There aren't many new concepts taught in this lesson. I continued with the theme of plurals from the previous lesson, and make sure the students the plural correctly when saying, "I like ____."

The grammar of this lesson is one of the most common concepts taught through English education in Japan. After "Hello" and "How are you?", we start getting into "I like __," and we usually do it at a young age. Case in point, I already taught all the grammar to my 5th grade students last year when they were 4th graders. Here are those plans: December 20th, 2013, and March 24th, 2014.

Almost all the content in this lesson was a review, so I made sure to teach accuracy over volume. In 4th grade, I let "I like apple" and "What sports do you like?" slide because I wanted them to learn the words and grammar. But now, I focused on correcting them. It's "I like apples" with an 's'. Plural. And it's "What sport do you like?" without an 's'. Singular.

Since we already sang "What fruit do you like?" in every single class last year, I wanted to do something else. I chose "Sing" by The Carpenters. I think most ALTs are sick of this song, but I still like it. When I start hitting the high notes, it almost always gets a reaction from my students. :)

For class, I made an enlarged copy of the lyrics, and put it on the board for all students to see. We spent half a class practicing and introducing the song before singing at the beginning each time.

In the back of Hi Friends 1, every vocabulary word for this lesson has a cut-out card, so I created my flashcards based on those graphics. Unfortunately, these graphics are NOT vector images so they scale terribly. But.. Close enough. I could use my high-res images that I use for my younger grade, but I prefer them to match the images in the book.

Speaking of those cards, before class, I asked each of the homeroom teachers to have their students cut out the fruits cards from Hi Friends 1 page 41. Some teachers did it. Some didn't. But, for those that didn't, I made enough time in class for the students to cut everything out.

This class was basically just a review of the "How many?" grammar from the previous lesson. I leveraged that grammar to introduce the singular and plural forms of all the fruits.

I categorized each of the fruits into 3 groups depending on how the "s" sounded in their plurals.

The following plurals all have a Z or ズ sound: Apples, Bananas, Melons, Pineapples, Lemons, Strawberries, and Cherries.
The following have more of an S or ス sound: Grapes, and Kiwi Fruits.
And these others have an EZ or エズ sound: Oranges, and Peaches.

I taught the plurals using the same method as the classroom objects from the previous lesson: "1 apple, 2 apples" It's kinda dumb, but the students totally understood the difference between the two words. Then we practiced the plurals with "How many?"

For the game, I thought up something called the Janken Collecting Card Game. I'm sure some already thought of this, but I thought it would work well with the grammar, and it didn't take very long to explain.

First students will make groups of 4 or 5 students. Each student has their set of cards from page 41 of Hi Friends 1. One student will ask another student, "How many ___ do you have?" where the [blank] is the plural version of a fruit. The student responds with however many they have, "I have __ _____." To start off, it would be 1 apple, for example. If it's 0, then the student has to ask for another fruit. Then that student asks the other student for some fruit cards. Both students put their fruit cards in the middle and Janken. The winner takes all the cards. And they continue until one student has all the cards.

I basically just played for time, and the student within the group that had the most won. Not a bad game. Everyone was using the grammar, speaking clearly, and getting rather competitive.

All my students already knew "I like ___" and we already played some games dealing with it last year. I wanted to do something completely different, so I had them make posters. :)

But first, I used this lesson to introduce the new song, "Sing" by The Carpenters, to the students. Overall, it took about 15 minutes to introduce the song, and I did this in 3 stages. First, I put the print-out of the lyrics on the board. Then I played and sang the song for the students as an introduction. Some students recognized the song. Others thought it sounded difficult.

Secondly, we looked more closely at the lyrics. Several parts were repeated, and others had the same rhythm. We went through each line of the song, one by one, and the students repeated after me. As we went through, several students who thought the song was impossible starting getting more confident, and realized it wasn't too bad. I think they surprised themselves. :)

Actually, this was the very first time I introduced a full song to the students. All previous songs were the regular kind of English songs you'd expect. I think some students took this as a challenge, and were relieved and surprised they could actually do it.

After we practiced the lines for long enough, the third stage was singing the song together as a group. And it went well. Several students wanted to sing in again after, but we had to keep moving along.

Anyway, Today's Aim was drawing pictures and making posters. I quickly explained "I like ___" to the students, which they already knew and totally remembered. So, we continued to the Activity. Then we made posters containing their favorite fruits and their favorite character. I stole this idea from other ALTs.

Here's my example:

Easy stuff. Some students made some really good posters, too. Check them out on the bottom of the post.

Students need to finish the posters by next class, so I assigned it as homework.

For this class, I combined two games that work well together, and the students seem to enjoy them.

To start off, we reviewed "I like ___." Then I taught, "Do you like ___?" "Yes, I do." "No, I don't." For each one, I asked the students for the Japanese meaning, then wrote it on the board underneath the English.

The first game is the Census Game. I should really rename this to the Survey Game, though. In Japanese, I call it the アンケートゲーム, which translates as Survey Game. I think other ALTs call it the Mystery Game, or something.

Anyway, with all the fruit flashcards on the board, students put their heads down, and I ask the class "Do you like ___?" If the students like the fruits, they raise their hand. If not, they don't. I count the number of "yes"s and write the number underneath the flashcard on the board.

Before I reveal the results, the students play the second game: an Interview Game. Using their posters from last week, they go around the room and use the following script:
I like (character).
I like (fruit).
Do you like (fruit)?

On the back of their poster, they tally either "yes" or "no" depending on what the interviewee responds with.

After 5 minutes, everyone sits down, and students start guessing the results of the Census Game by comparing the results of the Interview Game.

This really works best if the Interview Game has A LOT of time so the students have a chance to ask every student in the class.

In this class, I'm introducing all the other vocabulary and grammar left for the lesson. We practiced fruits real quick. Then I showed them the sports, animals, and drinks. I asked them about the categories. Then I introduced "What ___ do you like?"

For old time sake, we sang "What Fruit do you like?" which we sang in almost every class last year. Everyone completely remembered it, which impressed the homeroom teachers. :)

All the students really had no difficultly with the vocabulary or grammar, but practicing still took quite a while.

For the activity, I did some of the listening activities in Hi Friends 1 on pages 16 and 17. In most cases, we only had enough time to do the page 16 activity, and skipped page 17.

For the final 2 classes of this lesson, I followed the activities recommended by the official lesson plans for Hi Friends.

To begin, I review everything, and we play the Row/Column Question Game as review. I started by playing this twice, but so much time is needed for the interview game that in later class, we only did it once.

For the Interview Game, each student gets a worksheet. There are 6 columns. The first 4 columns require the students to ask "Do you like ___?" using the column's vocab: Birds, Peaches, Basketball, and Milk. For the last 2 columns, students ask, "What ___ do you like?" with Sport and Animal. Each response is written in the row. O for "yes", X for "no". Katakana is fine for the Sports and Animals.

They start off in groups of 5 or 6, and then expand to the whole class.

Again, the Interview Game needs a lot of time so students can fill out their worksheet as much as they can. At the end of class, I collect all of the worksheets so we can use them in the next class.

Once again, we review all the vocabulary and grammar. And we play the Row/Column Question Game, too. But this time, I allow the students to both ask the questions, as well as answer. The students basically teach themselves. :)

Today's Aim is the "Who am I?" Guessing Game. Each student gets their interview sheet back, and then I go through a couple of examples. I begin by writing "Who am I?" on the board, and ask the students for the Japanese. Some classes struggled, so I ask them for each part. Like, "What is 'I' in Japanese?", "What is 'who' in Japanese?". Then I write the meaning underneath, 私はだれでしょうか.

To play this game, choose one student on your Interview sheet, and recite their answers. For example:
I like birds.
I don't like peaches.
I don't like basketball.
I like milk.
I like badminton.
I like cats.
Who am I?

Students look at their Interview sheets and try to match my words to the responses they received in the last class.

I went through a couple examples, then the students got back into the same groups from the last class. Fun fun. :)

Overall, I think things went really well. There was never a dull class. Students were always entertained and could easily recite everything I aimed to teach.

I probably should've come up with more games for the cards. The students spent class time to cut them out, and we only used them once. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a good game where they could actually use English. Karuta with fruits is WAY too damn easy for them. And most other card games are listening, rather than speaking. That's why I went with that collecting game.

Also, drawing the character was basically a throw-away idea. I had the students do it because I thought they'd enjoy it more than just drawing a fruit. In the end, we never really used the character in class.

But whatever. The students learned everything, and made very few mistakes. Good stuff. :)