Sandwich Chefs

Today, during Unit of Inquiry time, we all got together in my kitchen to make some sandwiches

It's such a simple everyday activity, but it involves so many of the different language focuses and lines of inquiry that we are following at the moment:
- Jobs (chef)
- Prepositions of place ('between' and 'on' the bread)
- Likes and dislikes (Vegetables and other types of food)
- Similarities and differences (Pakuchi, as always, being highly divisive)

It was also a great activity in that it gave us an opportunity to practice proper hand-washing procedure, which is so important for stopping the spread of Corona Virus.

A Reflection:

I touch my face  a lot!

That's not a good thing for a chef to do even when there isn't a serious virus spreading around.

I think it's because I'm a little nervous.

I've been teaching for almost a decade (Actually, my first teaching job in Japan was as a cooking instructor at a community center in Gunma), and after four weeks of using Zoom I'm quite used to being on camera, but as soon as I press the record button, I become a bit self conscious and have trouble acting naturally.

Do you think your kids might be feeling camera shy too?

If you are having a little trouble getting them in front of the camera, one good solution, which one or two parents have already adopted, is to turn your camera off. You are always welcome to just watch our lessons if participating is a still too much of a challenge.

Who knows; after watching us all pick our noses for a day or two, your child might start to feel less self conscious and be ready to give joining in a try.

Meet Mr. Ben's Mum and Dad

Today we had two guests in our lesson; my mum and dad! Or you could think about them as Joji's Grandma and Grandpa. It was a good chance to start looking at our family trees.

It was also a good chance to practice asking some of the questions we had answered when putting together our own self introductions.

The kid's did a really good job of putting the English they have learned into practical use, and my parents had a good go at using the Japanese phrases they have been learning too:



Tomorrow we will grow my family tree some more, as my brother and his kids will join us. I hope you can remember your questions!

Our First Online Week

Well, that was a very different first week of the school year.

Adapting our lessons to work online has been a challenge and I've got a bit of thinking to do over the weekend.

Every year the kid's in the preschool class have quite a wide range of levels of development and vastly different learning styles. Circle times are especially divisive; some kids love structured conversation (being called on in turn, or putting their hands up to share their ideas) while others do best when they can play with toys and chat casually with the teachers who join them. This divide is getting wider with online teaching. Some kids are thriving, while other's needs are not yet being met.

What can we do about it?

The same principals we try to apply to our classroom teaching to address this issue are still relevant to teaching online:
-Organize different group sizes throughout the day, including some one-to-one time
-Learn through play
-Give the kids choices in what to engage with.
-Co-create our lessons with the kids.

I think we are doing well with this last one; the kids have come up with some great suggestions in their reflection times, such as doing adventure yoga and building together with blocks. That activity was also a great example of learning through play:



We will definitely do activities like that more frequently in the coming week.

Another thing I think we are doing well with is pursuing our unit of inquiry. Our digital inquiry wall (on the homepage of this blog) has tracked our progress through "Tuning In" and "Finding Out" about our likes and dislikes, and our similarities and differences. As we move in to "Sorting Out", the kids can start to put together and perform their first assessment piece; their self introductions. Some have made a good early start already:


Next week we will widen our focus a little and start talking about families, with the goal of eventually creating our own family trees (see our senpai Takuma`s example on Seesaw). The Covid-19 lock down gives us a unique opportunity with this topic; we have a lot of parents and other family members available to us, including my own family who are at home under even stricter conditions in New Zealand.

Hopefully I can arrange for them to join us at some point.

If you, as a parent, have any suggestions as to how we should structure next weeks lessons or activities that would particularly engage you child, please comment below. 

Meet Our 先輩

As we 'Tune In' to our first unit (Who We Are), I'd like to introduce you to last year's Preschool class, who are now moving up to Pre Kinder with Mr. James.

Actually, they can introduce themselves:

One of this unit's key concepts is 'Connection' and we will be looking at 'Myself as part of a group' as one of our lines of inquiry.

One of the groups the kid's belong to is the school community. We are really lucky to have good roll models to show us what we can achieve and help us with our inquiries.

I'm really looking forward to this year's kids filming their own self introductions, at the end of the first unit.

Something we didn't manage to do last year, but which would be cool, would be to send them to a school in a different country and start a kind of digital pen-pal relationship.

Has anyone in our class every been to a school in a different country? Please let us know in the comments.

Building Our Communication Network

Hello Everyone, 皆さん、こんにちは

Thank you all for your responses on Jupiter, Seesaw and our Blog. Jupiter, Seesaw そして Blogに返信して頂き、ありがとうございました。

With the future a bit uncertain due to the corona virus pandemic, making sure we have a solid network for communication should be our number one priority. I am hoping to see all of the kids on Monday, but we need to prepare for online learning, in case that is all that we can do. コロナウイルスの影響で、今後どうなるのか不確かですが、いま保護者の皆様とネットワークでコミュニケーションが取れることが最優先事項です。来週月曜日に子供たち全員と会えることを望んでいますが、万一に備えて私たちにできることは、オンライン学習の準備を進めることです。

With that in mind, I am going to do something I wouldn’t usually do; I am going to share with you the list of which families have responded to our test messages through which channels. We would not usually do this because we don’t wont parents to feel like they are being shamed or pressured. But, with online teaching, we are going to have to change our mindset a bit: それを念頭に置いて、私は、通常行わない方法でコミュニケーションの方法の確認を行いたいと考えています。すでにお送りした確認メッセージに対して、どのご家庭がどの方法（ジュピター、シーソー、ブログ)でご返信をいただいているかのリストを公開します。リストを公開することによって、保護者様が不都合やプレッシャーを感じられたりされるのではないかという考えから、通常はこのようなことは致しません。しかし、オンライン学習を始めるにあたり、私たちは考え方を少し変える必要があります。

We need to think of each other as co-teachers working together. 私たちは保護者様も含めてお互いに子どもたちの教師として、一緒に考える必要があります。

I would like our communication network to look something like this: 私達のコミュニケーションネットワークを以下のように捉えて頂きたいです。 

So, as co-teachers working together, can I ask you to reach out to the parents who are having trouble? It would be great if you could help each other as much as possible. つまり共に協力し合う教師として、問題を抱える保護者様に手を差し伸べて頂くことをお願いしてもよろしいですか。

With that in mind, here are the responses we have received so far: そのことを念頭に置いていただき、下図にこれまでに私たちが受信した方のリストを載せております。   

Thank you all, Ben