Japanese

Konnichi wa!

こんにちは

Hello! I am Taguchi-Sensei and have been enjoying getting to know the Japanese students of Oatlands Primary School in Brown-Sensei’s absence, as we have fun learning Japanese.

Preps

This term the Prep students have been learning their Numbers 1-10, the colours yellow, white and red, as well as one-stroke hiragana:

1.       一       いち (ichI)

2.       二       に (ni)

3.       三       さん (san)

4.       四       よん (yon)

5.       五       ご (go)

6.       六       ろく (roku)

7.       七       なな (nana)

8.       八       はち (hachi)

9.       九       きゅう (kyuu)

10.   十       じゅう (juu)

Grade One &  Two 

Students in Grades One & Two have been reading and acting out ‘The Enormous Turnip’, a Japanese folktale about a farming family who accidentally grow a huge turnip and has to call upon each family member (including the dog, cat and a mouse!) to help them pull it out of the ground. Students have learnt the words for these characters as well as the fun repetition of Heave-ho! Students have been putting their hiragana knowledge to use by learning to read and write the names of the characters in Japanese.

Grade Three & Four

Students in Grade Three have been enjoying reading and acting out the well-known fairy tale “The Three Little Pigs’ in a Japanese translation. They have learned to ‘huff and puff’ in Japanese and how to say a straw house, a wood house and a brick house in Japanese. They have played team games to learn the vocabulary in Japanese, particularly the board game ‘Bump’.

 Grade Five

Through the eyes of Sumo wrestlers, students in Grade Five have been learning how to introduce themselves, including saying ‘Nice to meet you’, name, age, height, weight and nationality. They have been working on implementing their hiragana, learning some katakana and numbers in kanji characters. It has been wonderful to see their confidence develop in speaking Japanese to each other in this way.

Until next time, 

Sayonara

さようなら

Taguchi Sensei