The Magnificent Seven

 

B1:Preliminary & A2:Key successes

Although it's been a pretty crappy year with travel restrictions, health scares etc, it's been a tremendous one academically, for our teens at Luna.

Every one of Luna's students who took a Cambridge examination this year was successful. That didn't just happen by chance! They have been studying hard, reading lots, and applied a positive attitude to class activities as well as homework.

A2:Key - firsts in both their schools

• Lifetime achievement at A2:Key for Schools
• Lifetime achievement at B1:Preliminary for Schools
• Lifetime achievement at B2:First

Each of these students began their formal assessment journeys with our Cambridge Young Learners programme, having taken one, if not all three levels previously. Very solid foundations, and step by step progress with "Can Do" motivation...wanting to show off their English language skills (and not being forced).

Gold Standard - B2:First

Some of our learners smashed their test first time trying - very impressive! Others needed a second or even third attempt to reach their goal, which in many ways is even more inspiring as many would just give up or lose heart. 

Missing candidate, chuffed sister & mum!

And we applaud our students who are have made their own choices in their studies/English learning, and have a clear idea of their road ahead...be it using English to study medicine at university, or not stressing out over centre exams next year but aiming for Canada instead. Others intending to be the first in their school to get the next level as well. Whatever your motivation, it's clearly powerful...and we hope inspires your peers to push themselves in 2022. 

If at first you don't succeed...

Well done all of you - very proud school/Cambridge Assessment English Centre owner!

Register for your next Cambridge exam with Luna International, offering exams 

Tokyo, Nagoya, Nagano at 

https://luna-jp004.jp/

 

After I graduate High School next year...

I will be a third grader next year, so I have planned what I can do when I graduate. 

I can study management from a famous professor at college in Canada. I want do it very much, but I will need to get a part-time job because it will be really expensive.

Playing music in a band is not so well-paid, and the income is irregular, so it will be hard to make a living.  However, I think it is important to  challenge myself for my dreams.

Another option is to travel around the world and discover new views and ideas. I think it would be  a lot of fun and extremely exciting.  There are so many places that I have never been to yet. However, it might very dangerous because there are lots of strange people with different ideas, so sometimes conversations might be difficult. In addition  it is not a stable life so I would have find accommodation and earn money.

What do you think I should do?

A holiday report - a teen writes

Dear Jim,

I went to a adventure park in Norikura with my family in the Golden Week.

My father drove our family car to Norikura. The road wasn't crowded that day. There were many

people in adventure park.

I played adventure. The activity was scary but it was fun. Zip line was very high but I like the wind during the zip line.

I ate very sweet ice cream at a restaurant in Norikura. It was cold and windy in Norikura. I had a really nice time there.

Posted for Ayumi

Another sixth grader writes...

My favourite day of the week is Saturday. In the morning, I always go to the brass band. After brass band, I usually go to piano at my grandmother's house.

We're shopping at the department store. My mother was a salesperson in Tokyo. She likes nice clothes. I do too!

I'm going to my cousin's home by car. We always have fun. Last Sunday it was sunny. We were at my grandmother's house; if it's sunny, we want to go to AEON.

It's my sister's birthday on February 23rd.My mother & I are making a cake. She's cooking a chicken too. The party is at 7 o'clock. See you then!

Posted for Karen (13)

A sixth grader writes...

My favourite day of the week is Friday. In the afternoons I usually sweep the floor, then I sometimes go to the supermarket in the evening.

We're shopping at AEON Mall. My favourite shop is a speciality tea shop & AEON Style. I bought two sweaters. They're so cute!

I'm walking to school. We always have fun. Yesterday, it was rainy. I hung out with my friends. It was fun.

My brother's birthday is October twenty-ninth. I buy a cake and a present with my mum.

Posted for Akane (12)

Our favourite teen TV shows

Momo:

My favorite TV programme is Sekainohatemadeittekyu. It's tells us about it's the world. Sometimes it's about animals other times it's about world festivals. My family watch it on Sunday in the evening. When we watch it,we laugh. I like it very much.

Yuu:

Everything (Arashi song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My favoriteTV programme is "VS Arashi". I see it in the evening on Thursdays. It's very interesting because Arashi is very nice and great. I watch it in the living room with Mam.

Mizuki:

My favourite programme is "Zip". I often watch it every day. It has a lot of short programmes, so I can choose favourite programme. It's interesting and funny programme. I can watch news, music, animal and culture programme.

Noisy little boys - after reading The Canterville Ghost

There are two noisy little boys in the story; are they familiar? 

Write about any noisy young children you know, and why you like (or don't like) them.

I have a niece and a nephew. As my older sister's house is near my living place, I often go to her house and stay with her, the niece
and the nephew. Since they were very little, they always talk to me at the same time or try to talk to me while another one is talking with me. As they were talking to me continuously even if another one still talk with me, I always admonished them that they have to talk to me one by one and listen the talk of another one. Now they are 13 years-old and 11 years-old but sometimes still keep me crazy. However, I like to talk with them as I can feel they have been growing by what they talk. Especially for the niece is very talkative, she often call me or LINE me to talk about her friends, schools and her parents.

Posted for Reiko

Leading a horse to water; how to make it drink?

After a month or so of "I don't know", "I guess", "Yeah", "Maybe" & "Not really" responses to just about everything we have tried, Damian & I have been scratching our heads & thinking outside the box for this class, considering a project-based approach. Our learner is far too cool for school, and his English far too good for a traditional approach...plus we know he will start yawning & pull his hoodie back up as soon as we revert to type & try to start teaching. A follow up to an in-class brain-storming activity never got off the ground because the written product was so utterly bizarre I did not know where to pick up...man-eating carrots, flying volcanic robots & reincarnation. My efforts to flesh out the narrative had us going in ever-tightening circles of teen logic & reticence.

Clearly this kid plays way to many games. A Placement Test we rely on had given us our first 'false' reading (I think) in that he was about 2 CEFR levels below where we had pencilled him, so we are still trying to establish a baseline level we can work from. OK. Writing didn't quite work out, so let's see what we can do about a vocabulary exploration.

Word Up the tool of choice here, expecting a short 'it's too hard/boring' after 20 minutes...but no. "Can I use a dictionary" and "I'm gonna loose if I just use 3-letter words, aren't I?" revelations. Uncovered a will to win/compete with people (not just programmes) and thinking about strategy - as well as accepting tips/hints to do better (after outright rejection at first - couple of big scores from me vs 'dog' did the trick!).

So, introspective reluctant learner wants to win - games - and has an impressive vocabulary. Dislikes traditional classroom approach but mum wants him to be given essays for homework! Gamification might be an answer; I have seen a few presentations now of using games for courses, but I'm not a gamer myself...I really doubt I could become a Minecraft ninja in a hurry and build this into a strategy. Likewise, I have no interest in descending into the depths of Second Life and all the escapist/obsessive traits that seems to bring out in people. Last thing we really want to do is loose this learner into an even deeper layer of withdrawal from us! Not that we can play crossword games every week either (fun though that would be for me!).

Conundrum. Any suggestions, fellow teachers?

Teacher looks up sleeve & finds trusted old chestnut!

"Janken" race (rock/scissors/paper)

 It has been a few months since I taught my slightly noisy & easily distracted crew on Tuesdays! We never have a problem together, as I simply refuse to let them have the 'independent' time they invariably spend nattering away in L1 with each other - suggesting they are either bored or not working hard enough..."finished yet?" or a cough & a glare usually does the trick for me!

To burn off some New Year energy & have a chance to discard coats we needed warming up; asking a partner "How many ....s?" & being unable to move until they answer with a full phrase = motivation aplenty to get steamed up & jumping around (then afer we can calm down & do some book work!). Teacher sits back and lets peer pressure ramp up the speed limit!

Commuters

At Luna we don't usually push classes in with each other, but a little bit of a necessity this week. Can't really use text books as that would be too hard or too easy, but with a bigger group an ample chance to do something completely different (but review & recycle something not different at all!). Break out the teacher's favourite old photocopiable resource (which I bought just after I did my CELTA - my trusty Jill Hadfield communication games) and relax in the firm knowledge that this exercise works just fine without much need for complicated explanations or theatrics. As with the younger kids, tonight's teens were keen to fill in their 'road map of London' with impersonal info (not too interested in talking to each other 'for real' - various reasons, age/gender/school difference among them). Oh, we finished early...let's use the other side and find out about each other after all then!

What's your favourite old chestnut of an activity, up your sleeve for a rainy evening in January?

Solving teen angst with Quizlet!

It can be really hard motivating teens in EFL classes, especially if they are knackered and would rather be playing baseball. Add into that a boy/girl demarcation line as wide as the English Channel...

So, sitting at different work stations is an ideal solution - and bizarrely far more collaborative as the competitive edge kicks in! Both were online to Quizlet and having a crack at the same vocab from the same unit of the same book....I almost didn't need to be there :)

Analogue Story Generator - a dice & a homestay visitor

This is a fun activity which worked very nicely in class with my returnee brothers and their English homestay guest in a one hour class last week.

I was expecting them to not be in the mood for a regular class, prepping for FCE, and also that our native-speaking guest would probably have a lot of raw language I could use more creatively...

Column 1: Superhero - think of silly name for the six rows, brainstorming eg people we know & admire, sports stars, anything silly...
Column 2: Villain - maybe a baddy we don't like from school or the news...
Column 3: Location - somewhere local, or a place we like or want to visit...
Column 4: An object - a favourite toy or super-power delivering tool...
Column 5: Main event - more dramatic/mundane the better...
Column 6: Ending - obvious? Challenged mine to come up with a sticky end, a twist, comic book, science fiction, sporty & surprising finishes.

Materials = piece of paper with 6 rows x 6 columns, and a dice. Pencils would be handy!

The brain storming actually took quite a while as I needed to filter suggestions a bit so we would end up with an interesting variety of outcomes (and publishable ones!).

Selection phase = students throw the dice in turn to choose a superhero from column one. Repeat for the other 5 columns: each student now has a very eclectic set of characters & bizarre storyline to concoct!

Embellishing = decide on a cast list for the main characters (Mum featured as did the teacher), a narrator, supporting cast, a title.

Homework - write a summary of the plot (rough draft). Aim = second draft with more detail, structure/organisation, Hollywood moment etc!

Immediate feedback = very entertaining interaction & entertaining suggestions - only told them the 'story' aim after we'd brainstormed all the 36 components (otherwise the'd have been filtering their own ideas - as it was they guessed they were going to make a story - but a horizontal one eg all #4s - and had tried to make things 'fit')

This activity would never work with my usual junior high school/high school crowd; it did work splendidly with noisy, energetic, imaginative, competitive teens. One-upmanship added a lot to the storyboard, and I for once was not 'the expert' - all I had to do was pass the dice around...and moderate the input!

Teenagers, how do you have fun?

Dear Brad,

I'm fine thank you. And you? I have been in Japan since third grade.

My sister makes me laugh because she is crazy. My friends make me laugh all the time because they are funny. Some movies make me laugh if they are fun.

I enjoy reading books because I could do it alone. I enjoy playing outside with my friends because we can do lots of sports and games.

I read English books for thirty minutes every night. I've read more than twenty of them since I was born. I play with my friends twice a week. I've done this since kindergarten.

I think having fun is really important because I can enjoy myself, share a good time with my friends. I also like going to school. I can meet a lot of friends and learn lots of things there. I also enjoy shopping - I like to buy groceries, clothes and especially pens.

From Ha-chan (I'm not a teen yet!)

writing task from unit 7, English in Mind 2 (CUP)