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