Languages- Japanese
Communicating with the Specialist Team
We look forward to partnering with you in 2021, and welcome your input:
Sensei Masae Uekusa (Japanese) Masae.Uekusa@education.vic.gov.au
Konnichiwa, minasan! (Hello, everyone!)
Week 9-10
All the students have reflected on the Japanese Day and revised this term’s learning by playing some fun games on the topic to celebrate their learning.
Japanese Day Highlights (Week 8 Thursday, November 25th)
Opening Ceremony
2021 USPS Japanese Day began with the Webex opening ceremony run by our Japanese Captain Daniel O’Loughlin. He did an amazing job by facilitating the ceremony in a calm manner.
Our SSS Choir presented their beautiful Japanese song ‘Kimi o nosete’ (Carrying you) from the famous Studio Ghibli movie ‘Laputa’. I was impressed by their beautiful Japanese pronunciation as well as their excellent singing! Thank you Mrs Haines for conducting this.
The ceremony ended with the whole school costume parade. There are so many creative and well-researched costumes!!! I was so thankful to all the families and staff for the great effort into preparing for this day!
Art activities with Mrs Haines:
We were very fortunate that all art activities were prepared and lead by our fantastic art teacher Mrs Haines. Foundation to Year 2 students were introduced to the famous contemporary artist Mr Takeshi Murakami and learned his fun and pop art style. Year 3 to 6 students were inspired by the images of different faces of Mt. Fuji through the four seasons. They painted and decorated their Mt. Fuji with different materials. I was impressed by all the beautiful art work. Please see the photos!
Game activities:
All students learned about the traditional Japanese sport ‘Sumou’ through the insightful videos and slides. After that, they made their own paper animal/origami wrestlers and the ring/platform to play paper sumo matches by tapping the platform with index fingers. Tap, tap, tap!
Outdoor sports:
All students had the opportunity to enjoy replicated Japanese ‘Sports Day’ activities outside. Foundation to Year 2 students enjoyed bean-bag tossing, giant-pants race. Year 3 to 6 students had fun running ‘Typhoon’ race and three-legged race. This session was such an exciting one!
Special activities:
Foundation to Year 4 students had the opportunity to enjoy the popular Ghibli movie ‘Ponyo’. It is like ‘Little Memeid’ with a twist. It is always nice to have a calm-down time on such an exciting day. I heard that our students loved the movie! Some students also enjoyed ‘Tasuki’ (sash) relay using tinsels, too! Unfortunately Minecraft Education did not work as we expected this time, however, they managed to look at all the famous landscapes and landmarks using the Google Earth to learn more about Japanese geography!
To sum up, it was such a fun day with lots of exciting activities thanks to our amazing teachers and staff who worked tirelessly to make everything work smoothly. And our students also did a fantastic
work by always trying their best to follow the SWPB values! I cannot thank you all enough for your kind support for our Japanese Day!!!
ArigatouJ
Masae-sensei
SSS Choir sing 'Carrying You'