Starting the Year Off Right!

Students created their own license plates with a mystery number and symbols to tell about themselves.

This year is a busy one! With seven different classes and five textbook free curricula, it's bound to be exciting.

As always, I make getting to know my students my number one priority. Learning English is a great challenge, and it's important that all of my students know I value the effort they will make in my class and more importantly the goal of our time together, which is communication. I felt that this year got off to a particularly great start. This was in part due to the time I spent planning activities, but also to my fantastic students and a bit of help from a small rubber chicken. It's amazing what a little laughter can do!

These are some of my favorite beginning of the year activities:

• Passport to the Future: How I use passports for my basic, integrated skills courses I have mentioned before. This year, I picked students up on the first day of class with a sign indicating that students would be joining "Sarah's English World Tour." I told them they would need a passport for their travels, and asked them to complete a passport application. A colleague came up with the passports & customs idea to prepare students for U.S. customs on their summer study abroad trip, and with a few additions, like the application, it's since become a mainstay of my second year curricula. I had students make name tags which they held up while I took their passport photo after they completed their applications. I worked late the first couple of nights assembling what after three years has become a quite convincing Japanese passport ( converted notebook). This helps me quickly learn students names and basic info. And, during the first days of class I set up "customs" outside the classroom, and students enter different English speaking countries. This is a good tie in to the next discussion activity. 
• Why English?: This year, in reflecting on motivation in the classroom and how my students must feel about studying English as a required subject, I decided to attempt an initial brainstorm about the reasons why they study English. Perhaps Simon Sinek's TedTalk on "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" had something to do with it too. Sharing this idea with a colleague, I was also inspired to use the "post-it" brainstorming method. Students had a stack of post-its on their desks, and I asked them to jot down any ideas that came into their minds when they asked themselves why they study English. I was impressed by the depth of their responses. Once all the students had their ideas written down, they took turns in small groups to come up to the white board and share these with the whole class. Then, we started to group notes into three distinct categories: 1) for our future (work, travel, engineering), 2) communication 3) because it's fun. What resulted, thanks to the additional post-its from my colleague's classes, was a colorful tapestry of guiding lights. 
• The Personalized License Plate: This is not a new activity and I think I even did something like it when I was in my graduate program. Basically, each student receives a blank license plate (or t-shirt, note card, etc.) and is asked to record some basic information. In the case of the license plate, I asked them to write a mystery number in the middle, and surround that by four pictures/symbols that represented their special places, hobbies, interests, or favorite foods. I gave my own example and had an introductory PowerPoint that explained each thing on my license plate as well as encouraged them to guess at my secret number (the number of countries I have visited). Once students completed their own license plates, I asked them to swap with a partner, and modeled language they should use to ask their partner about their plates. They're final task was to introduce their partner to the class. A meaningful observation arose out of this task. In the classes where I let students prepare their introduction on paper prior to speaking, they struggled to make eye contact or speak naturally. In the class where I gave them no preparation time, I just said "stand up and introduce your partner," they did so much more naturally and fluently.  

Classroom contracts in English and Japanese, signed by all students in each class and the results of our post-it brainstorm on why students' study English.

• My Life as  Comic Character/Super Hero: This is my introductory activity for the "Exploring English through Comics and Graphic Novels" course. Students are asked to imagine themselves as a comic book character or a super hero and sketch up their character as well as outline their strengths, weaknesses, super powers, etc. based on their real life personalities and interests. Always a hit!
• Self-Maps: I tried this for the first time last year and asked students to get creative once more by making "self-maps". I adapted last year's version a bit, making it more personalized to the students, who have just returned from a year abroad in New Zealand, and helping them organize their ideas in more visual ways. Using a concept map, I had them answer questions and reflect on their parts of self before imagining visual "maps" to represent their personalities, dreams, experience and learning. Once finished, they presented their maps three different times in small groups of students. Classmates had the opportunity to ask questions. They all did an amazing job, coming up with deep and well-thought out representations of "self".

• Name Games with the Rubber Chicken: These games are so simple, and have certainly been done before, but, something about adding this ridiculous squeaking rubber chicken purchased at the 100 yen shop made them so much more fun! I played these games with my presentation classes, now I teach a fourth and fifth year (college freshman and sophomore) presentation class. Of course, with presentation, it is always good to get comfortable being uncomfortable, so that was part of the game. The first was a simple toss and catch name game. With all students standing in a circle, I started and squeezed the chicken letting every one know that this indicated turn taking. You make the chicken squeak, say your name and pass. The objective was eventually to start throwing it in all different directions and get faster and faster so that we could hear everyone's name several times. I learned names fast! The second rubber chicken game was a memory game. Again, rubber chicken signaled turn taking. We each stated our name and one thing we were interested in. The challenge was that you had to first introduce everyone to the left of you who had already had a turn. "I'm Sarah, I like pizza," "She's Sarah. She likes pizza. And I'm Yoko, I like playing guitar." And on and on. I added in gestures to aid with the memory. It is a simple game that makes you pay close attention and make eye contact with everyone in the circle. I'm still devising new ways to use the rubber chicken that also involve the use of language...please comment if you know any!
• Moodle Forum Introductions: If you teach teenagers, then you'll know getting them out of their shells, at least in public in front of all their peers, is sometimes a bit challenging. I find that giving them a private space to formulate and articulate their thoughts is a great starting point. For three of my higher level courses, I have Moodle course pages that allow me to set up private and personalized forums. I ask each student to post a new topic in an introduction forum, and write a short introduction, with specific questions posed to respond to that help them start to think about classroom content. Then, I ask each student to read and respond to at least one other classmates' introduction, and I go through and post my own comments and questions. These become a kind of dialogue journal that really sets the groundwork for lasting and mutually respectful relationships with the students. 

In closing, during that first week of class, I couldn't help but smile at all the fun I was having with my students, especially with the help of my friend the rubber chicken. It pays to be inventive and silly. The quirky Japanese duo Cibo Matto with their song "Know Your Chicken" was stuck in my head after those names games ( I warn you, it's a weird video!).