Native English Language Program | 岡山県倉敷市のノートルダム清心学園清心中学校・清心女子高等学校

This Week in NELP

Here are the latest pictures from NELP.

Here are the junior high first graders. They are having a debate. Their topic was "Young people should get work experience in addition to going to university."

Here are the junior high school first graders watching a movie. They watched the movie Chicken Run. I think they enjoyed it a lot.

Here are the first graders playing before class.

Last week it snowed for the first time this year!

My first graders begged me to let them go outside and take a picture with them.

Here are the first graders in their special projects class. They are making two short films.

Here are the second graders. They are having a discussion about the speech "I Will Fight No More Forever" by Chief Joseph.

Here are the second graders taking a quiz.

Here are the second graders having a debate. Their topic was "Should we stop using disposable chopsticks."

Here are the third graders. They're talking about invasive species in Japan. Today's topic was "How did these invasive species come to Japan and why?" I then had the students classify 160 invasive species according to the students' predictions on how and why they came or were brought to Japan. In the future, we'll do research and find out how accurate our guesses were, but on the whole, the students had a really amazing sense about the animals.

Here are the high school first graders. In today's lesson, we discussed business etiquette. Students demonstrated how to meet, greet, bow, shake hands, exchange business cards, go into a meeting room, introduce people, put someone on speaker phone, pose for photos and more. It was a very eventful class.

Next week in NELP:
The junior high school first graders will talk about the speech "On Colonizing Education" by Chief Canasatego.

The junior high school second graders will watch a movie!

The junior high school third graders will prepare for their next debate. Their topic is "Should we kill stray dogs and cats?"

The high school first graders will write a resume, and in oral communication class they will continue talking about business etiquette and will begin working on interview questions for job interviews.

20:59｜Author：nelp

Speech Contest January 2012

A couple of my NELP students and a couple of our SELP students went to a speech contest on Saturday. Unfortunately, I couldn't go because I had my Seishin English Hills Elementary School lessons that day, and so Matthew went with the students. The mother of one of my students took these photos. I'm happy to say that all the students did very well.

10:32｜Author：nelp

Games and Public Service Announcements

Here are more pictures from this week's NELP classes.

Here are the first graders playing UNO. NELP UNO is a little different from regular UNO. When a player plays a card, they have to ask another player a question. When a player can't play a card, another player has to ask THEM a question. We had a pretty amusing time.

Here are the third graders working on their Public Service Announcement video.

They've decided to make one video instead of two because we're running out of time in 3rd grade and we only have a little more time together. They have no idea how sad that thought makes me!

I'm really going to miss having them in my junior high classes. My third graders have been such an extraordinary group of students and I've had a lot of fun with them the last three years.

10:16｜Author：nelp

How I teach the high school program

I often quote Pablo Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do in order to learn how to do it.

I think this quote expresses the NELP program very well. I always tell my students that the best way to learn how to do something is just to do it. It saves a lot of talking.

As well, I tell my students "You can't learn something without making mistakes. You do it. You do it wrong. I adjust. You do it again. You do it better." It's like my other favorite NELP quote (this time from Samuel Beckett): "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

I was telling my students just today that it's a FAILING of education that we teachers always try to tell students exactly what to do and how to do it and what to give us so that we'll be happy. Bosses and supervisors and managers almost NEVER tell their workers exactly what they want. They often simply say "Do it." And then if it's not what they want, they say "Do it again."

It's my belief that if we ONLY teach our students how to follow directions, we're only preparing them to be FOLLOWERS. If we want these young women to go out into the world and be LEADERS, we must teach them to think, to do things they don't know how to do, to do things they've never done before, to do things that are OUTSIDE of their "comfort zone."

Naturally, this makes some of my students extremely unhappy because they never know: "Am I doing it right? Is this good enough? Is this what Mark is looking for?" I'm very sorry to make my students suffer, but I believe this experience is very good for them because this is what their employers will expect of them.

Naturally, none of my girls believe they will someday be "The Boss". But being a manager or supervisor or boss ... being a LEADER ... is something that people very rarely choose for themselves. It's often something that, initially, someone asks them to become.

My high school students are creative, hardworking and brilliantly intelligent. I have NO DOUBT that they really will be the leaders of tomorrow. I just hope I can prepare them just a little and help them just a little even so that someday they will be GREAT leaders.

21:53｜Author：nelp

The High School Program

This term, in the high school first grade class, we're discussing business. More specific, we're discussing leadership and organization.

The students had three winter vacation assignments.

1. The students had to write an agenda for a business meeting.
2. The students had to find three jokes.
3. The students had to answer this question: What is a successful business meeting?

In our first lesson, we had a discussion. The topic was: What is a successful manager? We talked about the qualities of a good boss.

In our first writing lesson, we talked about how to write an agenda for a meeting.

Today, we talked about how to host a meeting. Specifically we talked about how to open a meeting, how to introduce ourselves confidently to a group, how to introduce ourselves professionally to an individual, and how to show confidence. I also talked to the students a bit more about writing an agenda.

Next Tuesday, we're going to talk about refrigerators, and next Thursday we'll talk about the importance of humor as a business and management tool.

21:42｜Author：nelp

The First Photos of 3rd Term

Here are the first pictures of 3rd term.

Here are the junior high school first graders. They're playing bingo. The students had to write questions about winter vacation and then ask the other students in class the questions they had written. Five yes answers or five no answers in a row made a "bingo".

Here are the first grade students!

Here are the first graders playing before class.

Here are the first graders in reading class.

Here are the first graders in writing class.

Here are the second graders playing before class.

Here are the third graders. In third grade, we're doing a project on invasive species in Japan. The students have just started. Here, they're studying about how animals are classified.

The third graders have also been working on their public service announcement project. However, since one of our third graders was absent that day, progress broke down and we ended up playing Jenga during the last ten minutes of class.

Here are the high school first graders. This term, they're discussing business.

21:02｜Author：nelp

3rd Term

Third term started a week ago, and I've been very busy with many projects.

The first graders are reading "All Summer in a Day", a story about bullying by science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

The second graders are reading the speech "I Will Fight No More Forever" by Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph. We talked about the history behind the speech, the history of Europeans in the Americas and their treatment of Native Americans. We talked about the names of tribes. We also talked about the history of Chief Joseph's group of Nez Perce. Today we talked about the Jewish ghetto, the holocaust, and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

The third graders have started preparing for their big debate in June. Last week we talked about the purpose of debate and the usefulness of studying debate. Today we talked about how animals are classified. The students are really brilliant! I gave them a full deck of 166 cards that I made, showing animals classified by the National Institute of Environmental Studies as "invasive species" and I asked the students, besides "animals" or "living things" what one group do all these animals belong to. One girl brightly spoke up and said "They all have a backbone." Not the answer I was looking for, but brilliant nonetheless. I hadn't included invertebrates for reasons that may become obvious later.

The third graders have also begun work again on the Public Service Announcement project.

The high school first grade class will be spending a lot of time talking about business. We're going to talk about agendas, resumes, interviews and FIRING PEOPLE!

I think it will be a very eventful term.

In the meantime, I'm already getting ready for this year's English Camp and I'm also looking at more changes to the curriculum.

23:49｜Author：nelp

Christmas 2011

Here are the last pictures of 2011, including the Christmas lessons for 2nd and 3rd grades.

00:00｜Author：nelp

Joto and Reischauer 2011

Here are the pictures from the Joto Speech Contest.

One of my second graders and one of my third graders both went to the Joto Speech Contest this year. They both did really well, and I was very proud of both of them. My third grader did a fantastic job and earned one of the two 2nd prizes.

Two of my third graders and one of my second graders gave speeches at the Reischauer Speech Contest. One of my second graders gave a recitation, and one SELP third grader and one SELP first grader also gave recitations.

I was unfortunately unable to go because I was giving a seminar to students interested in taking the NELP test.

My third graders got third place and fifth place in the original section, and my second grader got third place in the recitation section. I'm really proud of all of them.

20:48｜Author：nelp