Monday, January 19, 2009

Dodge Ball Elementary

I spent all of yesterday teaching at Yamabe Elementary School. It was a nice little change of pace, and the kids are really cute. I did a few little lessons where I introduced myself to the kids. I talked about Springfield, horseshoes, Lincoln, Obama, and I told the kids about the wonder of school days cancelled due to snow. Then I helped them fill out a little sheet introducing themselves in English. A few volunteers stood up and read theirs aloud. It was pretty basic. "Hello. My name is ____. I am ____ years old. I like _____. I like playing _____."

In the afternoon we all played dodge ball for a whole class period. I may have already mentioned this, but the Japanese rules for dodge ball are a bit different. Here there was only one ball(a second was tossed in later) and the game is stopped after a time and the survivors are counted to determine the winner. I was trying to avoid a Billy Madison moment so I didn't throw any cannonballs at anyone. I just caught those aimed at me and passed them to a kid. Some of the little guys had pretty good arms though. They were playing for keeps.

Yamabe Elementary is a school that feeds its graduates into my school, so I assume that's the reason I was there, to get them accustomed to seeing me, excited about English, or something along those lines.

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