Classroom learning

 Japanese 日本語 (Nihongo)

During the first half of this term,  Year 1-6 students have been participating in a mini unit at the 2024 Olympic Games in France (O-ri-n-pi-kku). Given the international flavour of the games, we have taken the opportunity to explore Katakana - one of the three different ways of writing in Japanese (along with Kanji and Hiragana). Katakana is often used to write country names and other ‘loan’ words from different languages (the students’ names are written in Katakana).

Here are some examples:

As part of our unit on the Olympics, Year 3-6 students researched and prepared short biographies of Japanese Olympic Athletes using Google Slides. Please ask them to show you theirs! Some of the athletes included gold medal winners such as Natsumi Tsunoda (Women’s Judo), Koko Yoshizawa (Women’s Skateboarding) and Koki Kano (Men’s Fencing).

Altogether Japan came 3rd in the 2024 Olympics!

While the Year 1-6 students explored the Olympics, Prep students investigated language and culture around families (Kazoku). They found out the names for the various family members and did a wonderful job of describing their own households.

Trist, Japanese teacher