Sample Lessons from Meiwa

The following is a series of Elementary lessons as used in Meiwa. Pictures are free to use by Mie JETs and private Mie ALTs in their lessons within Mie Prefecture, but may not be reproduced for any other purpose.

For other lesson ideas, see EFL/ESL Internet Resources

Lesson 1: Greetings

• Grammar: "Greetings, "My name is ..."
• Game: Snap
• Structure:

1. Begin with by introducing yourself as a demonstration. I tend to say something like "Good morning everyone. My name is <name>. Nice to meet you. I'm from <country>. This year we will be learning English together. Wakatta?". I find it fun to put the students off a little at the start. The unexpected tends to be fun. I then repeat the intro sentence by sentence, translating to Japanese as I go. At the end of the lesson I repeat the first part of the intro, though by then they can understand it and it serves to build up their confidence that English isn't so hard after all. At the end I say "Good morning everyone. My name is <name>. Nice to meet you." All of which they've learned that lesson.
2. I go through greeting flashcards with the students. I first get them to repeat the names in Japanese, so they are 100% clear on the meaning of the pictures. "Asa, o-hiru, yuugata, yoru". I then comment on how good their Japanese is! We then do the words in English. I'll say "good" after each word is done, then I'll introduce the word "good". Once we've done the words, I'll explain that greetings (aisatsu) are made by adding "good" to the time of the day. We then practice the greetings of "good morning" etc.
3. Play karuta with the cards in groups of 3 to 5. Call out the English and have the students "snap" the equivalent Japanese cards (2 of each for each group).
4. Teach the students "What's your name?", "My name is..." and "Nice to meet you". Go around the class and ask students their names, then shake their hands and say "nice to meet you".
5. Use the last 15 minutes of the lesson (or first 15) to introduce yourself, your country and whatever you want (self introduction).

Lesson 2: Feelings

• Grammar: "How are you? I'm ..."
• Game: Fly-swat race
• Structure:

1. Review the last lesson. Greet the students and teach them "everyone" and "good morning/afternoon everyone".
2. Go through the face cards and teach "fine" (genki), "happy" (ureshii), "sad" (kanashii), "sleepy" (nemutai), "tired" (tsukareta), "hot" (atsui), "cold" (samui), "hungry" etc.

Always start a lesson off with a quick review of words they learned last lesson. Start by asking students "o-genki desu ka?", then switch to "How are you?" and teach what it means. Hold up each face card and get the students to guess the associated feeling, and teach the English vocab. When you're happy they know reasonably well, divide the class into 2 or 3 groups. Stick the faces to the blackboard. Have one student from each team stand at the back of the room, and put 2 or 3 fly swats on the floor in the middle of the room. Ask a student "How are you?", if the student replies "I'm happy", then the 2 or 3 students at the back must run, pick up a fly swat, and be the first to hit the correct face. Repeat until everyone has had a chance to play.

Lesson 3: Animals

• Grammar: "What's this? It's a ..."
• Game: Charades

Prepare some animal flashcards. Start by revealing each animal slowly, from the ears down, and have the students yell out what animal it is (in Japanese), then teach them the English word. Do this for all animals, repeating "kore wa nan desu ka?", gradually replacing it with "What's this?". After a review of all the animals, play animal charades. Split the class into 2 or 3 groups and have 2 or 3 chairs at the front facing back toward the rest of the class. 1 student from each group sits in a chair, and you hold up a picture of an animal behind them, so the rest of the class can see. The class then act out charades of the animal to help their team-mate guess what it is. When an animal has been guessed correctly, a new set of students come up and repeat the process. This is great fun. Keep repeating the main phrase.

Lesson 4: Colors

• Grammar: "What color is this? It's ..."
• Game: Fruit basket

Teach the colors (flashcards help) then play fruit-basket, but with colors. If a student is wearing the color that is called, they must change seats.

Lesson 5: Instructions

• Grammar: "Sit down", "stand up", "turn left", "right", "around", "raise your hand"
• Game: Simon says

This lesson is a good opportunity to review what the students have learned so far. Perhaps introduce the criss-cross game and play by calling out the Japanese word, and having the first student to raise their hand give the equivalent word in English. Alternative games can be played for younger groups. After teaching the instructions, the game of Simon Says works much better if the students have some concept of what a "Simon" is. Try drawing a circle on the board, adding curly hair, ears, eyes, nose and mouth, and then introducing him as Simon. The game seems to work much better that way. If there is time at the end, you can choose two students, one to go to the front of the class, and one to stand up. The one at the front must give three instructions that the one standing must perform. You can repeat this several times with different pairs.

Lesson 6: Fruit

• Grammar: "What fruit do you like? I like ..."
• Game: Draw and guess fruit, line janken

Many students already know the names of many fruit in English. Start by drawing an apple on the board and getting students to call out the name of the fruit. Japanese is OK for this part of the lesson, as they haven't learned the English yet. When a student calls out the right fruit, if it's in Japanese, stop and teach the English, otherwise get the class to repeat the English name. Then call the student who guessed the fruit to the front, and show them a flashcard of another fruit and have the student draw it on the board and repeat the process, until all fruit have been done.

Once the grammar has been taught, the last game involves getting the whole class to stand in a line that makes a big U shape around the classroom. From the start of the line, show the first student a fruit card and ask "What fruit do you like?" The student answers that they like the fruit that is on the card. That student then takes the card, turns to the next student in line and asks the same question. The card continues to be passed down the line in the same fashion. At the same time, introduce a different card to the end of the line and repeat the process. Eventually the two cards will meet somewhere in the middle, and the two card holders janken, the loser's card being removed and the winner's continuing on. They must see which team can push their card the furthest. Wait until the card has passed about 8 to 10 people before another card is introduced, so there is a constant flow of cards and so students aren't waiting around for long periods. You can also introduce color and animal cards later to mix things up a bit more.

Lesson 7: Vegetables

• Grammar: "What vegetable do you have? Do you have a pumpkin? Yes / no"
• Game: Go-fish card game

For this lesson, you need to make a set of playing cards, as well as vegetable flashcards. Get some light cardboard and print a set of the flashcards at playing card size, then cut them out to make the cards. Make sure you can't see the vegetables through the cards (if you can, either use thicker cardboard or a lighter print/copy). You will need 4 of each vegetable to make a deck, and you will need 6 decks for a large class, approximately 4 to 6 players per deck.

The game is played by dealing out all the cards. Any pairs a student has can be put together and placed on their desk in front of them. The aim of the game is to collect more pairs than anyone else. What is left in their hand is all the un-paired cards. Get the students to janken for who goes first, then each student in turn can ask any other student in their game, "Do you have a <vegetable>?", from which the other student can answer "yes" or "no". If they answer yes, they must give that student the card, thus giving that student another pair. This game works really well as Elementary students love card games and it allows every student to practice the target grammar while having fun.

Lesson 8: Family / Christmas

• Grammar: "Who's this? It's my ..."
• Game: Making Christmas cards (or "guess who" game)

If you teach an Elementary School class once a month, this lesson should end up in December, allowing you to do a Christmas activity if you want. If not, you can make a "guess who" game by asking "Who is Kenta's mother's sister's nephew?" The answer is, of course, Kenta. Start with simple, one level questions, then you can build to more difficult ones depending on the class.

If you want to include a Christmas activity, you should start by teaching a basic family structure, including mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister, uncle and aunt. Then you can teach them "to" and "from", as well as the sentence "To <Mother>, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. From <student>." You can buy A4 sticker paper from Eiden, Joshin or any computer store, and print a collage of Christmas pics found on the net. The students can cut out the images and stick them onto a folded B4 card to make their Christmas card. If you want to do this activity but don't want to use Christmas, you can make it a New Years card, or if it's at a different time of the year, perhaps a friendship card.

Lesson 9: Numbers

• Grammar: "How old are you? I'm ..."
• Game: Bingo

This is a pretty simple lesson, teach numbers then play bingo. You can allow each student to draw a number for the bingo game and call it out, so to increase class participation, and at the end you can teach "How old are you?" as the grammar point.

When teaching numbers, teach 1 to 12, and then you can divide the class into lunch groups, with each group selecting their best person to say 1 to 12 as quickly as they can, timed individually. The fastest group can win a prize. When teaching beyond 12, stress the "~teen" as a long sound and the "~ty" as a short sound. Demonstrate six-teeeeen and six-ty. Once they understand that, it's easy making the combination for numbers up to 99. The other main thing you must teach is that three becomes "thir" for 13 and 30, and five becomes "fif" for 15 and 50.

Lesson 10: Months

• Grammar: Greetings, "When's your birthday? It's ..."
• Game: Shrinking island

The "shrinking island" game is good for this. Put students in groups of 6 to 8 on about 10 half sheets of newspaper. This is their "island". Randomly call out months, and if no one in the group has a birthday on that month, remove an outer sheet of paper. As the island gets small, they must all try to stay on it. If anyone in the team puts a foot outside the island, they whole team are out and must sit down and watch the other teams try and balance 8 people on 2 pieces of paper!

Lesson 11: Self Introduction

• Grammar: "Where do you live? I live in ..."
• Game: Self introduction (no game)

Spend 10 or 15 minutes covering "I live in...", then hand out pre-prepared (with katakana) self introduction sheets. This is a great lesson to watch as it brings together everything the students have learned so far. The intro generally goes like this: "Good morning / afternoon. My name is (name). I live in (town). My birthday is (month) (day) and I am (age) years old. I like (animal), I like (color) and I like (fruit). I have a (brother / sister / cat / dog / fish). Thank you." Each student gets to introduce themselves for the class. For really big classes, shorten the introduction.

Other Lessons

Weather

• Grammar: "How's the weather? It's ..."
• Vocab: sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, windy
• Game: Map of the world with names and weather for countries.

Where is

• Grammar: "Where is the ...? It's here / there"
• Vocab: pen, pencil, eraser, ruler, ball, desk, chair, blackboard