Schwa

The phonics project has been moving along nicely. The more I get into it the more I see how really difficult this stuff is to teach. There are just too many ways to make the same sounds in English. I also see that I'm going to have to keep reminding the teacher to let me do it. She's got a lot of things to do and a lot to get across to the kids. However there was one ray of sunshine. One of the kids in 1kumi was able to read the word ham without a trace of and accent. At least not to my ears. When I do it again I'll have more teachable words prepared going in so there's no fumbling around thinking about what to do next. ...Actually next would be a fun word to have the kids read.

And schwa. I want to do schwa. I'm not going to explain schwa and I'm not going to point out it's appearance in the unaccented syllables of multisyllabic words. I do want them to hear it as it's pronounced in the consonant prior indefinite article. I want them to be able to make the distinct vowel sounds in a ham.

Of course I'm pretty sure that it's something that they would pick up naturally without my help but I like teaching the proper pronunciation of English sounds and hearing them improve.

So, anyway. I'll start calling atention to that sound when I have a chance.

Grade 2 Unit 1 You Look Strange

The teacher asked me for a worksheet for Grade 2 Unit 1 that has to do with the grammar point
subject looks adjective. It's such a small bit of grammmar to deal with it's hard to make something interesting. Especially given the amount of time I'm willing to spend on it... ahem.
But maybe this will catch the kid's interest. I'm just happy to be able to use some of those cool illustrations from .... I forgot the name of the website they came from, but if you search back in the postings you can find a link to it.

Grade 1 Unit 1 Are you Ms. Green ?

This activity lets the kids practice the second person interrogative present tense form of the verb to be. To do it you need to make some game sheets and another sheet that has the pictures and names of characters from the textbook.

I wasn't able to find any pictures of the New Horizon characters on the web so you'll have to make the game sheets by xeroxing images from the textbook. Paste them into this sheet that made. If it doesn't print out correctly you can just use it as a model to make your own. Teach the two convesations at the bottom of the page. One is used when you find the person you are looking for and the other is for the opposite case.

Pass out the game sheets and cards and tell the students that they are not to show the cards but are supposed to remember their own new name.

Chorally practice the question. Are you ~ using the names of the characters on the game sheet. and the two possible answers, Yes, I am. No I'm not.

The teachers and some volunteers demonstrate the game.
Now the children have to find as many of the people pictured on their game sheet as possible. If you want to you can put a time limit on the game. The students who find all the people or the most people on their game sheets are the winners.

Hitotsuba

We have two classes for kids with developmental disabilities at my school. The teacher in charge of the classes doesn't seem to be trained for handling these kinds of kids. I don't mean that they are discipline problems or anything like that it's just that teaching these kinds of kids must call for a training and understanding that the teacher doesn't seem to possess. To be fair neither did the last teacher who was given these classes and I certainly don't. It looks like the responsibility for coming up with a plan and materials is going to be up to me.

The biggest problem is that the level from kid to kid is so different. Two of them live pretty much in their own worlds. One of them is very high level and his problems seem to be more emotional than anything else.

So we improvise.

I'm making notes on the lessons and plans for further lessons and saving them on the page called Hitotsuba you can find on the right hand side of the blog. Maybe someone else has a problem like this and the lesson ideas might be helpful.

And if anybody has any ideas I'm open to suggestions.

More on "The New Thing"

So the new thing is teaching phonics.

We're going to be showing the kids a series of phonics flashcards with example words to get across the idea that the letters and their combinations represent particular sounds. The method is to present one set per month until we run out of combinations. The goal is to give the kids the ability to read an English word without having to sound it out in katakana pronunciation. Of course we'll be reviewing as we do this and when we get to the point that we are presenting them with whole words their will always be a natural review that just happens ...naturally.

I started yesterday with the first year (it's a first year project) and it went really well. But after I had finished I realized that there are some problems that need to be addressed.

For example: the o sound that occurs in the word do isn't covered by either the long or short vowels sounds that are taught for o.

For another example: the a in the word father has the same problem.

Yet another example: the s in the word is is pronounced like z.

So, here's what I think I am going to do. As I come to the problem letters I'll take a moment to write the exceptions on the blackboard. It won't take too much time since their aren't that many and maybe it will prevent problems later. Right now here's what I think might need a special explanation.

a, father
c, pencil
g, garage
o, do, one, some
s, is
x, xylophone
y, happy

Silent e's and voiced and unvoiced th can be worried about later but these exceptions to the rule are encountered early.

Maybe not garbage and xylophone but the words one and some occur in the first year book.

Grade 3 Unit 1 Passive Voice Worksheet Part 2: The Return of the Passive Voice Worksheet

As the title of this posting subtley hints this is simply a reworking of something I used last year. The difference is this one has a section that gives the kids the chance to make some sentences of their own. The vocabulary in the first section is all from the textbook so they will be able to look up the words using the glossary their textbook supplies. What they are to do is simply draw some lines that connect the phrases into the best possible sentences. Before you pass out the worksheets make sure that you have drawn in a line to make a sentence from the example on the master sheet before you make copies of it. The kanji 例 means example. Some of the vocabulary in the second section might not be in the glossary but they are fairly common words. However, in order to make a good sentence out of those words based on the models given the kids might have to use another dictionary or ask the teachers.

Second Grade Self Introductions

Here is a worksheet that we used for the first day of second grade. It's easy to understand.

The first part is just some example sentences that the kids study and use as models for the second part. In the second part the kids use the pictures in the box as cues to make their own sentences. In the second part it isn't necessary for the sentences to be factually correct. Whether they are actually in the Kendo club or not is not important. It's only practice. In the third part the children write about themselves. In the event that a child has no pets remind them of how to form negative sentences. I don't have a dog. It can be a teachable moment.

By the way. The first line of Japanese means, Make sentences like the examples. The second line means, Make sentences about yourself.