Fun with the First Years
1-3 is Iikura Sensei’s homeroom and I almost died from laughing during that class. The students were practicing telephone conversations and had to do a lot of pair work. During on part of the pair work I hear Iikura Sensei tell a student “I hate you.” I started to laugh and the student gave me a look because he had no idea what Iikura Sensei had said. The next time I see Iikura Sensei and that student Iikura Sensei is writing “I don’t forgive you” on the student’s paper. The student came up to me and asked me what it meant. I tol him that I did not know so he went back to Iikura Sensei. Iikura Sensei then handed the student a dictionary and told him to look up forgive. This seemed rather normal to me, the student knew what Iikura Sensei wanted him to do and started looking for the term. Iikura Sensei finally got frustrated with how long it was taking the student to look up the word so he found the correct page and then laughed at the student’s reaction to the word. It was great, I love it when Iikura Sensei jokes around with his students.
The students also had to write a dialogue between two people on the phone. I was walking around the room and I see “Are you free on Saturday? Let’s go to the mountain and take mushrooms.” I know the student meant pick mushrooms but it was still brilliant to see and I got a good laugh out of it.
The highlight was the “I don’t forgive you student” pointing to his friend and saying “He is a Baka” to me. I gave the student the dictionary again and told him to look up the term fool. He was very impressed that he could call his friend a Baka in English.
1-4 also had a highlight in it. The conversation started with “Hello cow? This is pig.” I didn’t get to see the rest of the conversation but it was still a very creative way to do the activity.
I have no idea what Iikura Sensei spends his time teaching his students but they have amazing English. One of the girls today looked at Iikura Sensei and said “I don’t understand this worksheet, who writes their name on it?” For a first year that is amazing, I have second years and third years who wouldn’t be able to come up with that sentence. Whatever Iikura Sensei is doing sure is working. I cannot wait to see how these students do next year in the interactive forum.