Every week we do a little craft that coincides with the theme.

Angi made these cars in the preschool, and they were really really cute. So I stole the idea and am using it in my class this week. So, I enlarged the template (we need more space to glue on the vocabulary) and cut out two cars for each kid. I then glued them together to make it more sturdy and drew on the windows and handles. Using stickers, I made the head and rear lights, and to top it all off, toilet paper roll wheels.

The kids get to colour and glue on the vocabulary as well as colour and put on the wheels.

This is the demo I made for the class.

They’re going really well!
The kids love them and the parents think they’re cute.

Win.

So, for example, if they say something like tento, for tent, we’ll get them to say it again and drop the ‘o’ on the end.
Most of them understand that it’s incorrect pronunciation and can fix it in a try or two.

One of the lessons we were doing included learning a set of new vocabulary that focused on words that have an o followed by a silent e (which makes ‘o’ say it’s name, instead of sounding like it does at the beginning of the word octopus). For example, bone. The level that we teach this at usually has kids from 8 – 11 years old.

We had already read the new vocabulary words that we were learning, and were going through the visuals one more time to check comprehension and pronunciation. When we came to ‘slope’, a lot of the kids were saying, ‘slo-pu’! So naturally, trying to point out this mistake I said, ‘SLO-POO?’ putting emphasis on the ‘oo’ at the end.

As soon as it had come out, Angi (who was observing that day) and I burst into fits of incontrollable laughter. Then to make matters worse, Angi adds, “constipation?!”. The poor kids didn’t get it and were severely confused about what was going on with the two teachers in the room. A couple of them even asked what we were laughing at or why, but really, that’s just one that doesn’t need to be explained from me, haha.

So now every time we’re doing our ‘magic e’ vocabulary and I come across ‘slope’, I can’t help but smile.

It’s pretty cute though.
And the boy who told us, is hilarious. He stays like half an hour after class is over, just to hang out and talk, haha.

There’s another another boy, who has a crush on one of the girls in his class. One day she came in saying how she had a date, and he was all huffy, saying things like, ‘You’re too young to date!’ ‘That’s so stupid!’. They’re only seven, so it’s nothing serious, but it was pretty funny.

Oh, there’s also M. Who used to give me a really hard time, but lately is being awesome. She was so good in class on Saturday, so I made sure to tell her mum what a good job she did. Her mum was really happy, so she was like YAY WAY TO GOOO and that made M super happy as well. So hopefully we’ll continue down this path of awesomeness. She would also like to go drink tea with another little boy who takes English lessons with us. They are six.

In other school related news, one of my classes now says ‘awesome’, because I say ‘awesome’ all the time. They are four and five. It’s… for lack of a better word, awesome.

I also have a little one, who’s two, who now knows the word ‘no’. Her mother probably hates me, because she frequently says, NONONONONOONONONONO. She’s super cute though, and sounds like Pengu — and I mean that in a good way. She’s just two, so you can’t expect her to have amazing language skills at this point, haha.

This past week was a really good week at school. My classes went really well, for the most part. Oh, and I learned from JW (who is seriously adorable, he’s a chubby little boy who’s just super genki) that if you don’t eat carrots, you can’t make it into first grade.

I have one class on Thursday that’s all boys. It’s one of the most fun classes to teach, because they’re a great group of kids who are really funny and just like to have a good time. The only downside is that they do speak a lot of Japanese in class, when they’re not supposed to. They also know they’re not supposed to.

So, when they start speaking a lot (asking questions to better understand is one thing, but F especially just chatschatschats in Japanese… or English…. he just talks a lot in general. Awesome kid, though), I remind them that it’s ‘English time’. Every time I go, ‘It’s English time!’ They all go, ‘ENGLISH TIME!’. I have a class (again of all boys, and again really fun because they get along well and joke a lot) on Saturday who does the same thing.

But in the Thursday class, it’s too much, so it gets to be a problem. No one likes having their name on the board, and I don’t want them to thing speaking Japanese is bad, I just want them to know that it’s time to practice English. So we’ve made a little game. Everyone gets their name on the board at the beginning of class, and everytime they speak and exessive amount of Japanese (and not being a legitimate question) they get a strike. It’s three strikes and you’re out, but no one’s gotten that many yet.

It’s funny, because they like to call each other out. So if it’s like two words, you get their other classmates going, ‘JAPANESE! JAPANESE! JAPANESE!’. The one who spoke in Japanese, usually goes, ‘NONONONONONONONONONNONO’. And sometimes they decide to tell me that they were speaking Chinese instead (which clearly it’s not, because I understand Japanese and I don’t understand Chinese -_-).

Anyways. It’s fun. That’s the main point behind that.

Next week is Halloween, and I’m still trying to decide what to wear for a costume.

It’s basically just a variety of presentations from people who have experience with teaching English in Japan, and you can choose which presentations you want to attend.

Eri and I went to three. The first one, the presenter didn’t show up. But, the representative from the company that publishes the book she was going to be talking about was there, and he talked for a good while instead. He was great, funny and easy going. I talked to him later, and he was really nice.

They also had a great book that we’re thinking of using in some of our classes, so I’m excited about that. It’s a writing journal, and it has 90 different prompts to start kids off. Basically, they can write as much or as little as they want. My boss seemed to like it too, so we’ll see if we get it or not, haha.

The next presentation was all about phonics, and how EFL learners learn to read, and how they are generally, currently taught. Honestly, it was a lot like being back in school, haha. It was obvously quite linguistic based, so it had a lot of overlap with the courses I used to take. I enjoyed it a lot, and it made me want to start getting back into studying more linguistic stuff.

Especially and socio-ling. I really loved socio-ling.
I wish I still had access to my university’s online database so I could read articles for free, haha.

After that we headed to lunch, at an Indian place and had curry. CHEESE CHICKEN CURRY FTW. It was fun though, Sean came too (he actually invited us) and he paid, which was super sweet because he didn’t have to at all. Eri and I were surprised.

His presentation was that afternoon, and he needed some more photocopies, so Eri and I offered to go make them. Oddly enough, I had a stapler in my purse, so that worked out well for stapling them together. Yes, I have weird things in my purse. A fork, included.

So yes… we watched Sean’s presentation which seemed to go well. He talked about 5 good games that get 100% participation in the classroom. Of course, these are games we use at school, so it was cool to see him teaching other people about them.

I feel really lucky to have a really great boss, and awesome co-workers. I think I can definitely say I lucked out on this job… well, all my jobs really.

And speaking of other jobs, the next post is memories from the campground.
Why? Because I can.

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Anna Maria e-mailed me asking me if I could teach Japanese again, because Hiroko has to return to Japan for family reasons. Although I’m glad to be teaching those classes again, the cirucumstances are obviously less than desirable. Hiroko is extremely nice, so I sincerely hope that everything is okay.

I started my CV and I’ve been actively looking for jobs to apply for. There’s a good number that are seemingly looking for applicants, so I hope I can find something that works for me. There are two right now that look right up my alley, one wants candiditates who have experience in working with and preferably in teaching music and the other is looking for a Speech / ESL specialist, which my education at University specialized in, so that’s great too. I love linguistics (even though I don’t talk about it much, I truly find it fascinating) so that one sounds really great too. I don’t know if I’m quite qualified enough for what they’re looking for, but everyone keeps saying that it doesn’t hurt to apply. If they say no, they say no. At least I can’t say I didn’t try.

I also wrote Jackie asking her for advice and some guidance about my certificate, and I got a contact address for the gentleman in charge of the ESL program in the area so I can contact him to observe a few adult classes (I need some observation hours in a different location for my certificate).

So yes… I did all this yesterday, haha. So I feel like I’ve done a lot in the past twenty-four hours or so. I still have to work on my CV… and I’m anxious about it for some reason. I’ve never applied for a job before, so it feels like this huge ordeal. I also have no idea what to do for a cover letter, but I guess I should finish the CV first and work on the cover letters as I make my way through sending applications and whatnot.

But yay for teaching Saturday classes again! Most of the kids are different, because a lot of my kids from last year are in high school now (which officially makes me feel old) so they can’t attend any longer. The only thing is I have no idea where they left off, and I feel bad e-mailing Hiroko now, becuase I’m sure this is the last thing on her mind.

The only downside, of course, is having to be there at like 9:00am ~_~ That makes me wish it was like the OCOM and right around the corner from my house… but alas, it’s in Niagara Falls. Same school and classroom as before (I filled in one day for Hiroko at the end of last year). But it’s that school that I drove past like, four times when I was trying to find it the first time I taught there. -_- It’s behind a church, so it’s really hard to see from the main road and I swear there’s no sign.

Now that I say I hate being up early on Saturdays, it is kind of nice because a) I can get a breakfast sandwhich on my way and b) it’s nice to be up and moving early, so that you have the rest of the day ahead of you.