Last Day of Teaching

Brief activity testing memory of the Kana learned in the lesson.

Today was the final day of the Japanese scroll painting lesson. I had to wait to teach them for about 10 minutes, as there was a brief Veteran's Day ceremony held in the front of the school, where veterans talked about the holiday and its significance briefly. After the ceremony was finished, the students gathered back inside, and I taught the 4th graders about the Japanese writing system, which consists of scripts, or Kana, as they are called in Japan. The Kana in the writing system includes Hiragana (used for native words), Katakana (used more for foreign words), and Kanji (characters that hold various meanings). After teaching them about the writing system, I gave them a demonstration on how to write in Hiragana. The students were expected to write at least two adjectives in Japanese that described them. I gave each table a list of adjectives written in Hiragana to choose from. I showed them how Japanese is written horizontally rather than vertically. After the demonstration, the students continued their landscapes, as they had not finished them yet. They will work on writing in Japanese next class period since there was not as much time to work on the project as usual due to the ceremony.

Glazing

 5th grade continued to work on their face mugs. Since my last visit, the students have added the facial features, and the mugs have been fired. Today, the students are glazing their mugs. Mrs. M had set out different colored glazes at each table, and students would migrate to the tables where the colored glaze they wanted was. I enjoyed seeing how each student's mug had turned out, and the students are excited to be able to use them.

Finished mask.

The 3rd grade class was finishing up their masks. The students experimented using hole punchers and creating holes in the colored paper so they could tie raffia at the ends, and some of them even weaved the raffia through each hole and tied the ends together. They also put beads onto the raffia strands, and glued them onto the masks as well. A lot of them turned out looking really nice, and the students were really proud of their work. They kept coming up to me, asking me to take pictures of their work, as they saw me take this picture I have to the right of a finished project. It was great to see how much pride and confidence they had in their work. At the end of class, Mrs. M asked them what they learned from the project, and the students talked about the functions of masks, the process of creating them, and what they learned about symmetry. It's a joy for me to see how much these students cling to the projects and what they take out of them.

I had so much fun teaching the 4th graders about Japanese scroll paintings! The whole process from making the lesson to teaching it was, quite honestly, a blast! And it was really rewarding for me to see how the students appreciated this lesson and how much they retained each time I reviewed with them. Some of the time constraints were frustrating, as I felt rushed in the lesson and demonstration at times so they could get to work a little bit. If I could tweak anything about the lesson, I think I would like to have taught them more about the writing system and gave them some practice writing a few words on their own. However, with the time constraints, it was tricky to incorporate something like that into the lesson. I think I will use this lesson for my own class, but make changes according to grade level and where they are in skill level, and then I will not be as limited, and I can incorporate more practice exercises into the lesson. Overall, it was a good learning experience, and I can't wait to see the finished work!