Japanese

Whole school

We are having a busy and exciting time in Japanese class this term.

We learnt about Taiko, Japanese drums at the beginning of this term, in preparation of our Taiko incursion, held on Friday in Week 1. The instructor Kiyomi, who travels to schools all around Australia, brought 46 Taiko for the students to try. We had a session for the whole school, and workshops for Year 3 to 6. We all had an opportunity to play Taiko including staff members!

Year 3-6

Students finished learning about "Vegetables" and are now learning about "Zoo animals".

We practiced the names of vegetables such as tomato, onion, capsicum, eggplant, potato and carrot in Japanese as well as Japanese vegetables such as gobō (burdock root), takenoko (bamboo shoots) and renkon (lotus roots). Students then use the vocabulary to indicate likes/dislikes and to say "I eat". We use a variety of ways to reinforce what they learnt. They enjoyed singing, pair conversations and online games.

Year 3/4 students received a bookmark each from Japanese children in Year 4. They had a session to talk to them in Term 1 on Zoom and made bookmarks for them. It has been a great exchange and was wonderful that we could send something to each other to treasure for a long time!

Year 1/2

Students have been practicing animals, likes and dislikes, body parts, numbers, how to say their age and colours in this term. We talked about Taiko-Japanese drums in Week 1 and draw some pictures. From Week 2, students have been practicing zoo animals such as zebra, elephant, tiger, polar bear and monkey in Japanese. In coming weeks, we will use these words to indicate likes and dislikes. We used ELLA (Early Learning Languages Australia) program to learn verbs such as walk, run, jump, dance and stop. Students were very quick to learn these new words through online games.

Foundation

Students have practiced speaking in full greetings at the beginning of the class. They greet me with “Good morning Mizu Sensei”, and answer the question of “How are you?” all in Japanese. Everyone is becoming fluent in saying these lines!

Students have learnt about Taiko, Japanese drums prior to the incursion. They also learnt about colours, how to count over 10 in Japanese and body parts. Origami (paper folding) is always a popular activity! We continue to see lots of smiling faces in Japanese class each week!

Have a good week.

Ayako Mizushima (Mizu Sensei)