Japanese

Konnichiwa (hello)!

The Japanese classroom is full or brave students attempting to speak Japanese as much as possible. It has been so impressive seeing the enthusiasm of students across the school in using classroom phrases so confidently and willingly. Ganbarimashita (keep it up)!

Here is what is happened in Term 2:

Grade 2S

After introductory phrases, greetings, and numbers have been covered in Term 1, Term 2 has progress with students exploring colours and animals. We read the Japanese version of the story ‘Brown Bear’ by Eric Carle and join in with games and activities to help us recall the words for colours and animals and create memorable experiences to attach the words to. Science colour experiments, craft and origami – lots of fun!

Grade 3

Grade 3S have learnt about the cultural day in Japan to celebrate children – ‘Kodomo no Hi’. We made the traditional items of carp shaped kites (koinobori) and origami helmets (kabuto).

Grade 3SH have been introduced to the story Brown Bear by Eric Carle, in Japanese. The students were able to read the story with only Japanese hiragana characters to assist them (and their memories!). They will add to their prior knowledge of colours in Japanese, by using the colour to describe an animal. 

Grade 4E

Our learning leaps from the highest mountain in Japan, Mt Fuji, in Term 1, to a Japanese wedding – specifically a traditional Japanese folktale called Nezumi no Yomeiri – The Mouse’s Wedding. Characters and phrases will be explored, and students will have the opportunity to act out and translate the story into a bilingual text.

Grades 5S and 6K

By this stage of Japanese, students have accumulated many words over their learning journey. We reflect on what we now know, acknowledging the amount of words we can identify from the 100 most frequently used words in Japanese. We spent the term revisiting the hiragana chart, and the 46 characters that are in it. We started to put together basic hiragana characters to make words, and then read and create our own stories. 

Arigatou 😊