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!
October 2009 Meeting Notes October 19, 2009
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Many thanks to Miki for MCing this month’s meeting and providing the warm up song:
♪It’s Time To Go Trick-or-Treating (Tune: For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow)♪
After the introductions, Emi shared an article by Setsuko Toyama about English Education in Japanese elementary schools, Nigel shared his experiences making “skeleton” candies in Thailand, Yoko told us how to make witches make soup from diaper parts (hopefully not used!!), we saw the “Grab All You Can Game”, and Grace told us about trick-or-treating in her neighborhood.
We did the “Dry Bone” song, where you divide the class into a few groups. You start off with a newspaper completely open, dance on it, and when music stops, fold a newspaper in half. .. continue until…
Miki will have a party at hers using two hundreds balloons… and the lucky students will get to pop them all!!!
Halloween song eliminator. This is a musical chairs derivative. Students hold a scary item, and pass it round the circle. When the verse ends, the person holding the item at that time is out.
Fumiyo’s activity was “Halloween Colors” by Holiday JAZZ CHANTS. The aim is to learn Halloween vocabulary (four singular words, four plural words and four colors in the lyrics.) Ss are asked to listen and raise the appropriate flash cards. Nigel and Naho added their ideas: remember who has what and call them out; chant and pass a ball to next person in order (black cat > witches’ hat >…)
There was a conversation activity “Can you play —?” using “Eigo Notebook”. Ss hold hand sized picture cards. Sts walk around the classroom, do Janken and ask “Can you play —?” and find their partners (there are two matching cards within the classroom set). Richard, Miki and Nigel added their ideas and we actually did the “Shout Game”. Instead of “walk and ask”, we “shout and listen” so Ss can have speaking lesson and listening lesson at once.
There was a Bean Throw game where a few Big white beans are put on a plate. The Halloween vocabulary is written on the one side of beans. Start with beans face down, shake the plate and count how many bean are face up.
Nigel showed a speaking drill, the aim being to learn “and” and “classroom English” using NOVA’s Halloween and Clothes cards (hand size). Arrange twelve cards as a clock face. T or “IT” decide the position of twelve o’clock and call out the time “eight o’clock!” Ss will say “Look there is a pumpkin and ghost.” The S who shouts the whole sentence is the winner. Nigel then changed some cards to clothes and did it again. This time Ss were
October 2009 meeting at AMIKAS, Takamiya
asked to shout “A witch is wearing a coat.”
We did Genki English’s ♪Trick-or-treat Monster Halloween♪ song.
Grace showed a few of her favourite stories; “Skeleton Hiccups”, “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Gallop”, “Swing”.
Many thanks to the kind note taker who provided me with these excellent and detailed notes so very promptly!!!!!!!
***** NEWS FLASH **** – Meeting day changed for October only!!! September 25, 2009
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Due to AMIKAS being fully booked on the next 2nd Sunday (October 11th, 2009), we have decided to have a morning ACET meeting on:
MONDAY 12th October, from 10am to 12pm.
Maybe there will be a social lunch after? It is a public holiday after all!!!
Wishing you well until then!!
