Open week at Luna

Classroom questionnaire - involve mums!

 I love Open Week!

This is the chance we get to show mums and dads how well our students are doing, and how they are doing it. In the last year we have made big efforts to share our work with Edmodo, but there's nothing like an actual peek around the classroom door. (Of course, parents are welcome to come and see what's going on anytime...we wish even more parents could come, because there's so much cool stuff we want to show them!)

On Tuesday afternoon, nearly all the mums came to see Jim's busy class, which uses the Primary Colours coursebook. As we had a decent roomful, it was a great opportunity to move around more than usual and get unexpected answers. It also meant mums were as engaged in the activity as their children were, and got a feel for the language/interaction instead of merely looking over shoulders. Frees the teacher up nicely too, to soft pedal any classroom management issues.

Mums on the spot

This class has covered topics like numbers, colours, and school bag/household items lately, and can handle questions from the teacher if they are in context. I wanted to put them in charge of the questions today, and deal with answers they had not heard before. eg Japanese children (maybe all?) want to tell you every single colour that might be on their t-shirt/pencil case/socks...funnily, today mums did the same. Thank you. There was only one 'space' for the answer to go in, so they had to rationalise the answer! (And everyone realised a simple answer works best).

Each child had a slightly different questionnaire to complete, asking everyone else "What colour is your...toothbrush/bike/bag etc?". They then wrote the name of the respondent (all up on the board to copy) in the right row/column (itself something this class needed to be taught to do, which astonished me at the time). Once finished (only just in time) we coloured our charts as a nice bar graph. Mums got a first hand experience of their children speaking English in action (not the odd word or out of context) and were able to assess for themselves pronunciation, memory, letter formation, interaction and behaviour.

We are looking forward to seeing more parents through the week, and are really keen to give face to face updates on progress, problems and praise. Come on and see what's going on!

Managing a want-out child

 I was worried about this class all week. One of the boys had complete conniption (had to spell check that!) last week and blew my game plan out of the water. Trying to maintain a class and at the same time have an in-building truant to worry about is not easy. Flat refusal to come back to the class (I'd asked him to move because he was disturbing his neighbour, fled the room in gales of tears) but also to go anywhere else, like downstairs to mummy (and therefore get 'busted').

I gave him time to calm down (and me too) and maybe figure he was missing out on a fun activity (he did miss out, and was peeping around the door to see what we were doing). His friends decided to go and get him, but that didn't work either (they were very nice about it, but they gave up in the end and got back to the game).

Eventually it was obvious he wasn't coming back, and I didn't want him to get pointed at when other students came upstairs - nor did I want to set a precedent i.e. bailing out of class is OK. His mum also needed to know what had happened without a big song & dance/in front of his peers, give them a chance to go home a bit early & minimise the crushing embarrassment etc. Loads of wailing...

I made sure mum got the message that I did not need bowing at profusely this week before class. An apology was in order, and I got a quiet one as we trailed the others into class. No big deal - please behave?

Any prizes for guessing who was the star student this week? Funny how it goes like that. Tested the limits, found the breaking strain and didn't enjoy the result. So, maybe now we can stay in bounds and lead the class rather than trip it up.

Primary Colours (or Colors?) in action

Peeking over Moeka-chan's shoulder to see how she was doing with the hide & seek game in Primary Colours; really well! Kids love the satisfaction of sorting out a puzzle like sequencing objects, matching or guessing their partner's favourite stickers...it also means the teacher doesn't have to do much at all in class except sit back and nod as the children grapple in English!

OK, it's 'color' not 'colour'? Yuck! We had to resort to the American Edition because the British one is not stocked in Japan. Despite this handicap :) we are still making lovely progress and mostly smiling all the way!

Good job kids!