We received these from our favourite textbook supplier, englishbooks.jp. We've finally migrated to the New Headway series, so pictures and language will be a bit more relevant to 2016! No more clunky mobile phone pictures or listening to telephone switchboard conversations! Already enjoying using the text in my classes.

 Also received the Macmillan English Book 1 sporting a new cover and a few packs of stinky reward stickers.

 As mentioned before the books were ordered through englishbooks.jp, as are most of the books and materials we use. While usually very pleased with their service this time I was blown away, the books were ordered Tuesday lunchtime and they arrived Thursday morning. And this from a company that is based in Miyazaki! How many Tokyo based book sellers can offer this kind of speed? In my experience not many...

 Already feeling highly satisfied with the staff at englishbooks.jp on Friday a Sales Rep stopped by to say hello and ask how things were! Pretty fantastic was all I could answer.

 I'm pleased to announce that I'll be taking part in the Sixth Story Forest Waka-Waku Camp to be held at Okubo Library on December 4th, 2016.

 It's the first time for me to either attend or take part in this event so I really don't know what to expect. I've been asked to co-read a book, one of us will read it in English (me) and the other will read it in Japanese. Sounds different? Apparently they've done the same thing with reading books in Japanese and Korean, and this year thought they'd give English a try.

 As I say I know very little about the event at the moment, but just looking at the flyer it looks like it may be quite interesting. The book reading takes place in tents and teepees! And the children move from tent to tent collecting stamps.

 Looking forward to it and hope to see you there!

More information:

English: The Sixth Story Forest Waku-Waku Camp

Japanese: 第6回　おはなし森のわくわくキャンプ

Korean: 제6회 이야기 숲의 두근두근 캠프(오오쿠보 도서관)

 We will hold our annual Christmas Party on Sunday, 18th December this year. Posters and 'chirashi' are already made and printed and will be going out to all our students this week.

 I can't quite believe that I am so organised this year, as I usually leave everything to the last minute! But as some of the mother's have already been asking when the party is I thought I'd get busy!!

 I am a firm believer that the secret to language learning is to be able to ask questions. The more questions you can ask in the target language the quicker you will learn. With this in mind, I make sure that in all our lessons the students gain confidence in asking questions.

 Take today in our Elementary B class, I put this rather childish green plastic frog in the centre of the table and asked the children to think of a question, expecting them to ask 'What is it?' or 'What is this?' or 'What colour is it?' or 'How many frogs?' etc. as they are patterns we have been practising over the past couple of months and I've these frogs to elicit those kind of questions.

 Imagine my surprise when the first question that came to their minds was 'What's your name?' followed by 'What sports do you like?' as if they were interviewing the frog!!!

 After many giggles we decided to call him 'Little Green Froggy'.