Elementary Activities

Hey Dudes ^u^ I had this great brain wave. Numerous people told me to post this stuff on line. I was all like, "But to get it to show up on the search engine, you need lots of hits. To get lots of hits, you need it to look pretty and be organized." Plus, I don't know how I feel about lots of hits. Sounds scary. But, with the brain wave, I was all like, "You know what, I'm just going to put it up anyway, pretty or not. It will be on the internet." So, for those who have suggested it, I have taken your advice. 

So... Why did I begin this? In my first days in the elementary classroom here in Japan I had no idea what I was doing exactly. I feel like this is a story that just about everyone has. I watched my Homeroom Teachers at the elementary school level navigate through the textbook and I learned a lot of activities by trial and error. For example, the first time I saw Karuta being played, I was mystified and delighted. I absolutely loved it. I also couldn't say "kaurta" correctly for the life of me for the longest time. 

At about the sixth month, I was ready for some more cohesion and reason to enter into my work life. Junior high schools were pretty straight forward. But the elementary school curriculum for foreign language studies was an irritating mystery. Maybe jet-lag and culture shock made me deaf to the advice given during Tokyo Orientation. Maybe unfamiliar websites like "Englipedia" were such a foreign matter, I quickly forgot I ever heard it. And maybe I'm just horrible at using a search engine. 

At any rate, after stepping on a few toes and interrupting a bit (REALLY sorry) to get to the point of my quest, someone said the magic words I was looking for: There IS a place where you can go to get activities specially tailored to the textbooks. They are all in one place and easy to find. So I checked it out. And I was immediately disappointed and discouraged. 

But I rallied and said to myself, "I know there are a whole lot of activities that the homeroom teachers know because they have it in a Japanese document somewhere. I'm going to find this document and figure out what in the world they are teaching when I am not there." Also, I really just wanted a list of activities I could "pull out of a hat" for a lesson. 

I began this project in May 2013. After I completed activities for grade five, Englipedia has posted a lot more in the Hi, friends! section of their website. If you've never been there, check it out at Englipedia.net*

Over this summer, I worked my butt off to transcribe the Teacher's Manual for Hi, friends! into simple, usable English activities for grade 6. If you're wondering, directly translating it would have taken even longer. I'm sorry, I do not ever plan on translating it. I also got my hands on a Japanese MEXT Lesson Plan copy. (Those translations ARE available on the net: check it out at Akitajet.com but, they mostly lack the evaluations, goals and learning targets for each lesson, which DO EXIST in the Japanese copy.)

What you see below is the finished product. It's not perfect, but it does the job. I've spent most of my free working hours for the last year and a half on this and am really looking forward to moving onto other projects. If there are any glaring mistakes, or some helpful changes to make the activities more usable, feel free to email me :) I will see what I can do. Credit to two of my co-workers for helping me type activities in for Book 2 Lessons 6 and 8.

Thank you for checking it out! 
Peace and love,
Nikki

Click the links below and it will directly download to your computer. I saved it in a .docx format. 

Hi, friends! Book 1 (Grade 5)

Good Games for Any Lesson--Grade 5

Lesson 1 Hello!

Lesson 2 How are you?

Lesson 3 How Many?

Lesson 4 I like apples!

Lesson 5 What color do you like?

Lesson 6 What do you want?

Lesson 7 What's this?

Lesson 8 What subject do you study on Monday?

Lesson 9 What food would you like?

Hi, friends! Book 1 (Grade 6)

Good Games for Any Lesson--Grade 6

Lesson 1 Review! What do you have?

Lesson 2 When's your birthday?

Lesson 3 What can you do?

Lesson 4 Turn Right

Lesson 5 Let's go to Italy

Lesson 6 What time do you get up?

Lesson 7 Momotaro Fairy Tale

Lesson 8 What do you want to be?

*In year 2020, there are plans to make foreign language study required to begin in grade 1 for elementary school students. Some schools may already have a language program for all elementary grades. Other schools are beginning trial runs for what the curriculum might look like. Since all of this is subject to change from school to school for the present time, I can only tell you the current vision for this curriculum as I understand it: The old eigo noto books, now called Hi, friends!, will be extended over all the grades. From what I've seen, it may be that fifth and sixth grade will remain with the curriculum that they have now. So that will mean that they will be reviewing the material and going to greater depths when they enter fifth and sixth grade. It is also said that the foreign language class for fifth and sixth grades will be graded and evaluated. Ie. it won't be an extracurricular class anymore. 

I think that if they do use the Hi, friends! textbooks in the younger grades, there will have to be a massive production of new activities and material. Much of the material already in existence is simply too old for the younger grades. 

I also hope that students will learn the basic phonics sounds for the alphabet letters during this time. I've been teaching students this basic phonics every time I see them, but four times a year simply isn't acceptable for this kind of learning. For now, I will remain teaching phonics as soon as grade 5 reaches lesson 6 (The ABCs lesson) and I will continue to try to get students to a point where they can learn simple digraphs and diphthong combinations (th, ch, sh, oo, etc.) Once I'm finished with my next project, I'll see if I can organize my thoughts on phonics in the elementary schools and post it here.