/flashiest app on some administrator's TikTok feed. 

Alphabug soup - There's a fly in my soup!

s...s... soup!

I was looking for an open ended vocabulary game to test some of my YLE students when I stumbled upon “Alphabug Soup”, which was tucked away in our vast boardgames cupboard, right next to the gateway to Narnia.

The essence of the game is to get your critters around the board, and back into your soup pot, by naming words that begin with the letter displayed on the letter disks that you pick up after rolling the die. The aim of the game is to collect as many disks as possible, NOT get around the board as quickly as possible. Repeated words are strictly forbidden!

Rather than focusing on a specific vocabulary set, this game provides the students with freedom to choose their own words. I was especially pleased when “Union Jack” was uttered during game play! The game also helps clear up some common mistakes with words beginning with "l" or "r" and "b" or "v". One of my classes was struggling with differentiating between b and d, the competitive aspect of the game soon straightened out those errors.

I’ve also experiment with some variations to the game and upping the difficulty. Instead of only picking up 1 letter disk per turn, players pick up the amount of letter disks as shown on the die face, moving forward 1 space for each correct answer. For hard mode, the number you roll is the number of words you must say beginning with the letter shown on your chosen disk.

“Alphabug Soup” is fun, versatile and basic enough to suit classes of ranging abilities, whilst allowing for a broader range of vocabulary to come into use. The students also don’t seem to mind the collections of critters bobbing away in their soup pots!

Can you cha-cha-cha in English?!

Great way to start the New Year with our first class showing off tonight!

I haven't taught these guys for a couple of years, and very nice to catch up with them again and see how much progress they are making...why don't you prove it, by the way, and do really well in YLE Starters this year? Think you'd do very well...



What is your favourite song/chant with YLEs? This is from English Time 2 (OUP), by the way...

Rei's Pirate Diary

This is an adaptation of Rei's journal from last week. Rei is the big white monster, with his little friend Shin-chan. They had an interesting rainy Sunday morning with Lego. Read on!

Rei's update - picking pears

This week Rei tells me about picking (Asian "nashi") pears with his mum...

listen to ‘Rei picks pears’ on Audioboo

I know all about picking pears, as I did this quite a bit in New Zealand way back in the day. I don't like picking pears (they are usually hard, and don't bruise as easily as apples)...because wasps love eating them. They get drunk on the sugar, and just hang out on the blind side of the fruit until you put a hand around them. Stung on/between the fingers? That hurts!

That is my story; think Rei's is a lot less dramatic!

The insect collector - cicada stories

This week Rei wanted to tell me about his insect collecting hobby; I am sure his mum hates it! Cicadas ("semi" in Japanese) are those enormous doodlebug size insects that make a racket this time of year. They really are a bit gross. The worst experience I ever had with one was when I was riding my old Kawasaki, quite quickly, visor open (need air!) & wallop - a cicada flew into my helmet & splattered all over the right side of my face/ear. Remarkably, I didn't crash, but I did feel very well! Funniest cicada experience was on Sado Island, watching the Kodo drummers - one dived-bombed straight down the crack of my friend Paul's shorts (never to be seen again!) What is your best/worst cicada story?!

This week Rei wanted to tell me about his insect collecting hobby; I am sure his mum hates it!
Cicadas ("semi" in Japanese) are those enormous doodlebug size insects that make a racket this time of year. They really are a bit gross. The worst experience I ever had with one was when I was riding my old Kawasaki, quite quickly, visor open (need air!) & wallop - a cicada flew into my helmet & splattered all over the right side of my face/ear. Remarkably, I didn't crash, but I did feel very well!

Funniest cicada experience was on Sado Island, watching the Kodo drummers - one dived-bombed straight down the crack of my friend Paul's shorts (never to be seen again!)

What is your best/worst cicada story?!

listen to ‘Rei - insect collector’ on Audioboo

ghosts?!

I think you can see we had a lot of fun with our new topic yesterday - we will be talking about our bodies and doing more cool stuff. The trick I learned from my daughter's kindy was to use rubber bands as well as string to prevent tearing.

 

If you have got any cool masks you have made, why not share them?

A young reader reads :)

A little star called Rei blew this little reader away this afternoon. Can you guess what the key phonic sound was in the story? 

listen to ‘Rei & Jim read "Max"’ on Audioboo

How did we do?

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