Takurou's strip story

Takurou made this story in class today (his mates wagged class - too hot & humid!)

Takurou's Matsumoto by LunaTeacher

FAQs - High School & homestay in Canada

What would YOU like to know about living in studying in Canada, as an overseas student? Thinking about sending your kids?

Now is your chance to find out - leave your question(s) as comments to this posting.

One of our ex-students is popping in to Luna on Friday to 'say hello' - she has just come back to Matsumoto after spending two tears in British Colombia, graduating high school last month. I will be interviewing her for a podcast, and will put your questions to her. Podcast will be published over the weekend - subscribe on the Easy Listening page (tab above) so you don't miss it!

I love it when our extended family come back as all grown-up friends!

New podcast episode

Find the podcast player under the new 'EASY LISTENING' tab at the top of the page. (This is a new 'static' page, where you can find our podcast and many other audio resources - podcast recommendations etc.)

Check out the other pages too - how do you like the revamped look?

This podcast episode features a chat with ten year old Haruka about the last movie she saw - "Night at the Museum 2". She'd already read both books and is quite a fan!Do you agree with her choice of role model? How many people did Ivan the Terrible actually kill? Why is Al Capone "black & white"?

You' ll just have to listen to find out - and why not subscribe, while you are there? Never miss another episode  :)

Fuuka's avatar

Get a Voki now!

What's this/that? A good laugh!

Bon Bon update

Registration to join Luna's team closed on Friday, and we are delighted that once again we will have a full subscription. Thank you all for choosing to join us - we might be able to squeeze a couple more dancers in if you ask our super model Yuki (left).

As you can see, this year's t-shirt is a collectors item (as is Yuki) and is bound to popular and highly recognisable.

Starting point will be outside NHK, heading towards Agata-no-mori. Hardly ideal, as that is absolutely the 'dead' end of the festival. However, we may end up in the middle of town again...who knows! Meeting up at 5pm - 'getting in the mood'.

We are also booking a little yakitori (same as 2009) to carry on the festivities once the dancing stops. Shaping up to be an exciting evening!

Vocabulary Connect 4 : Chip-O

My little lads struggled a bit last week in the heat, and I wasn't on the best form either, getting frustrated with their lack of energy/brain power!

We are all mates again now, after a 'sound' game of Chip-O. Essentially 'Connect 4', with images of vocab on the board and cards with the words on to try & match. It is more interesting not knowing all the vocabulary, as that stimulates the kids to help each other/have a need to ask me questions - ahead of their turn, importantly, to keep the game moving on & not waiting for someone 'stuck' on their 'go'.

I love this game as a reading review/phonics lab - the game itself is fun and the teacher can rarely contrive the result (usually have to 'throw' a game so students win, which is boring & often transparent!)

Big Books, little readers

Show YOU are interested!

Action shots of Jim in action in the classroom are few & far between; Yuki is always pestering me for them though for promotion materials etc. So, seeing as she was helping out in pre-school today (Naomi off studying in Tokyo), she snapped away happily while I was reading one of our lovely BIG Scholastic readers ("I like").

Be active

Obviously (as I think it is obvious!) readers need to be interactive and engaging; milk the book for all it's worth and personalise it for maximum impact! In this case picking out the fruit we do like - and the fruit we don't like. Which fruit did we eat already today? Which fruit is soft/hard, what colours are they etc.

Most importantly of all, know your story!

As you can see, our pre-schoolers thoroughly enjoy a good book, and it is a lot of fun getting so much back from the children. I would say they are producing more spoken English now, before their 3rd birthdays, than most of our pre-teens who can only come to class once a week.

Engage

All the language they are acquiring at this age is going 'in', and being reproduced extremely naturally, frequently, and in context - with no pressure to perform.

Canterbury Tales writing project

A Holy Place in Japan

The Kofukuji in Nara is one of the oldest and historical places in Japan. It's a very quiet and holy place where a lot of famous and familiar statues of Buddha are. Inside the temple one of the statues is smiling while another is angry about something etc. They all speak to us without saying a word.

Sixty years ago a lot of youths visited to see these pagodas during WW2. They were sent to the place as a miserable soldier who had to battle for defeating war of Japan. Most of them were sent to die in the Southern Island for the sea of Japan and never came back home.

Well, Kofukuji was built in Nara by the Emperor Shomu and Empress Komyo about 580AD or so.

A very popular statue of Ashura. He's handsome and speaks of humanity.

Kofuji Park- The Emperor and Empress loved it. Also young and old people have loved it since old times.

Deer is very cute.

The Girl with Red Hair

Good evening Mr.T. You have just read a book called "The Girl with Red Hair".

Can you tell me about the main characters in the story?
The main characters are Mark and Kate . Mark works at Mason's store with Leon and Shami in security. He likes working in security and he is twenty-two years old. Kate has red hair and green eyes. Mark thinks she is very cute because he saw her on the security TV. Her sister Clair's little boy is called Greg, and she looks after him every Wednesday.

Does Mark meet Kate? How?
Yes, he meets Kate by dropping Greg's hat and he says to Kate "Is this your hat?" Greg had a red airplane and was near the door. Mark went to the door and stopped him, because he didn't want Kate to steal it. Then, in the Ocean Club (a nightclub with good music and nice girls) Mark saw Kate when he got a drink, and he met Kate and her sister. He was happy.

What kind of story is this, then?
This story is really funny and I liked it when Mark is talking with Kate at the Ocean Club and the store. It's a romantic story.

What kind of story would you like to read next?
I'd like to read a story which is a little bit harder, but very funny.

OK! Let's see what I can find on the shelf. Thank you Mr. T! Look forward to reading about your next book :)
Bye bye!

Idle iPhone designs

Yuta was the only one to turn up to class today - it's been very hot and the holiday season is looming...

Rather than give him a hard time with the books, I showed him how to draw a simple picture on my iPhone; as you can see, he got the hang of it pretty quickly! We then imported the images to VoiceThread and made the cool slideshow above, adding captions, comments and our little chat. He did most of the work himself, and looked rather chuffed with the result.

Fool on his classmates for not turning up! We had a ball! Thanks Yuta - goo job :)

Yellow chair chant & trusting your friends

This is a song/chant I've not used in class for ages, and I'd forgotten how much children enjoyed the challenge of listening hard for detail...when they really want to do something like colour a picture! An extra way I like to exploit the material is colour coding the lines in the song - our pre-schoolers are pre-reading stage for now - and it helps them sing-a-long/remember the song later.(The Yellow Chair Chant, from Let's Sing, Let's Chant 1, OUP)

Establishing trust and helping your friends is a very important part of growing up, and we've noticed with our kids a certain tendency called 'me firstism' closely followed by tantrum alert if frustrated. It was therefore very pleasing to see the girls lending each other a hand to walk along the wobbly causeway they'd designed, and telling each other to 'be careful'.

We have been working on combining short vowel sounds with consonants recently, and this game was a step ahead of where we really are in terms of learning, but it served a purpose which was to generate 'oh wow!' and also to notice there was a recurrent theme - ie a/e/i/o/u tend to get used a lot  "again?" they kept saying! Even a couple of weeks ago this game (My first scrabble) was 'too hard', but letting it 'settle' and having another go worked like a charm. I like the set up as it is colour-coded and self-correcting, the pictures are clear and colourful, and pieces unbreakable.

Another awesome day in pre-school :) 

Stop press! : Britain closes to foreign students

From the EL Gazette

"In a move that sidesteps the UK Court of Appeal and the Houses of Parliament, and right as the Gazette goes to press, the British government has given just 24 hours' notice of a change to immigration law.

The change bans adult students from coming to the UK to study English or any other course below degree level for more than six months, unless they have passed a specified intermediate English qualification at B1 level on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

A new list of qualifications comes into effect from 12 August; the only ones accepted for entry are Toefl, Ielts, the Pearson Test of Academic English and Cambridge Esol exams. Among the qualifications no longer accepted is Toeic, the world's largest English language exam, which is taken by over four million candidates a year and dominates in Korea and Japan, the two largest markets for English language courses in Britain...."

Luna International is a Cambridge ESOL Centre, offering exams at all levels - including B1 (PET & PET for Schools), year round. Contact Yuki Momose for details/dates (next PET exams available in November).

Wallace and Gromit invention advertisement

HwiSun

Not three yet!

Exploiting graded readers

I am a huge fan of the OUP Reading Tree series, because it offers so many 'angles of attack'. Not just an interesting read, with familiar characters and cool illustrations, but very subtle recycling of vocabulary and sensible progression of grammatical structures.

Students love the stories because silly things happen, and in not too many pages! I love them because a happy reader is a learner on the loose!

Reading (and listening to the narration) is an 'at home' extra to regular classes, but things often tie in nicely with a classroom task - today our JHS girls were trying to distinguish the different sounds of a "final s" - voiced /z/ or unvoiced /s/.

Listening was one tack. Reading aloud and holding fingers gently across our throats was a second - fingers feel a vibration, then your voice is 'working'. If no vibration, then it's just wind between your teeth, isn't it?

Green series "A new house" was just right; lots of final s. As a group, the class read the story with two colour pencils at the ready (pink & blue to match the coding in their textbook). The story itself was irrelevant! Pouncing on words with an s on the end and pronouncing it clearly until I nodded (they modeled the sounds to each other, experimenting/testing until it sounded right).

Trial & error breeds confidence when students self-identify patterns or rules, and will listen to each other's intuition before any teacher's voice 'goes in'.

Beer Party!

Come and join us for a cold one!

When?
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Where?
Daiich Kokan (rooftop beer garden next to the castle)
What time?
meet outside at 6:30pm, nomihodai from 7-9pm, party might continue until later..
How much?
Y3500 (about), meal Y1500 plus drinks Y2000
Meeting Place?
outside Daiich Kokan, entrance of castle opposite the Family Mart

Please let us know asap so we can book a table. Pleas note that payment is compulsory once we've booked, as the restaurant does not make any allowances.

Hope to see you there!

The Luna Team :)

My name is Keiji!

About me - Mr. T

Hi Jim,

My name is T****. I am Japanese and I ten years old. I live with my two big brothers and my parents, and I go to a school called *******.

I am 133cm tall, and I am thin. My hair is short and black, and my eyes are brown.I do not wear glasses.

I am cheerful and lively, talkative and extrovert. My mum says I am very cute and always smiling (I am not smiling today because I went to the dentist!)

In my free time, I love watching English cartoons on DVD, and I like playing with mum. I go to English lessons on Wednesday afternoons at Luna International. I sometimes read English books, but I didn't read last week because I was busy doing kendo.

This is about me, and please write back.

Best wishes,

T

Yuki-chan on Twitter

The fabulous Yuki is now on Twitter. She doesn't know how it works and doesn't have any 'friends'.
Please follow her?! http://www.twitter.com/luna_intnl