Wednesday, January 10, 2007

My class has started.


From the day vore yesterday my husband's job started, from yesterday my daughter's school started, and, from today my class has started.
Yesterday I was tidying up the class room. It took all day long. The end of the last year I actaully cleard up the room, this time I tried to tidy up the materials for lesson. So it took long time.
Now the season when I have to look for (recruit?) new students. I'll insert circulars in newspaper once or twice until March. (My class is a franchise school, so I have to do it.)

If I get an inquire, I invite the kid and parent (usually mother) to my class to addend my free lesson. This time I'll use these picutre books.

What books do you remember when you were babies?
Or if you are English learners, what books do you recomend to read for kids who start to study English?

5 comments:

Helen said...

I don't really remember the books I read (or was read) as a baby, but I think there were a lot of Doctor Seuss books! I especially remember one about overfeeding a goldfish. The goldfish grew really really big.

I like Dr. Seuss because the rhymes are fun, but might be difficult to teach!

Mieko said...

To helen
I have som Dr.Seuss' book "Foot book", "Cat in Hat" etc. (I'm not sure these titles are right.) The upper grade elementary school students enjoy them. (I think it is not needed to teach, just enhoy the rhymes though they are learning phonics rules in other way)

Anonymous said...

I agree with using the Dr. Seuss books. I used Green Eggs and Ham with my Japanese students. The point of these rhymes (and other nursery rhymes) is not whether you can understand them--generally they are nonsense (make no sense). The reason that they are valuable in teaching a language is that they teach the rhythm of the language. Children get an intuitive sense for how plurals are formed and verbs are conjugated without memorizing a lot of rules.

Dr. Seuss is especially interesting because he was commissioned to write the books using a limited vocabulary. The idea at the time (1950s and 1960s) was that by using only words the children knew that that they could learn to read faster.

The "Dick and Jane" readers followed the same idea although I don't know if they are available in Japan. I prefer the old Mother Goose nursery rhymes. I think it's better for children to hear words they don't know so they can learn new ones.

I've been thinking about doing podcasts of nursery rhymes to help ESL students. Do you think it is a good idea?

Mieko said...

Ms. Steavens
Now I dropped by AMAZON of Japanese site. And I found some books of "Dick and Jane" readers.
It seemes to take a few weeks to get them. But I'll check them.
Well "doing podcasts" -- what does it mean? please tell me.

Anonymous said...

A podcast is sort of like a blog post but in audio. Podcasts can be done by big broadcasting stations but a they can also be done by ordinary people.

Here are some examples of my favorite Japanese podcasts.

Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime
http://eloise.cocolog-nifty.com/rodoku/
I can't understand this Japanese but I think the reader's voice is beautiful and I find it pleasant to listen to even if I can't understand it.

Nippon VoiceBlog
http://www.voiceblog.jp/nippon/
This is easier for me to understand because the site includes the transcript...so I can try to read the Japanese along while listening to it. The topics are very interesting, too...mostly about traditional Japanese culture.

I can use iTunes to automatically download new podcasts...then I can listen to them on my iPod when I garden or do housework. This is the modern housewive's method of study.