Japanese

Welcome to Week 8

Year 5/6

Students have been focusing on “Zoo animals” and “Vegetables”. They practiced the words and sentences through a variety of activities such as Q&A, pair conversations, planning a day in Melbourne Zoo, reading and writing, songs and games. Now they are learning “Months and the 4 seasons”. We have been talking about the opposite seasons in Japan and what the Japanese 4 seasons are like.

Year 3/4

Students have participated in a lot of activities to learn and practice our topic “Zoo animals” and “Vegetables”. We practiced the words and sentences through songs, pair conversations to indicate likes and dislikes, buzz games, and question and answer using a random name picker.

Year 3/4 exchange program

Students had an exchange session with the Year 6 students of Onchi Primary School, Japan on Zoom. Everyone introduced themselves saying their name and age in Japanese and we all listened to the Japanese students saying their name, their treasure and what they are good at in English. We sang a song in Japanese and they played a song with recorders. Unfortunately we couldn’t hear the recorder sound due to a technical problem, but their teacher is planning to record it and send it to us in the near future. 

Year 3/4 students spoke very well and we are very proud of their effort and manners. Well done!

Year 1/2

Students continued to practice animals, likes and dislikes, body parts, numbers, how to say their age, Hiragana (Japanese alphabet), days of the week and colours. They have learnt some names of animals such as polar bear, zebra, tiger, elephant and monkey. We talked about a place in Nagano where Japanese native monkeys come to soak themselves in hot springs. 

They have started to learn and practice “Time” in Japanese. We counted, learnt how to say hours in Japanese and practiced it in small groups using some clocks. Students used ELLA (Early Learning Languages Australia) program and played “What’s the time Mr. Wolf” and “Making and printing concert tickets”. They were fun games to reinforce hours and days of the week in Japanese.

Foundation

Students continued to practice greetings, body parts, animals, likes and dislikes, colours and Hiragana (Japanese alphabet) sounds through a variety of songs in Japanese. They can indicate likes and dislikes of animals very well as a whole class activity. We also have been practicing how to count 1-20 and how to introduce themselves in Japanese. 

Writing in Japanese is also a popular activity. We have a word of the day and they copy writings off the board step by step. After the writing, they draw pictures of the word. Students can get a Japanese stamp when they pronounce the word. Foundation students are familiar with the routine now and are working very well every week!

Have a great week!

Ayako Mizushima (Mizu Sensei)