Being located between two large Tokyo hospitals Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital,and National Center for Global Health and Medicine we have welcomed many nurses and doctors as students over the years. Teaching medical professionals in Japan it quickly becomes apparent that many of the loan words used in Japanese hospitals are German in origin, so we get Karte (カルテ) for Medical Record, Rentogen (レントゲン) for X-ray, Gips (ギプス) for plaster-cast etc.but this week I encountered the word 'Preceptee.'

 My student explained to me that a 'preceptee' was a new member of the nursing team, and my first thought was that it was a Japanese-English word and therefore confined to Japan. Curiosity, and a sense of completeness, got the better of me and it turns out that student nurses can, or must, participate in a Preceptorship, guided by an experienced practitioner, known as a Preceptor, therefore making the nurses undergoing a period of Preceptorship, Preceptees.

 Please note it is only, as far as I am aware, used with newly qualified nurses gaining practical experience in a hospital setting.

 As they say, you learn something new everyday!

 We had fun in our junior High School class tonight with a game of Scrabble, creating words using as many letters as possible (after checking it's valid!) and then challenging them to use the word in a sentence.

 But the best was yet to come, my High School student saw the game on the table and asked if he could play, as he hadn't played for three years. With his expanded vocabulary, and excellent spelling skills, it soon turned into real battle between us, that left me struggling to keep up with him. At the end of the game we were both surprised to have filled the board, and used up nearly all the tiles, as seen in the photo.

  Usually Junior High School games end when too many short words, squashed into a corner, make it impossible to progress any further. So it was a real treat to see how much my High School student had improved!

As a big fan of the AGO series of card games, we have been enjoying playing the latest AGO Q&A release in our children's classes.

 In this video, Paul reviews AGO level 1.5, as well as sharing some of his favourite cards.