This morning was spent making two sets of first letter phonic flashcards for use in various games. Although we have a few sets of similar flashcards in the classroom, including my favourite set from the Early Learning Centre when I was back in the UK, I've noticed that when we play games like 'Go Fish!' many of children have difficulty holding their 7+ cards so that they can see them.
So the first task was to find the illustrations for the cards, fortunately Samuel and his team over at SparkleBox had a set of cards ready to download and print. In fact I'd recommend taking a look at the SparkleBox site to anybody teaching young learners. Although primarily aimed at those teaching children in the UK there's a lot that can also be used here in Japan.
Anyway I digress...so we printed two sets of the cards on thicker than normal paper. Also took the time to print a brick pattern on the reverse so you can't see through them! Cut them, laminated them, trimmed them and here they are all ready for those small hands in this afternoon's classes.

The news quiz is back again after taking a rest last week due to the spring holidays. Just as well really as the news was dominated by only one story, gasoline tax. I won't go into the ins and outs of the situation except to say that it's all very trivial and is mainly just a chance for Ozawa's DPJ party to keep the squabble with the LDP alive.
Onto this week and probably the most interesting story is the one included at the end of the Student Sheet in the missing headlines section. When I first read the news I was sure it was an April Fools, but further research led me to a carefully presented 73 page document so I'm inclined to think it's all above board. Have a read for yourselves and reach your our conclusions. For me it seems to be just another example of counting a field of sheep by adding up the total number of legs you can see and dividing by four!

Student Sheet & Notes

Have fun!

In a week dominated with further falls in the world financial markets and a fair few frankly bizarre cases of random stabbings in the local news let us bring you some of the other stories happening in and around Japan.

The Japan News Quiz 24 March (PDF 157KB)

The main story over the weekend centered about events happening on Wall Street and no doubt many of our students working in the financial sector here in Japan will have been keeping a close eye on the markets.
So this week I've tried to keep the doom and gloom out of the quiz.

The Japan News Quiz 18 March (PDF 187KB)

I've also loading everything up as one file, use the controls within Acrobat Reader to determine which pages you want to print.

I've had a box of Scrabble Junior lying around the classroom for ages, but had struggled to use it in my classes. Various reasons..but even on the easiest game there didn't seem to be much educational value getting students to lay tiles over ready spelt words.
Until today that is...in what can only be described as a flash of inspiration, I grabbed some card and cut it up into blank tiles. I then wrote lower case alphabet letters on. And voila! I now have a new game for reinforcing the lower case alphabet...which is essential if I'm to reach my goal of getting all our young students into the habit of reading!
So, if you've got a box of Junior Scrabble lying around gathering dust, get cutting that card!


...of course my ultimate goal is to have my students challenge me to game of real Scrabble (no pictures) but that seems all a long way off at the moment.