Robot rolls
...written on 2001-07-04, @ 12:44 a.m.
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan
Mon July 2, 2001
I had my Tuesday nighters today. I think all four classes went very well. The one that I sweat out the most is the one with the fourth graders. My first class. The class with the little boy fireball named Kenya.
Kenya is the devilish one. He hides my flashcards when I'm not looking. Runs to the back of the board and plays with the dry erase markers. Sniffs through my stuff looking for new things to play with. Distracts the others with his antics which keep him from having to learn.
Today, little Mr. Kenya arrived 35 minutes late. The rest of us were firmly entrenched in our activity and I motioned Kenya to sit to the side and observe. I noticed that he was not full of his usual bravura. He was not the star. I had him join the group and answer some questions. He lagged behind, but after some more observing and coaching, he was doing well. What a relief not to have to struggle with him tonight.
I had met my fifth graders in the hallway earlier and had given them a big hug (very rare thing to do in Japan). By the time they got to my class, they were warmed up and ready for action. What a great class! They are so attentive and the best thing thing is that they TRUST me. They know I do kooky things and they even play along! For example, I forgot my stopwatch today for our regular vocab review, so I pretended to have one and as usual, passed it around to the girls when it was their turn to use it. One girl even had it, and unbeknownst to me, before she started helping another girl sift through the flashcards, passed the imaginary stopwatch to the girl next to her, so when I looked at her for the watch, they all laughed and pointed to the girl who actually "had it".
My 8th graders are all going to Georgia this summer (wish I could go with them), so we practiced some role play situations with host family members. Let me tell you, I was impressed by the fluent English coming out of them! AND that they got up to do the role play AND even directed the action themselves! I made a mental note to myself to use that kind of activity more in the future.
At the beginning of my both my 8th and 10th grade classes, we always do "Show & Tell". Daisuke, a 10th grader showed us a mask of a robot hero that he bought when he was 5 years old. I was amazed at the excellent condition it was in! After he told us about the mask, he slung it around his neck, where attached to a long string, it looked like an alter ego on his back.
Three out of four of my 10th graders are going to Georgia this summer as well, so we practiced some questions and role plays. I also gave them a large list of descriptive feeling words and had them choose three they knew and three they didn't know and we proceeded to help each other explain them. Daisuke had picked the word "foolish" as one that he knew, but Chika didn't know that one, so Daisuke took it upon himself to mime the word.
We all watched as Daisuke, his arms hoisted upward and flailing in the air, flung himself hard towards the back of his chair, and, just as he touched it, made a bizarre lunge forward as if he had been stabbed in the back. With a heartwrenching grimace he pulled on the string around his neck and reeled the face of his robot hero to his chest and shrieked woefully at the cracked plastic visage. HORROR OF HORRORS! Luckily though, the damage wasn't that extensive to his ten year old treasure. I would have hated that.