January 17th Meeting – Happy 2010 Everyone! January 20, 2010
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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: February meeting cancelled. February is another very busy month of kids ESL presentations!!!
Many ACET members have expressed their intention to go to the big Oxford University Press presentation on Feb 7th, and the Longman Kids Club tour on Feb 14th. CHECK the websites as PRE-REGISTRATION may be required.
2010 Shinnenkai will be after the Longman Kids Club tour on February 14th, which finishes at 4.30pm.
Please mail your party place suggestions to the ACET vice-president or president. Please inform the ACET vice-president or president if you wish to attend. There will be a group email to all ACET members announcing final details. Activities and MC etc., will be decided at the shinnenkai.
Next Meeting: March 14th 2010
Presenters (to be officially confirmed) will be Yukiko Watanabe (Matsuka Phonics Institute) and Richard Graham (Genki English).
All today’s presenters excelled themselves, and once again reminded attendees how lucky they are to be able to attend useful ACET !!! Really, really impressive stuff! The professional quality presentations that our regular presenters give is really amazing, isn’t it! It was great to see so many great ideas for children’s ESL games packed into 2 hours! ACET members have now been generously sharing their fantastic children’s activity and song ideas for over 10 years now.
Nigel
Nigel kindly MC’d today in his usual inimitable style, making the meeting relaxed and fun for all. He kicked off with a chant:
Valetine, Valentine, won’t you be my valentine? Valentine, Valentine, won’t you be my friend? A pair activity where students make a heart twice, then turn around make another few hearts and shake hands. Fun, but we need a video to explain!!
The second chant was “Skip, skip, run around, reach up for the sky, and touch the ground. Now back to back stand-up and say I love you, I love you, I love you! (or Be my valentine, hooray!” Students do the “Skip, skip, run around, reach up for the sky, and touch the ground ” 3 times, then sign “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
The third activity was “spin the bottle”, a kindergarten classic. With the children sat in a circle, the teacher spins the bottle and the joke is that the teacher will chase their “Valentine”, the child to whom the bottle points. That child then has to run around the outside of the ring of children and sit back down in their space before the teacher catches them. If they are “tagged” they become “it” and get to spin the bottle. The chant is “Take a bottle, spin it round, and when it stops don’t make a sound…Except to say: I love you!”
Nigel designed the chants himself, and he advises the use of a rhyming dictionary, and / or song lyric cannibalization to assist in this process.
*Nigel is definitely a Sensei – and one tip worth remembering for preschool ESL classes is this: ignore the chaos and just lead the activity you intend do to. Making everyone sit down in an orderly way before you begin just confuses the kids – they will start worrying about who they should be sat next to, and trying to get in the order designated for their usual classes. If it is a good activity and appropriate for their age, kids will want to join in, and a natural form of order will appear.
Recommended Valentines Day song: “Love Grows” by Jon Farrell. Website here. See the real thing in action in Nigel’s own class. Effective and very touching! Songs for Teaching is also a great resource. For gorgeous flashcards try Teaching Children ESL.
To be continued…
DECEMBER ETJ Expo @ Seinan University December 8, 2009
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The ETJ Expo on Sunday 6th December, was well attended by ACET members (although not by the web manager due to JLPT testing on the same day 
). Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you think you might have any interesting and beneficial information relating to any of the Children’s EFL games, activities or teaching methodologies seen on display at the Expo that day!
Many luminaries in the EFL publishing business were of course in attendance, including one Ms. Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, one of the co-authors of the Let’s Go Series. Located in nearby Kita Kyushu city, rumour has it that she may in the future be able to give a special presentation at ACET! Watch this space for further news!
Her website http://www.teachingvillage.org/ contains many thought provoking articles and links relating to the world of EFL. Check it out, folks!
Wishing everyone a very safe, happy, and prosperous Christmas!
See you all in the new year!
November Meeting Notes November 17, 2009
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Many thanks to Emi for being a great MC, and all 13 attendees who helped us have a very relaxed and constructive meeting as usual. We sang the Dicekey “I want to be a” (a-z of 26 occupations) as a warm-up. It was quite tough, but most people managed to at least attempt her ASL based gestures for each occupation. A nice tune, good vocabulary, and good phonics excersize. Thanks again Emi! Check out the revamped Dicekey website here!
For those of you who are interested, you can find the Signing Savvy website here for more information on ASL.
Volunteer Sought
Nigel made an announcement that he is looking for a new Sunday volunteer with a passion to teach, at the children’s home in Hagashi-Ku. Nationality is not important, but the ability to attend when you say you will is. These kids already have it tough enough without their volunteers letting them down! If you are interested, warm-hearted, and reliable, please contact Nigel by email: brazim@yahoo.com for further details.
“What do you want for Christmas?”
Naho did a presentation using the Chance De Pon CD チャンスでぽん (???) Is that right? There was a nice song and good flashcards but they appear beyond the great Google’s search powers… If anyone can provide more details, please leave a comment below.
Yoriko started out with a circle activity game using some nice flash cards from Borgman (?) Publishing consisting of a set of logical pairs e.g. umbrella and rain boots. The teacher has the other half of the pairs. The student with the card has to use their logic to guess what the other half of the pair might be. The other students then get to practice (potentially) asking the teacher questions in the third person “Does he have a ~?”, as they use their logic powers to guess what card the student is holding. Very natural, and a bit like go-fish. Excellent stuff!!!
Her next activity used similar language as Naho’s activity . The card set was downloaded from Setsuko Toyama’s site here.
With those cards, we were shown how to play (1) concentration with a large card set (2) uno and (3) the contact game. The TL was “I want / I don’t want” xmas toys, and “I want a ~ too.” She also brought along her book, the very beautiful “The Christmas Alphabet”, a lovely pop-up book.
**Top-tip: Print the cards on perforated business card paper. This saves a lot of time cutting and trimming.
Santa’s Suit & Santa’s Night
Miki read Santa’s Suit, a very nice book about Santa having a wardrobe crisis, and then the very simple “Santa’s Night”, suitable for young learners. The website www.musick8.com was also recommended as a good story website.
Balloon Santa Game
Nigel went on to talk about an activity he finds is always popular – “Dressing up as Santa”, and then cramming as many ballons in to the gaps in the suit, then run across the room, then take the suit off again. Don’t forget to warm the kids up with the “blowing up balloons game” first! Santa suits available from Daiso at ¥420 while stocks last!!!
Pokey Pass Game
He also mentioned the Pokey activity… for this you need some of those yukky Pokey biscuits, and some paper Santa, reindeer, snowmen or other seasonal cutouts that can be suspended from the Pokey. If my understanding is correct, each student in the group has to pass the hanging cutout to the other without the Pokey melting or breaking or the students accidentally kissing. Sounds hilarious… See illustration below!
Important Announcements: ACET Schedule Changes / Cancellations
December 2009 Meeting Cancellation
The next meeting scheduled December 13th will be cancelled, so the next meeting will be January 17th. Why will there be no ACET in December? It is a busy month for all of us with Christmas parties and whatnot, AND teachers can get their monthly “teacher meeting” fix at the ETJ Expo at Dec 6th at Seinan Gakuin University 09:00 to 18:00.
January 2010 Date Change
Meeting will take place on January 17th, not on January 10th. Why? The 10th is a 3 day public holiday, hooray!
Shinnenkai instead of Bonenkai
As there is no December meeting, and therefore no Bonenkai Christmas Party, we have decided to have a Shinnenkai Happy New Year Party. The venue has yet to be decided. If anyone has any good suggestions please get in touch!
February 2010 Date Change
Meeting will take place on February 21st, not February 14th. Why? To avoid clashing with OUP who will have a big presentation in Fukuoka on that day.
January 2010 Meeting Tentative Plan
Nigel has agreed to MC, Yoriko has volunteered to read “The Giant Turnip”, and Grace and Yoko have some Valentines Day activities they’d like to share.
See you all in January!
