Date and Place: Nov 15 (Ongaku-Shitsu), AMIKAS in Takamiya, 1.30pm to 3.30 pm
MC: Emi
Warm-Up Songs: Emi
Activities: Naho, Yoriko
Story Time: Miki

Any new presenters and ideas ALWAYS warmly welcomed…

Yes, November is…. The month before Christmas!

Will anyone be bringing their Christmas activity and game ideas?

See you on the 15th!

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!!!!!!!

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!!

A great beer garden party was enjoyed by all who attended on Aug 10th, on the roof of the Fuku building, as can be seen from the picture here.

The next meeting will be on Sunday, Sept 13 2009 at 1.30pm at AMIKAS. The theme will be “Halloween”. Please bring any Halloween songs, games and activities that you would like to share.

Next MC: Yoriko. Book: Miki. Activity: Me(Jon). Touch screen computer: Yoko. Party and craft ideas welcome. 2009 officers election will also be held.

Many thanks to all those who attended on Sunday, 12th July 2009. We were shown a nice range of activities suitable for preschool, elementary and junior high students.

It was good to have Nigel back as MC. He warmed up with “Under the Sea”, by Genki English, using his very special “cubes”, as shown(different topic) a few meetings ago by Yoriko. She kindly posted details of her link here.

Once again thanks to Richard Graham (his version of “Under the Sea”) for already sharing the above video on his Youtube page. Video courtesy his wonderful new Apple 32Gig 3G’S’ iPhone that everyone must want…nice!

Yoriko presented some ways to teach “What can you see under the sea?” using classic obscuration techniques to draw the kids interest. That seaweed looked rather oishii, and the porthole looked rather fun too, in a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea kind of way. She used the under the sea Genki English flash cards and also prepared her own photo flashcards, a nice bit of variation and extra vocab.

Nori?

Mami showed a simple but effective math game using playing cards (trumps). The numbers ace to 10 are 1 to 10, but Jack = 11, Queen=12, King =13. The deck is shuffled and divided in two. Each team takes 2 cards, and the first team to add/subtract/multiply the numbers together correctly wins their 2 cards(or was it all 4 cards) . The team with the most points(or was it cards) wins. Lots of scope for varying the rules with this game, plus it is naturally nice and speedy!!

Noriko presented a number of activites including, phonics othello (a winner), the sit down game, the outline details of which may be found here at Genki English. Thank you Richard!! One of the other activities was a chant to practice adverbs of frequency, and Richard made the point that we ought to be careful that the rhythm matches the words – something about how the major word stress should fall on the first beat of the bar. Please could you elucidate further on this point if you read this, Richard

Noriko then showed us how to combine the adverbs with the verbs she used for the sit down game into a form of white board othello. The verb flashcards go along the top (in the squares) and the adverbs go down the side.

Seeing the “What can you see?” question on the whiteboard made me think – maybe you could use “What do you usually see [at the seaside/on the way to school/at school]?” as the heading, and play this game. Just an idea…

Emi read Stone Soup, a very old story based on several European fables. She was using quite a plain book, so she prepared her own flashcards, especially for the food. She put these on  the whiteboard each time a new food was introduced to the story. At the end of the story the soup is made, and the kids get to put the food into the soup pot, a circle on the whiteboard. Richard suggested getting the kids in a circle, they become the pot. Finally, if you are a proper, caring English teacher, you make the soup and bring it in for the kids(joking!), but I understand Emi and an number of other members have actually done this, and they promise that it is quite delicious!

Craig read “The Aliens Are Coming” by Colin McNaughton , a BRILLIANT possible Halloween book. He asked one of the children present to point to the eye ball, planet, etc, finally point to the poo poo. She loved it. Interactive, fascinating and funny. Craig noted that as with all reading to students, this is a great opp to introduce abstract language not often covered in the classroom. How exactly do you answer the question “What is ‘outer space’?” I wonder? Thanks again for the video Richard.

Aug 10 ACET Beer Garden Party, RSVP.

There won’t be a workshop next month (Boo!), as, as usual, it is “Summer Vacation”. Hurrah! However there might be “ACET Beer Garden”, proposed by Miki to be held on August 10. RSVP to acet-fukuoka@hotmail.com. Thanks again to Miki for the amazing banana and zucchini bread, and the freshly brewed coffee. What a star!

The next meeting will be on Sunday, Sept 13 2009 at 1.30pm at AMIKAS. The theme will be “Halloween”. Bring Halloween songs, games and activities to show. Check out this page on YouTube songs, Genki’s “Apple Bobbing” and “Trick or Treat songs”. Next MC: Yoriko. Book: Miki. Activity: Me(Jon). Party and craft ideas welcome. 2009 officers election will also be held.