Wednesday - 岩手小学校

Well, after that brief interlude of an entire month, here is my Wednesday school, Iwade Sho Gakko (Iwade Elementary School).  This is my “home school” so this is where I spend days if a different school doesn’t have school or there are no classes on a particular day.  This is also where I have been going during summer break.  That being said, I actually share this school with another ALT.  Up until now, I have had fourth through sixth grades, but the old ALT just finished before break and the new guy doesn’t arrive until mid-September, so I don’t know if they’ll want me to add a couple classes until he gets here.  There are 50 students exactly here and it also has a specialized English program.

A view of Fuji from just outside the main entrance.

The shoe closet at the main entrance.  I'm unsure what type of
bird that is on the Iwade crest.

The English Room.  We line the tables up on the left side of the
room for classes for the kids to use during "writing time."
They sit in the center of the floor for the rest of the class.

Apparently the Yamanashi City BoE is using Iwade as the guinea pig for introducing “English as a foreign language” which seems a strange way to iterate the difference.  Basically, all they are trying to change is how often the younger grades have English class and how early writing is introduced.  The old system, which all of my other schools are on, teach the alphabet just at the end of sixth grade before they graduate to junior high.  Here, however, they teach lower case in third grade, upper case in fourth grade, and have them writing very simple phrases and sentences in fifth and sixth grade.  By simple, I mean things like “I’m hungry” and “It’s on the box” in fifth and “I have a headache” and “I get up at 6:00” in sixth.  So, in theory these kids are the cream of the crop when it comes to English, but it seems the system was implemented too late for the fifth and sixth graders.  The fourth graders, on the other hand, are way beyond any of my other school’s fourth graders.  Also, they are probably the most attentive class I teach.

The English room from where I usually stand.

Traffic safety day.  They spray painted some fake roadways on the playground and set up some traffic lights.  After this day I knew why all Japanese school children crossed the street with one hand in the air.