I don’t like to talk about work too much on here, because in most cases it’ll just be me complaining about one thing or another. Not that I don’t like my job or living in Japan (I love it, actually), it’s just that as humans, we tend to dwell on the negatives instead of the positives. But I guess, I wanted to make a note of this while it’s still fresh my memory.
My 6th graders at my biggest school just finished performing their plays today. It wasn’t anything too serious, they only performed it within their own class and there weren’t any big props or anything. For those who are familiar with the infamous Hi, Friends! textbook that we use in Japanese elementary schools, this was for Book 2, Lesson 7 “We are good friends”. This is the lesson that everyone seems to hate. From what I’ve heard, most ALTs think it’s pointless, and skip it if possible. I can definitely see where they’re coming from though — whether this lesson is successful or not, is hugely dependent on both the HRT and the students. I was a little worried considering the negativity, but I decided to ask my HRTs to see what they thought. We went ahead with it, but instead of doing Momotaro only, we decided to do five different stories. Because seeing the same play over and over again would be boring, right?
I worked together with my HRTs and we choose the following stories (based on the number of characters, how well they are known, ease of adapting into play etc): Momotaro, Big Turnip, Three Little Pigs, Cinderella and Snow White. Then I wrote the scripts, dialogue, and translated them into Japanese (in the end, my HRTs had to do so much correcting that I think it would’ve been faster if they had just translated it for me from the start, hah). I confirmed that it wasn’t too difficult, yet at the same time enough dialogue for the story to make sense.
We spent 6 weeks on this lesson. The first week, I briefly went over a few fairytales/folktales in English, just to get them into the whole idea. Then we (i.e, my HRT and I) told them that we will actually be performing the plays, and to make it fair, decided the parts via kuji (lottery). We handed out scripts during the second week. Of course, since my kids can’t read, they basically had to listen to me saying the dialogue, then transcribing into katakana if necessary. Both my classes at this school has 35+ kids… so it would’ve been impossible for me to go around repeating dialogues for everyone within the span of 45 minutes. Instead, my HRTs recorded me saying the dialogue and burned it onto CDs for each group. Let’s just say it was very weird hearing my voice repeatedly in every corner of the room…
After that, they had about 3 weeks to practice the dialogue, remember it, create props if they wanted to, figure out gestures, and somehow turn it into a play. Japanese kids are very shy (or maybe it’s just my kids), so getting them out of their comfort zone was the biggest challenge. We were worried that it would turn out horribly, but that wasn’t the case. It was quite the opposite actually. Some went all out with their props; used desks/chairs in lieu of houses; used music during certain parts. They were amazing. Of course, none of them were perfect. Some forgot their lines, spurted out Japanese instead, had their back to the audience… but most importantly, they laughed, and they had fun. Some of them commented that they were really happy to have so much fun in English — and that’s what us elementary ALTs aim for, right?
When we were cleaning up at the end, one girl asked if I was going to cry at the graduation ceremony. And it just reminded me that, I only have 3 more lessons with these kids before they go off to junior high. They’re my absolute favourites, and I’m so sad that I won’t be teaching them come April. I thought I was done and dusted with graduations since getting my university degree. But it looks like there’ll be more to come.
Note: ALT = assistant language teacher, HRT = homeroom teacher.
edit 2015-03-19; I did the same lesson with another school with less students, and it didn’t go as well. The students weren’t interested, seemed bored, and pretty much just stood there reading off the scripts (with katakana English) during their “performance”. I think I lucked out with my biggest school.
onefiftyfour 