Day 37: Sukiyaki

Today I taught with Chuck Sensei in the fourth grade classrooms. Much of the English lessons are review, and today included much review of past material as well. It is difficult to teach the material to the students at a decent level of comprehension when we only see each student for two class periods a week. Therefore, review and application of the English they learn is essential. I reviewed the TH sounds with the students first, making sure they bite their tongue to make the correct sound. The Japanese have a tendency to pronounce TH sounds like and S. For example, they might say, "Sank you," instead of thank you.

Chuck Sensei and I took turns teaching numbers to the students. Number are great because the students are already familiar with the visual representations of numbers, and they need only know how say them. Numbers are not entirely universal as far as communicative language, but they are more so than words and phrases. We played some fun games in which the students were given a few numbers and they had to guess the order of the numbers that gives us the correct cost of something. For example, a light bulb is 134 yen. After working a lot with numbers, I worked on past tense with the students. I started with simple "repeat after me" phrases, but then moved on to simply asking them what they studied yesterday or what they did last weekend.

After school today I decided to go for a swim. It was not just the fact that this was the most humid day I have ever experienced in my life, but also that I will be swimming two kilometers with the fifth graders in a few weeks. Basically, I wanted to get some exercise and get a feel for swimming again. I am glad I did, because I realized what a workout swimming for distance is...I was dying. It is difficult, but I think it is important that I be ready to swim with the students. Most teachers just watch the kids swim, but I hope to spark at least a little bit of hope in the students when they are trying to make that long journey in the water. I am going to swim with them and make the event even more special for both myself and the students. In short, I need to start swimming more!

Yuko prepared sukiyaki for our last dinner together. Sukiyaki is sooooo good! Junpei flipped on the television during dinner and I could not believe my eyes; the television show Full House was on! It was great to see a familiar show. I used to watch Full House all the time, but this time it was in Japanese. Still, it was a very entertaining show. After dinner, we all went outside to enjoy some fireworks. Junpei ran around crazily with his sparklers. I kept thinking about how the Fourth of July is next Tuesday; I usually go up to our cabin in Woodruff, Wisconsin to watch fireworks. Junpei thought he would try to scare me when I was walking through the house, but I ended up scaring him so bad that he started to cry. I don't think he wanted to, it was more like a reflex. Poor Junpei. We played some silly games on the Harry Potter DVD, and then went to bed.