Of course the news since yesterday has been dominated by the tragic stabbings in Akihabara yesterday. Thoughts with all those affected...

Click below to open the quiz on some of the lighter stories making the news in Japan last week. As usual there's a top page consisting of headlines, blanked out words and pictures that should get your students talking followed by the actual stories cut and pasted to create a set of notes.

The Japan News Quiz (PDF)

Of course a s every Englishman or woman knows St.George's Day falls on the 23rd April. Well maybe not, a recent survey showed that only 1 in 5 knew the correct date of their Patron Saint's day. And I bet that most of those 20% were former boy scouts, who were made to parade through the centre of town every year. As I was...

Despite the lack of enthusiasm amongst the population of England any story that involves a dragon, knight in shining armour and a beautiful maiden is sure to be a winner with young minds. As well as giving us a chance to change the signboard and generate a bit of interest in the locality. So this week we've spent class time playing with these great masks from SparkleBox to act out the story of St.George slaying the dragon.


Although one student did call St.George a cowboy...

Before you dismiss the idea of playing snap in the classroom as way too easy and not a productive use of time, except possibly with very young learners who are yet to grasp the concepts of more complex games, take a look of this idea. It's a great little space filler or warm-up game.

Using a deck of picture cards deal the pack between the students. I usually just cut the pack into about equal piles. Play as snap but the children cannot say the item that is printed on the card they must say another word with the same beginning sound i.e. if the picture shows a duck they must say another word beginning with 'd'.

You'll be amazed at how difficult it can be to stop themselves saying the item on the card. My elementary aged students just love this game.

Here just for fun is the quiz on some of the stories happening in or to Japan in the past week or so. The PDF below consists of a cover sheet which you can give your students, who using their knowledge of the news stories can provide a summary of the story, which should lead to a discussion. Don't worry if you haven't been keeping up with the news, and who can blame you as the English language newspapers in Japan are pretty dull and uninteresting, I've included a brief summary of each news story in the notes.

Japan News Quiz 23rd April

Enjoy!

This was one of those ideas that came to me just before my per-schooler's lesson was due top start a couple of weeks ago. The inspiration coming from the second CD from SuperSimpleSongs.

There are two versions of The wheels on the Bus included on the CD. The first version is a 'Learn-It' song which means it's super slow so you can get all the kids doing a particular action before moving onto the next action. Nice acoustic guitar work too! The second version,Sing-It, sees a jump in pace and sound effects added to the actions. And because the children know what to expect they can really get into this version as it's pace quickens and finally slows to halt.

The picture above was taken after last Saturday's 'ringo class' which is our twice monthly sampler/play lesson. As this class is made up of children of different ages and abilities I've found the easiest approach has been to build the lesson around a simple theme. So last Saturday we started with some colours, looked at a few shapes, used some Tomy Cars to identify names of vehicles before introducing the song and then this simple craft. The craft is simply a rectangle of red construction paper, seven squares of white paper, one square of blue, and two circles cut from black paper. I also added a wiper! All shapes were pre-cut before the lesson so the students only had to glue the various parts in place. The children were then encouraged to draw some people on the bus.

The lesson was closed by a final singing of The Wheels on the Bus, and the children got to take their buses home to show mum and dad.