Welcome back to Fujimura’s Journey!
With the end of Chapter 1 came the beginning of summer. The students had a long 2-month break from the class for summer vacation and an academic research period. After discussing the workload of the students with some other teachers, I assigned a writing assignment and part of Chapter 2 for summer homework.
The first term was an introduction to critical thinking and organizing thoughts. I wanted the students to be able to look at an opinion question and come up with their own ideas quickly. I wanted them to be look at a piece of reading and be able to dissect it and think about it from other points of view.
In the second term, we continued those skills, but also applied it to their own writing. To do so, we focused on a mix of creative writing and formal writing. Telling stories and summarizing your experiences is useful for everyday conversation, so we started with creative writing. These skills will also help them with the interview part of Eiken 2 and higher, where they must re-tell a 3 or 4-panel comic.
Between school events like the culture festival and sports day, the students tackled the remainder of chapter 2. We met some new characters: the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow. Having so many characters was a good test of their reading comprehension skills, since it is easy to lose track of which character is talking. It also helped them understand the importance of “subject” in English grammar.
To solidify the idea of “character,” the students created their own character. They had to introduce the character, talk about their background, and describe their appearance and abilities. I paired this project with Eiken Pre-2 interview work, where the students had to describe people doing different things.
The students enjoyed showing off their crazy characters. They have great ideas, but we still have a long way to go before they can tell stories verbally.
Next, we’ll progress with our new Oz friends into the Emerald City.