Awesome Teachers
Time to sing the praises of Kimura Sensei the wonderful office lady at Asahi Chu! Tomorrow is the health check and I made a note to check with Tsukune Sensei today to see what I needed to do for it but before I even asked about it, Kimura Sensei stopped me to tell me about it. She spoke slowly, clearly, and made sure I understood what I needed to do. No one had to tell her to remind me. Kimura Sensei knows how to deal with the ALT and I love that. She is always on the ball and makes sure that I know what is going on and includes me. The woman rocks!
As I have stated it is still early in the school year so I should hold off on singing the praises of anyone until all of the teachers fall into the school routine again but I have to talk about the second and third year English classes. The teachers (Okayasu and Tsukune Sensei) are amazing! They have a set way to run the class.
First: Review the pervious page/lesson
Second: Do the new words/check the meaning of the words
Third: Key Points - They write the key points on the board in numbered order and explain the points to the students. Okayasu Sensei even allows time for the students to ask questions. Many of the other teachers I have worked with don’t do this.
Fourth: Read page in Japanese and then have the ALT read it in English
Fifth: The students read/repeat after the ALT
Sixth: Lesson activities
Now what amazes me about this is that the teachers speak in English for about 50% to 60% of the lesson. They use Japanese to explain the important points and when they read the story so the students can double check the meeting but most of the other things are done in English. The teachers will say, in English, ‘take out your books’, ‘repeat after Erin’, ‘stand up/sit down’, ‘who will volunteer to read’, ‘settle down’, ‘stand up, read this two time, and then sit down when you are done’, ‘write this down’, and even more. The teacher’s really use English in the classroom and I think that is wonderful.