cricket completed

Well, I've finally gotten over my 'cold' I think. - Maybe it was more of a virus.

Today i kicked myself for not taking my camera to school- my third years played cricket in our English lesson!! It was a lot of fun. Team B (my team) won- with about 36 points. Team A got 12. I played the sort of quick (kwik) version, with a couple of rules thrown in that I made up as we went along [not to the advantage of only my team, of course!] As we were playing inside the martial arts room, there was no way to score a six, apart from if the ball hit the ceiling, or high up on the wall, which it did a couple of times. Every team member took it in turns to bowl about 6 times. Some of the students were quite funny to watch, but they all did really well and enjoyed it.

Having had to explain it in a country where there is no concept of cricket at all, it made me realise how similar it is to baseball, which the Americans morphed it into.

From next week on, students will try and teach (me) about Japanese culture. Mine was an example of British culture. [If anyone wants to see my rules/ lesson on teaching it, just send me a line-i won't bore you all by putting up the worksheets on here!!]

Before we played the game itself, we did some warm ups, throwing & catching practice ('hot potato', just like we used to in St Nick's) and then bowling/ batting practice. In the throwing and catching, and also the warm ups, because it all uses action, it was a relief to be able to speak fairly quickly, without having to slow my speaking speed down to snail's pace, also prompting a japanese teacher to clarify/ add a bit of translation etc. If only that could happen a bit more often!

I'm still not really sure what to do next year- stay or go, or if I go, what to do. A PGCE / further thinking about teaching in the UK has crossed my mind. I guess being able to speak full speed in English the whole time would be a huge benefit of that option!! Hmm, I think i'll probably go backwards and forwards, take a few side steps until I finally reach a decision/ work out what to do!

Sorry this is a long and rambly message. But, this week with my first years, I've had fun making a restaurant in the classroom- ie students pretend to be waiters/ waitresses and customers and ordering food etc. Tomorrow we'll do a bit about ordering in a fast food restaurant. I got some props a few days ago from the local McDonalds. I asked for 40 of everything (cups, cartons for chips, burger packets etc) but, despite it being free advertising for them, they only gave me 9 or 10. Still, I'll try and make do! Then if there's time, I'll finish off the lesson by describing an English breakfast - try describing baked beans and HP sauce in a land where they eat rice, soup and fish in the morning! Oh and there was another point I wanted to say, but I've completely forgotten... apart from now I have a horrible image in my mind of Saturday lunch in Collingwood- powdered egg, fat sausage, horrid bacon, [weren't you only allowed one meat though?], baked beans (if you were lucky), potatoes (is this right??) and coleslaw -yum, not.

Talking of Collingwood- it's funny how you can't get some things out of your head. - On a vvvvery short run today, all I could think was, "Looking good, Collingwood...Lengthen it out for 10... Settle into a comfortable rhythm... This is good, girls- keep it going...(and many more besides)..." [And it's only when I'm running really late for school that this comes into my head as I cycle up the hill too!!]