Songs, Games and Chants, Oh My!

Day Two of Orientation had us separate into groups by the types of schools we would be teaching at Elementary, Junior or High Schools. I decided to go to the Elementary School Workshop since most of my schools are at that level. My ALT duties will include teaching at a nursery, three Elementary schools and one Junior High with only 25 students. In total, I will teach about 465 students in the areas of Hidakagawa-cho that used to be Kawabe and Nakatsu villages.

An elementary school teacher or Homeroom Teacher(HRT) as they are called over here lead the workshop. She seemed to have a lot of good ideas and told us a bit more about what to expect from the kids and how to involve the HRT in the class. The Japanese government has recently made teaching English mandatory at the elementary school levels. The problem is that most teachers did not need to take English past high school so I think that my role as an ALT in elementary school will be really important as the HRTs may not be strong in English. At the Junior High level, the ALT team teaches with the Japanese Teacher of English(JTE).

My friend who works in research on Japanese Elementary school English language education told me that at this age they want to start introducing students to the rhythm and tone of a native English speaker. So, it now all makes sense that most of the workshop covered how to teach English through songs, games and chants. We even got to sing a lot of the songs and learn a lot of the games throughout the morning. I learned how to sing some children`s songs like "Twelve Months", "Seven Steps" and a new favourite "Hello". I feel sorry for an Elementary school ALTs who don`t like singing because we will be doing a lot of it. Also, we will be playing games like "Fruits Basket" which is similar to musical chairs. There is also some rhythmic style called "Jazz Chants" but I`m not sure it will go over well with the kids. I may give it a try.

One interesting thing I have noticed is that Canadians sing "Head and Shoulders" to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down" while Americans sing some new fangled version. I personally believe that most of the commonwealth countries sing it this way and that the Americans and now the Japanese have got the tune wrong. I first encountered this while volunteering in Buenos Aires and the fellow volunteer from New York sang it that way. It caused a bit of problem since I wanted to sing it my way but I relented. Well, no more. I have to sing it the way I learned in elementary school. So kids of Hidakagawa you have been warned: we will be singing Head and Shoulders to a different tune.