Information about Monday night’s Moon Lantern Festival at Sheidow Park Primary School – this was emailed to me a day or two ago… 🙂 click on the following words moon lantern

Minnasan Konnichiwa,

Welcome back to term 3! We have a very exciting term ahead…..

Firstly, in week 3, we have Atsumi Osawa, Principal of Sawayama Elementary Schooland some of her staff coming to visit us with the intention of making us their ‘sister’ school in Australia. Oka Sensei and Mr. Bennallack have been busy communicating with them about their visit. We are also organizing a special assembly for their visit. This will lead to exciting learning opportunities in the future – exchanging work, and possible Skype lessons (along with the possibility of a student exchange). This will be a great opportunity to increase our knowledge of Japan and its education systems.

Later this term (week 9 – Monday) we will be holding a whole school ‘Japanese Day’ – where every class will be doing Japanese rich activities all day, having a shared lunch on the oval (with parents), and possibly performers. Keep tuned in for more as we get closer to the date.

Simone has also been busy for us – and we have purchased some Japanese readers for students to use in the classroom. As Pluck Sensei’s classes have been learning hiragana, these will help improve the fluency of reading the difficult script which we have been intensely learning, and will continue to use in the future. As part of these readers, we also gained access to the online readers as well, which anyone can access from any computer (unsure of accessing on ipads as they require flash) – the address for the site is http://in2era.com.au/   – and you can insert clgps123 as your user name, and clgps456 as the password. Some of these books are available in romaji (English letter script of Japanese) so can be read by anyone of any age! We have this for a year, so would love to take advantage of it.

Some of the students have been learning about dining etiquette – and the use of ‘itadakimasu’ before eating as a way to be thankful for the food they are about to receive. The JP classes have also been learning how to use hashi (chopsticks), so don’t be surprised if they want to eat their dinner using them!

Useful phrases:

Itadakimasu – said before a meal

Oishii !!! – Delicious!!

Gochi sou sama deshita – said after finishing a meal

O yasumi nasai – good night

arigatou gozaimasu – thank you very much

_______________ o kudasai – may I please have _____________

 

Thankyou all – please make sure to pass this blog onto your friends – we would love to have more parents and students subscribing to our blog !

Arigatou gozaimasu

Pluck Sensei and Oka Sensei

Minnasan Konnichiwa,

Thanks to all for a great start to the year. It is lovely to walk across the yard and have many students saying “konnichiwa“, and asking how we are – and replying in Japanese.

The younger students have all learnt to count to 10, with some of the slightly older ones learning to count to 100 (once they see the pattern, it is really easy!).

The older students have all filmed a jikou shoukai (self-introduction), which are available for students to copy onto their own usb so they can watch at home. They are in Store/Japanese folder, and would be a great thing for you to share the learning with your children. If you click on the numbers below, you can see an example of what students were required to do.

Thanks for all the positive feedback from parents – we love hearing how much your kids love learning Japanese!

Pluck Sensei and Oka Sensei 🙂

We have all been learning about the weather in Japanese, and asking and answering the question “O genki desu ka – how are you?” in Japanese.

Here are the ways we have learnt to answer:

Hai, genki desu – I’m good

Rippa desu – I’m excellent

Maa maa desu – I’m ok

Ureshi desu – I’m happy

Kanashii desu – I’m sad

Itai desu – I’m sore / hurting (usually when pointing to the sore part of the body)

Byouki desu – I’m sick

nemui desu – I’m tired

peko peko desu – I’m hungry

 

Weather words:

Tenki wa dou desu ka – what is the weather like?

1599 1597 1596 1595

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOUqVC4XkOY – Counting in Japanese 🙂

 

talk

Minnasan konnichiwa!

We (Oka Sensei and Pluck Sensei) are back again, with another exciting year of Japanese!

Juno has been hired an extra half day a year (On Mondays), so Monday is a great day for Japanese as we both have classes simultaneously…

It is beautiful to see students of all years and ages coming in to Japanese classes smiling and willing to learn.

We are setting each student homework after every lesson this year – to go home and teach parents everything they learn. To assist, we will be posting you tube clips and language on here so that you can remind the kids if they forget what they are meant to be teaching you…

We have been lucky enough to Have Kazuki Sensei with us for the first 2 weeks, but unfortunately his time here is short as he has to return to Japan…

The other exciting thing for all our students is that we have 2 new Japanese girls in our school -Yui and Hatsuna,  both who at this stage have very little English, so to be able to communicate with them at all, they need to try and use their language skills. Very daunting for some, but a great experience.

The receptions had fun using “hai – yes” and “iie – no”, and learning the greetings song. We often have to spend a couple of lessons after holidays revising the important basics, such as asking and saying your name, and basic facts about yourself so they can talk to others about themselves.

If you have any questions, or would just like to leave positive feedback, please feel free to at any stage. We will have the Japanese room (now in 05) open for acquaintance night.

Sayounara,

Oka Sensei and Pluck Sensei