Grade 1 Unit 1 Are From America?

Filter's off. And just in time for the new school year. Here's something new for first year students that gives them a chance to practice most of the 基本　sentences in the first chapter. Each student is given a copy of this worksheet and one of these flags. The flag represents the student's nationality for the purposes of the game and of course there'll have to be some preliminary discussion to make sure the students are familiar with all of the flags. I chose six at random that I thought the students would already know. ALTs who want to make changes and use the flags of their home countries, go right ahead. Although there is more than one way to do this here's the variation I'll use.

1. Two players meet.


2. They do the necessary greeting, I don't care who goes first.


3. They janken.


4. The winner of the janken gets to ask the question. "Are you from ...?"


5. The loser answers with yes or no and tells where they are from.


6. Only the winner gets to record the answer and collect information.

Doing it that way adds a competitive element. Or, you could remove the need to do the janken and just have the kids talk to as many partners as possible; with or without a time limit. The person who gets the most can collect a sticker Yeah! Stickers!

I've been thinking about making a special sheet on which the students can collect stickers rewards. Many of the teachers use them and it's always surprising how motivating they can be.

I remember when I was their age something like that would have seemed puerile (note to self: check dictionary and make sure I'm using that word right) and almost insulting. I probably stopped being interested in gold stars about the age of nine.

Anyway, the kids all have their English notebooks that they are encouraged to keep old assignments and test papers in. If I make the reward sheet the teacher can have them put it in the back of the English notebook. The only drawback as far as I can see is the need to keep putting out money for stickers.

Oh, and there was an earthquake a tsunami and six nuclear reactors are spreading radioactive poison in the land sea and air and may well be on their way to a meltdown.

And I'm worried about the cost of stickers?