Sunday, March 11, 2012

Studying Through A Different Activity

Working with nonnative English speakers has me constantly thinking of how they can learn more effectively.

Something I have done in my Japanese studies is to start playing sports: I first played soccer last fall and I am now taking tennis lessons. I first got this idea from a friend of mine who told me, on the first day I was in Japan back in 2003, that he took Korean lessons for a while. I asked how it was, and he replied that he was learning more Japanese than Korean.

Unfortunately most of our student population are Japanese, and here in Sendai, there are not many opportunities for them to participate in an activity that is taught in English.

Still, our students have the opportunity to join our After School Activities program as well as Summer School. This year in summer school we are doing a unit on Gardening and outside. (We don't have a title for it yet.) We are going to get the kids out of the classroom and have them doing hands-on activities.

Since the school is going to try to get kids who do not come to our school to come this year, it will be interesting to see how they react to this kind of instruction. I think they will love it.

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