#elementary esl

Animal Crossing/Spring English Board

So Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out around this time last year. Everyone was super excited about it, and every ALT I knew was doing Animal Crossing English Boards or decorations. I wanted in on the hype, so I made my little Animal Crossing board that I thought was super cute and the kids would love….and then the schools closed and absolutely no one saw it. It’s now a year later and there…

So here’s the board as a whole. I’ll go over all the bits and pieces next.

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The interactive activity for this board is to have the kids vote on what their favorite flower is so we can see what the favorite is in school. The selection of flowers to choose from is honestly just what came to my mind at the time.

I voted for sunflower!

Next, is some vocab words for spring. These are also just what I could think of at the time, so they might be a bit random. Using vocab words related to particular seasons or events is one of my favorite things to include on my boards, because it gives the kids a chance to learn words that we wouldn’t necessarily be studying in class.

This little guy is my town’s mascot, Suisen-chan. Our town flower is the daffodil and Suisen-chan is a daffodil boy, so I knew I had to include daffodils in the board. Honestly making those daffodils was probably the hardest part of this entire board, because I am really not good at paper crafts.

That about finishes up the spring-related parts. On to graduation! I figured it would be a good idea to point out the most important graduation-related word: congratulations. Whenever I write vocab words in English, I always make sure to include the katakana readings as well. This makes it so students won’t be intimidated by the reading and may actually be able to identify the sound of the words.

As graduation nears, I’ve had many students ask me about my experience with elementary graduation in America. They are shocked to find out that elementary school graduation isn’t a thing AND that by the time I was in 6th grade, I was already in middle school. Because of questions like these, I decided to make this chart that compares grades in the USA and Japan.

As always, I have a note from Gunma-chan and I for the students. This time, we’re wishing the 6th graders well as they move on to middle school.

And of course, to celebrate graduation and the epitome of Japanese spring, I added some cherry blossom branches. Of all the educational signs and design I put into this board, my fellow teachers were by far the most impressed by the branches. They even said that walking by my board gave a feeling of hanami (cherry blossom viewing), which has also turned my board into kind of a sightseeing spot that teachers who wouldn’t normally go by have gone up to see. So that’s still pretty satisfying, even if they aren’t actually appreciating the English in the English Board.

Summer English Board – Version 2

We’re back from summer break! But of course it’s still hot as hell and we’re all kind of sluggishly dragging ourselves around. Huzzah.

This English board has a lot of elements from last year’s summer board, with a couple new sections.

The first section is from last year – what various characters like doing in the summer. It’s fairly simple, and is mainly intended as a cute vocabulary…

Shit Children (and Coworkers) Say: Part 2/∞

7/16/19 – Korean Koalas

Today I was helping a 5th grader with his self introduction and talking about things he likes when he came out with “I like Koreas.”

We both sat there and thought about it for a minute.

“No! I like koalas!”

It’s ok, kid. Korea, koala, tomato, tomahto.

9/4/19 – Surprise Test

Sat next to a kid in a class to try to keep him quiet for a bit. This didn’t work at all, as he…

First up, because of the release of Animal Crossing New Horizons and my continued frustration that I don’t own it, I made an Animal Crossing hanami scene.

We can’t hanami, but we sure can still stick cherry blossoms on every available surface! After some digging around, I’ve discovered that the Animal Crossing font is called Fink Heavy and you can download it for free off some font databases.

Next, I have a polling section where students can use stickers to say what they did over their very, very long spring break. I came up with six general options, which I’m sure means that I’ll have kids coming up to me and pointing out that they did things other than what’s on the board.

Finally, I have a small “welcome back to school” sign on the opposing wall.

I have no idea when the students will be back/if it will still be spring/if all this work was pointless. But honestly, it’s not like I didn’t have 40 hours a week in which to do something besides spin around in my office chair.

As the late, great Terry Pratchett said “There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times.” I never thought that interesting times would be a curse, but I could certainly go for things to be a bit more boring right about now.

Some of the elements are recycled from last year’s winter board – like these characters saying what they like about winter, and the winter vocab cards. Although I had saved last year’s materials, I ended up remaking them all again anyway. In the year of making English Boards and looking back at my old materials, I’ve discovered that I’ve gotten much better at making things and my old things are kinda ugly. So my pack-rat tendencies and my box of saved materials to reuse may not do me as much good as I thought they would. Sigh.

My JTE has been pushing me to include more things about cultures around the world on my boards. So this next section involves absolutely no English, but whatever. My prefecture is very well known for its onsens. I decided to introduce the kids to other hot spring/bathing cultures around the world by asking “I wonder if there are onsen in other countries.” Actually here Gunma-chan is doing the asking for me. Very helpful. I chose to use hot tubs in America, sauna in Finland, the famous Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and Middle Eastern Hammam to discuss. Each paragraph has a brief explanation or some fun facts about that kind of bath.

The next section is about the next Japanese holiday coming up – Setsubun. I translated the famous phrase for the holiday; oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi (鬼は外、福は内) into English, and added some items that are part of the festival. I also made this super cute demon face which I’m very proud of. He’s adorable.

Finally, I have the word of the month. This word of the month was inspired by me sliding across the parking lot and sidewalks all the time. Only two-ish more months of winter to go….

I tried to do half-and-half for the two themes, but I had more fun with tsukimi

Undoukai

Let’s start with the sports day side of things. I came up with a list of vocab that the kids would recognize from their undoukai practice. Whenever I do Japanese events, I always include a sign to teach kids the English translation of the event and its pronunciation. In this case, undoukai’s translation was “sports day.”

Most American elementary schools don’t have anything as formal as undoukai, but I do have fond childhood memories of Field Day. I chose some events that I remember from my elementary’s Field Day, and that I knew this school didn’t do for undoukai. The kids always like pictures of things from the USA, so I thought this would help catch some interest.

I had made up the name Ribbon War because I have no idea what that game is actually called

Tsukimi

What starts off a tsukimi theme better than a big ol’ moon? Nothing. I was very concerned that my moon looked like cheese, but everyone just stared at me like I was deranged when I mentioned it. Tsukimi is all about looking at a gorgeous full moon, so I included a sign for “full moon” and another sign in Japanese explaining what it meant. I don’t usually use a lot of Japanese (except for katakana pronunciation) but I sometimes will use it for explaining/defining things.

Next is the topic of the moon rabbit. Most Eastern Asian countries have a legend of a rabbit somehow ending up on the moon. I wanted to use this to introduce the man on the moon. You have no idea how hard it was to find a picture of the man on the moon that wasn’t completely pervy and creepy. Ugh. I also found some outlines of the shapes on the surface of the moon, because I thought this would make no sense otherwise.

Again, here is a sign translating the name of the event. I’ve recently really gotten into origami, so I made a ton of bunnies and put them everywhere. I also have some tsukimi dango up there to set the mood or something. Really, I just thought it was cute.

Other Stuff

The word of the month generally doesn’t have any relation to the theme, just because I don’t think that matters too much. Or I’m not creative enough. One of those.

It continues to make me crazy how popular the Interview Corner is. I’m very happy that this idea worked out well for me. I’m also very annoyed that this is the most interesting section of the board to the kids and not what I actually came up with (ꐦ°᷄д°᷅)

Finally, with the kids all busily practicing for undoukai, some of my classes got cancelled. So I took that time to make a vine of morning glories. I’m really, really pleased with how they turned out. I think it looks so cute!

I’m looking forward to including more origami in my boards now. I’m sure doing some Halloween stuff next month will be really fun. Remember to take a look up at the moon on September 13th!

Shit Children Say: Part 1/∞

So, I work at elementary schools. And everyone knows that small children are tiny aliens in vaguely human bodies and/or straight up sassy assholes. As a result, I hear some pretty hilarious stuff, so I have decided to start compiling these nuggets of wisdom (?) for posterity. Also because I think my family is getting tired of hearing nothing from me but whatever weird thing a child has said…