February: Running, Spoons, and Awful Candy

February began with our school's annual Marathon Day.  For those who don't remember or didn't read my post on last year's event, the first and second year students have to run a 6km course in 50 minutes.  Those who can't complete it in time have to do it again on the day for absent students.  I asked my supervisor what happens to the kids who do it again and still can't complete it in time, but she didn't actually know.  Either way, it's not a good time.  For the kids.  I had a blast, but my job is to stand there for a couple hours (the boys and girls run separately, so I'm out there for two 50-minute circuits) and cheer them on.  No pressure for me!

Before this, back at the end of January (and something I forgot to write about, which happens often) the second year kids had another run that they had to complete.  I have no idea how long it was, or what time they had to do it in, but they got fed at the end.  I was invited along with some other teachers to help make the soup that the kids would get to help warm them up.  It was my first time making authentic Japanese food, so that was awesome.  We made tonjiru, which is a basic pork soup in miso broth.  I'll be honest, there were some things the other teachers were cutting up that I have absolutely no idea what they were, but all in all it made a pretty good soup!  (I was given a bowl to "test" before we served the students.)

So, yeah.  My school runs a lot.  So weird.

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but way back when we had the exchange students from Australia, I introduced the game SPOONS to my conversation students.  My family's played this before, and we really enjoyed, and I have a scar from a rather intense game with friends in high school (rules to live by: 1. Never play with rings on. 2. Never play with long nails. 3. Never use plastic spoons).  Anyway, so I taught them this game, using erasers instead of spoons because obviously we don't have a bunch of spoons laying about in a language lab, but I made my own decks of cards rather than using a traditional deck.  It would have been too easy for the students to collect numbered cards, plus they wouldn't be learning or practicing anything since the game doesn't require speaking, so instead I made decks that required them to collect four tenses of the same verb (write-writing-wrote-written).  They really enjoyed it, so when I was stuck for lesson plans for my first years, I decided to introduce the game to my first years as well.  However, as lovely as some of my first years are, most of them are really, really bad at English and the verb tense cards would have been too difficult for them.  Instead, I made cards with different sets of four words that either we learned this year or they would have learned in middle school (animals, school subjects, colours, etc).  They LOVED it.  One class in particular even requested that we play it again at the end of the year, so I brought it back as their exam review lesson.

I also had a Valentine's Day lesson this year, since I wasn't following any kind of textbook or specific content guide.  I decided to introduce my students to Sweethearts, those awful conversation candies for Valentine's that taste like chalk that no one actually enjoys.  They thought my description was hilarious.
Me: So, we have these candies for Valentine's Day that are very traditional, and are a popular gift, especially when you have to give candies to a large number of people, like a whole class.  But no one actually likes them.
Class:  Eeeeh?!
Me:  Yeah.  You know how conpeto (a Japanese candy) just kind of tastes like sugar and not much else?
Class: *all nodding*
Me: Okay, so imagine that taste, but the feeling of eating it is like eating a piece of chalk.
Class: EEEEEEH?!?!
Sadly, you can only get them at specialty stores in very few places (Ros did find some in Tokyo) and they'll be in tiny packages that cost way too much for what they are, so I couldn't actually inflict them upon my kids.  What I did instead was made pages with hearts on them with actual messages that you can find on the real candy.  For my first years, they got a paper with four easy ones, and had to write at least one sentence for each of the words or phrases.  For my conversation class, each page only had one heart with a word or phrase, but some of them were more difficult, and they had to write a five-line dialogue using that word or phrase.  I got some pretty creative ones!

One of the last things I did this school year, just with a couple classes who ended up with more lessons than the other classes, was a "pub quiz" style lesson.  I had three rounds with the themes 'Grammar and Sentences', 'Vocabulary', and 'Dictation', plus a bonus round with general knowledge, questions about me and Canada, stuff like that.  They really enjoyed that activity, too, but it's definitely only something that you can do at the end of the year, otherwise you wouldn't have enough material to work from.

That's all for February (that I can remember right now)!  Not sure how much there will be to tell about March.  March is the "I get paid to click around the internet" month because there's nothing for me to work on for classes until we get the new staff and class assignments after April 1st.  Yay.