Planting acorns - Luna's Reading Tree

Current progress

Back in April, to coincide with the start of  a new academic year here in Japan, we endeavoured on yet another project: Luna's Reading Tree. As our students develop their reading skills, we wanted a reminder within the classroom of their progress as means of evaluation for both student and teacher. Conveniently, it also adds to the decor!

As part of our reading curriculum, the Oxford Story Tree series has been a staple to many of our young learners as their first steps to reading in English and beyond. Having only become acquainted with Kipper and the gang relatively recently, I've thoroughly enjoyed their grand, and at times bizarre, adventures alongside my students.

The first step

Part of the reason this series has been such a hit with Luna is the language progression, each story builds on the vocabulary from the previous titles to allow students to expand their vocabulary without getting heavily bogged down with too many new words. Each series also comes with an audio CD, to listen in class or at home, and a workbook focusing on the key words from the story. Both bring a great wealth of additional materials/content for children to internalize the language.

The entire series spans 7 levels, with each level represented by a different colour, while at Luna we use the first four levels: red blue, green and orange. We believe this provides enough of a platform for our students to begin discovering their own titles and genres to explore.

The secret room looking lonely

Luna's Reading Tree represents all 28 titles, in the forms of leaves, from the 4 series, differentiated by the different colours. Each time you complete the story along with the workbook, you add a customised acorn to the relevant "leaf" to show off your accomplishments. Our goal is to have a luscious tree budding with vibrant energy, although our initial plan may not come to complete fruition as the Oxford Story Tree series are no longer available to order in Japan.

Never fear though as we still have some tricks up our sleeves and an opportunity to discover other fascinating stories to spark our students' imaginations.

Rainy season heat

 A long rainy season has from early June has finally ended, but what is worse is the scorching sunny days after that. Most days this week were boiling, over 30 degrees Celsius . It is perfect weather for swimming in the pool in the P.E class. The heat is not so bad at night or during classes at school because we have fans to keep us fresh and cool.

 However, after school or at the weekend, I usually have badminton club, where we use shuttles which are very light and easily blown by the wind, so we close the doors and all the windows. This makes the gymnasium horribly hot and humid. I changed 4 T-shirts in about 4 hours and drank about 3.5 liters of water!

 I want to hang out at the beach with cute girls instead of playing badminton with big sweaty guys!

Posted by Takuro

After reading - A letter from an orang-outang

When I met you for the first time in Borneo,I thought you were so kind. You moved me from the small cage to the big one. So I was relieved for a while. Then I thought I would go home in jungle again.

But you "a sailor " were not totally good man.You put me in a small cage again and moved to a ship.I stayed for two months. That was a terrible journey. I felt seasickness everyday and I didn`t like the food you gave .In addition I hated the whip.

In Paris, the situation was almost same. I eally wanted to go home.

The trees in the jungle was my favorite place. In the Rue Morgue I saw the lightning-rod, I thought I could be on treetops.But it was different. I watched women. It was a badly stressful incident.

Fortunately I stay in the Zoo in Paris now. This is the quiet life for me. I hear you get lots of money instead of selling me. I never forgive you.

Posted for Hiroko

After reading - An unusual story involving an animal

Every Japanese knows Hachi,a akita dog. Hachi was born Akita prefecture in 1923. When he was 1year old, he came to Tokyo.

Mr.Eisaburo Ueno who was a professor of Tokyo University, Department of Agriculture by train. Mr.Ueno wanted to keep a Akita dog although he had had 2dogs.

Everyday when Mr.Ueno went to University, Hachi saw him to the door or to the Shibuya Station. And when Mr.Ueno came back home, Hachi went to Shibuya Station to meet him.

But, after a year, Mr.Ueno passed away by a stroke of apoplexy after a meeting of the University. Hachi didn't have anything for 3days after his death.

On the day of Mr.Ueno's funeral, Hachi went to Shibuya Station to meet Mr.Ueno.
Later, Mr.Ueno's relatives tried to keep Hachi, but it didn't work well.

After 2 years Mr.Kobayashi who was a gardener of Mr.Ueno's house kept Hacchi.He knew Hachi since Hachi was a baby. Mr. Kobayashi loved Hachi very much, but Hachi didn't stop to go to Shibuya Station to meet Mr. Ueno. On his way to the station, Hachi stopped at Mr.Ueno's house and looked inside of the house through the window.

One day Mr.Saito who was the president of Japanese dog preserve association knew about Hachi and wrote the news paper article about Hachi. Hachi became famous, people loved him.
10years later, after Mr.Ueno died, Hachi passed away.People atend his farewell ceremony and he was berried to the grave next to Mr.Ueno. Hachci's blonze statue was built at Shibuya station, and it is still there.

Posted for Yasumi

After reading Hamlet - a conversation between king and prince

Hamlet went to another world where he saw his father.

Hamlet: Father, at last I have killed bad Claudius for your revenge. I decided I had to kill him when your ghost spoke to me about your true death. That was too cruel.

Father: You did a great job, fulfilled my soul. It;s great, my dear son. But I'm sad you died and came to this world too young. I hoped you lived strongly with Ophelia for long time as Denmark's noble king.

Hamlet: I'm sad about Ophelia, her father Polonius and brother Laertes. I'm sorry forgive me.

Father: You were good, noble and gentle prince. You are loved by all people. But it's not enough to live as a king of Denmark for long time.

Hamlet: Yes I was. I should be more cruel for bad people. Next time we will again be in that world and be a most royal and complete king to Denmark.

Father: I hope so. We will live strongly without revenge or not to receive revenge from others. We have to live for long time. It's important.

Posted for Mine

Sensei, I don't have a story to tell...speaker's block & interrogative teaching

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Casually mentioned I was trying to teach "The Narrative Tenses" last Thursday evening, via Swarm,  and then had a bit of a 'mare doing so. Friend, inspiration and twitter vivant +Michael @mickstout promptly asked me about resources to do so. Oh hell, called out!

Back story = used to employ a DELTA-qualified teacher whose every second sentence was about teaching the narra'ive tenses (Geordie), how good he was at it (them?) and that we should all d'off caps & bend a knee to the genius before us. But seeing as we have never had that many students in the rarefied reaches of advanced storytelling...you do need a bit for YLE Movers but you can generally get by without having to display any grasp of the past perfect simple/past perfect continuous/etc...in fact if you even tried, I think the speaking examiner would shake your hand!

This particular class week was missing the storytellers, instead only the 'answers on the next page already filled in' students had turned up. Any story telling they do attempt is in L1. My 'pardon?' usually gets a 'No, no' + dismissive hand wave. Been there? Can never introduce something stealthily or creatively because my thunder eternally stolen "that's on p45"...

Nuts & bolts of had + past participle etc all diligently underlined. But grasping the actual concept? Timelines, arrows, arm waving...Jim sensei needed to hit reset and start again.

So not only scratching my head all week about how to rescue the befuddled students from last week's grammatical cul de sac, needed to actually impress a colleague as well - or at least try to reply.

My students share the same language, and are not natural story tellers nor inquisitors. Imagine the opposite of Irish or Italian, maybe? Any contribution usually delivered as a set piece, accepted universally & scarcely a comment or question there be afterwards.

As usual, simplest is best, and decided after rummaging my collection of supplementary materials that nothing was really going to present itself. I needed to detox the class from the dreaded G terminology & translation mindset, and in some parlance flip the classroom. Keep books in bags, concentrate on imaginative brain, banish pencils, avoid turn-taking & prevent dominant personalities railroading others. Time too for me to be quite a lot more intrusive than I usually am (inviting fluency and letting 'errors' go).

A board game with out story telling limits

Solution. A narrative.

Dived into the back of our games cupboard & found Never Ending Stories (sorry, that awful song will start in your brains too!) - for age 6+ it says on the box. Ideal. Very simple. Totally random. Players plop cards onto a board in turn, and develop a story as suggested by the images on them (characters, objects, locations) in the order they have been played. Past tenses great. But the 'forgotten' past?

Start at the end of the story and add cards to try to get to the beginning, back-filling detail as you go. This is where the teacher needs to be very involved asking for connections, suggesting links, checking/requiring details eg Were they married before? What happened? How did they meet? and letting the whole group contribute - player whose turn it is selects 'best help' and adds the bits up. Importantly, before the next turn, teacher as narrator recaps - helping everyone keep up with developments and providing a model. Embellishment with current events etc as they occur to you are great, as students then get to see the rationale for the tenses you are using, without focusing on the tenses you are using per se - at least if the story is interesting! I challenge anyone to recount the same (and ever expanding) story the same way twice without leaving bits out; students need to see this is the beauty of storytelling not the mental linear blockage some see it as. Grammatical flexibility gets you over the hurdle and you can 'keep going' without having to go all the way back to the beginning of the timeline and get things 'in order' Students love pointing out the teacher's mistakes....ask them if you left something out...and 'rescue' yourself with a post script.

How our story unfolded - narrative to come

So, for me, interrupt like mad at the creative brainstorming phase, establish chronology and link bits together grammatically - then let that part of the story be told however it comes out. Once a turn is 'done'; gently re-tell it to check you got it right (include 'corrections' here?), and help the other students with a second listening before connecting all the other previous parts.

So there has to be a digital way to do this, for classes with wifi & tech savvy learners.Voicethread would be one way to collate a final version, I think, and could be done outside of class/before the next class. Sock Puppet, minus the time limit, another idea. Fotobabble only gives you 90 seconds - but ideal per pic?

In class, with confident students I think a Pecha Kucha type approach might work. You could also trawl ELTpics or any theme in Flickr - or go random and use flickr as a screensaver (hands free, adjust time images shown to suit skills).

Another randomiser = give a student a slip of paper with a ridiculous scenario on it and have them bluster their way out of it - kind of Liar's Game. (eg "You were seen climbing out of a nightclub window at 8am this morning wearing a superman suit")  Of course allow questions from the floor. Big class, have 2 or 3 students sit at the front and have them tell a story. Only one is true, room votes at end of story & Q/A on which one. NB They can all be false, but the winner = most convincing liar?!

My favourite place - Kamikochi

Matsumoto is a city in Nagano prefecture, Japan. Because this city is surrounded by mountains, in winter it doesn't snow much like Nigata and in summer it isn't so hot.

The most popular place for tourism is Matsumoto Castle. The castle was built in the 16th century, and a samurai called Ogasawara was governing the whole country of Shinano (The old name of Nagano). It is a famous castle which never had a fight. And also it is called "karasu jyo". It means crow castle and this is because it is black. In Hyogo, there's a another castle called white heron castle and it is because it's white.

There are many other places to visit. Kaichi elementary school is a place where you can see combinations of the Japanese and the Western styles. Japan used to do national isolation for 200 years during the Edo period. When a man called Perry from the U.S. came to Japan, it ended. And many Western things came into Japan. This building is one of an example.

Taisho lake

My favorite place is Kamikochi. it's a scenic spot and it's being popular and popular. These days many people from cities comes to escape the summer. In Kamikochi, you can see lots of beautiful mountains of the Japanese Alps. If you climb to an altitude of about 1500 meters, you'll see a beautiful lake called Taisho lake.

Posted for Remi

E-mail to Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

I am writing this E-mail from Fotheringhay Castle.  You must be surprised to see my E-mail.  Tomorrow, I am going to die and meet my God.  You cannot imagine how I feel now, but my heart is peaceful and quiet.

Promise me.  Please take care of my son, James.  He becomes the King of Scotland tomorrow, but he is a young boy and doesn’t know how he should rule his country.  Please support him and never let him die by unnecessary fight.

Before God, I have to tell you the truth.  You may still believe I killed James’s father, but I didn’t.  I know nothing how Darnley died on that day.  I was not there when he died and don’t know who killed him.  I know I had a lot of enemies and someone wanted kill me, not Darnley.

You know, the King or Queen is always lonely.  I had a few good friends, but more than that there were a lot of enemies around me.  I could not believe the people from the bottom of my heart.

James will fall into the same situation with us.  I just hope he will find a good woman who will love him and support him all his life.

I did want to see my son, James before the end of my life.  Please pass my message to him, I really love him.

Yours sincerely,

Mary

Karen finds a huge computer

I lost control of my space ship and it goes faster and faster. It's broken but I'm excited. I come to a strange planet, land safely, and find my crew is safe.

Purple planet with local inhabitant!

The purple planet has small mountains and water, and I am wearing a spacesuit. It's cold - zero degrees!

I decide to explore alone because I do not like my crew. I find a tunnel and a ladder. I don't like tunnels because they are dark, but I go down the ladder because I met an alien. It's small and pink with three arms and two legs, and it can fly.

I find a huge computer. My computer is good, so I push a button. The computer explodes and I am very shocked. The tunnel collapses and I am trapped.

THE END.

Yu-chan`s final mission

Yu's cold green planet.

I lose control of my ship, and it goes faster and faster because of engine trouble. I don't feel good - I'm going to be sick.

I come to a strange planet, land safely, and find my crew is safe. It's big green planet. There are not any animals. I'm wearing a space suit. I'm cold. It's zero degrees outside.

I decide to explore alone - I am brave. I find a tunnel and a ladder. I like tunnels because they are dark, but I go up the ladder because I saw a flashlight. I'm excited.

I find a long corridor with four doors at the end. I want to open the gold door, but I go through the black door and enter a room with metal walls. A panel in the wall opens and I go through it. I find an elevator and want to go up, so I do, but the door closes behind me and I realise that I am trapped. I shout and shout, but nobody can hear me....

Mutiny on the Bounty– after reading

Pitcairn Island　- Use the internet and write about the people of this island now

Pitcairn Group of Islands consists of 5 islands including Pitcairn Island. They are the colony of England and located in the South Pacific Ocean. There are no other islands that the people live 300km around Pitcairn Island.


56 people live in Pitcairn Island. They are the children of marine who participated in Mutiny on the Bounty. They believe in Protestant Christianity. They do not drink any alcohols and not smoke. In addition, they do not eat pork and shrimp.


After 2004, England started to invest in infrastructure in the island. There is still neither a radio nor a TV broadcasting service, but the people can watch the overseas broadcasting for free through the satellite TV. In addition, the people can use internet through the satellite connection. On the other hand, they have neither gas nor running water. Although there are no water sources in the island, rain water is used for drinking water. 6.4km road is maintained. The people use bike or four-wheeled buggy for the transfer.

In 2005, the police office and school was founded. The police officers and teachers are sent from England. They are controlled according to the



same level of criteria as England.

Story maze - Yuto's space trip

I lose control of my space ship. I was flying in space to find a planet. It goes faster and faster because the aliens were pushing. I come to a strange planet, land safely and find my crew is safe. I decide to explore alone. I found a tunnel and a ladder. There are so many rocks in the tunnel. I decide to go up the ladder. I find a long corridor with four doors at the end. I go through the gold door and break the door and put the gold in my pocket.

Story steps dictated by the throw of a dice!

The corridor leads to a maze of one hundred corridors. There is a transporter machine at the entrance. I enter the machine then I came to a strange orange planet; I landed safely and my crew is safe too. I decide to explore around and find another tunnel. This time I go down the ladder and find a huge computer. A door opens when I push the button.

I found yet another long corridor, and at the end I go through the silver door this time. I am trapped.

Dream in Space - Nanako`s story

I am in my space ship going to the purple planet, when I lose control of it and it goes faster and faster. I feel scared because it`s fast.

Storyline from Nanako's story maze

I come to a strange planet. It is purple and small. I land safely and find my crew. Everyone is safe. We are wearing small space suits, and they are cool inside. We decided to explore in a group because it was scary.

We came to a hill. We go around it and find a deserted space station. We go inside it, but there is nobody there. It is a little dirty and smells like lemons. The computers are off. There is fruit on the table, but I don`t eat it because it is very yucky.

I find a comfortable bed and lie down on it. It is very smelly but I fall asleep. When I wake up, it was only a dream. I am back in my cabin in my space ship. We are still flying in space on the way to the space station on the purple planet.

We Can Do - taking Young Learners in Matsumoto

Proud, once again, to be able to provide Young Learners for our students in Matsumoto - as well as continue our open door policy and welcome children from Okaya & Yamanashi as well.

Space not an issue, as we rented the big room at the Fukushi Kinroshya Centre this year. Nobody told us the bell was going to ring at twelve noon, which made us all jump! That apart, everything went very smoothly indeed; well-organised Yukari, thank you. Everyone knew where to sit, which colour pencils to sharpen etc.

Are you ready to start?

This year we had takers for Starters & Movers, so some first timers looking very small on the big chairs and a wee bit nervous - not a bad thing; handling pressure once in a while is an important achievement.

Also some children moving up a level, and coping with a sizable jump in level. Needed to hand out a tissue or two...important we are all smiles at the end of the day, and the promise of an ice cream seems like a decent bribe!

Thrilling to know the children in our care today are measuring themselves against a global benchmark in tests that again let them display what they 'can do' and rewards them for having a go. We do not teach to pass the exams at all - we teach English, with strategies built in which enable learners to operate independently & confidently.

Newest YLE venue in Tokyo

Delighted today to announce that "Hello Kids" in Miyogadani (Tokyo) has become Luna's newest venue for Young Learners, and run their very first Starters session today...which takes me back to our own very first YLE session and the amazing feeling of pride I had when the likes of Sayaka, Wakana, Yumeka, Tatzi came bouncing out of their speaking tests in 1999 into mummys' arms...

Thank you Greg, Jeff, Hitomi et al at the school today for undertaking very new roles; it was obvious you all have a very close relationship with your students and care deeply about their performances. Thank you for digging in to your roles weeks ago & being on top of the job today.

At Luna we expect every venue, every session, to meet the MAXIMUM requirements of an Inspection; regardless of an inspector turning up or not. To that end we do not allow any new venue to offer YLE (or any other exam), through JP004, without them proving to us first that they can & will get the job done as per rules & regulations. It is vital all candidates are taking their examination in the exact same circumstances as another around the world, otherwise the whole process is invalid.

Delighted to report all the children seemed to enjoy themselves, so everyone looking forward to getting their certificates back soon!

Luna's anchor ladies - Naoko & Hiroko

Luna's anchor ladies - Yasumi & Olga

Health questionnaire - the results

Mmm, pie

I asked some questions about health to people through the Internet. People from under 20 to 80, 13 people answered it.

The most interesting question for me was: Question 4. In Japan, it is believed that blood types determine your characteristics. I agree with this. But 70% of the people disagreed with this. And I was surprised to hear so.

I was impressed that 77% eat breakfast everyday. I think in Japan, people who eat breakfast are decreasing which is not so good. In my opinion eating breakfast is the first thing to do after you wake up and it is one of the most important thing in your daily life.

I was curious why many people love meat than fish and vegetables. From this response I found out 54% love meat. And most of the people don't eat more than five kinds of vegetables a day. I think people who answered these questions should try to eat more vegetables and fruits.

First Aid - my first (painful) experience

When I was 7-years old, it was caught a finger in the heavy front door in my previous house.  The door of my previous house had a thickness of about 8 cm and was so heavy.  It had strong pain and my nail of injured finger was gradually turned purple and finally whole nail of injured finger turned to purplish black.

When 2-3 month passed after injured, I visited a small farm nearby my grandmother's house and gathered grass to give to goats, sheep, and houses etc. After I gathered grass a few times, I found that my injured nail was removed completely without any pain. I couldn't find removed nail in grass field.

Have you ever seen under the nail? I have memory that under the nail, there was winding muscle? construction like large/small bowel and it was not good to see for a while. At that time, I was given first aid.

I couldn't remember how long new nail took to grow. I am sorry that I didn't carefully saw my nail's growth at 7-years old and didn't take any picture. If I have iPhone at that time, I will take many photos and update my nail's growth to twitter.

Posted for Ritsuko

Paradise - my idyllic place

I traveled to Fiji three year ago. I stayed Fijian village and resort.

As per this reading book, Fijian people was really friendly. They said to me "Bula!" in the town. In country side in Fiji, there was no enough electricity. Also, I could not take a shower. There was some difference in Fiji compared with Japan. But I liked the place because people was really friendly and there was beautiful sea. I could swim in the beautiful sea and watched real "Nemo"! Also, I could see beautiful coral reefs.

Fijian beach near Nadi, Viti Levu

For resort area, the commodity price was expensive than local area. The water was twice price! But the hotel was luxury and relaxed. The staff's hospitality was great! They gave me smile a lot.
The food was delicious. Fijian food also was tasty. There were Indian people in Fiji, so I could eat spicy curry with naan.

I liked Fiji so I would like to live there because the time is spent slowly. I can enjoy swimming in the beautiful sea. Fijian people is kind. But I prefer to live urban side (Nadi is better). I want to take a shower everyday and need electricity!

Posted for Miyuki