Grade 3
Hello Japan!
In our first Japanese unit in our BSBS schooling we are learning about greetings and numbers. We practice speaking to each other politely, including introducing ourselves and asking ‘How are you?’ We touch on colours and the Japanese flag, and then explore counting to ten and using numbers to play games.
Juice Bar
We will quench our thirst for language by learning about fruit and making our very own ‘Juusu Baa / Juice Bar’! We use repetition to become familiar with common set phrases such as ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I like apples’, ‘Here you are’, ‘yummy’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and include these in a joint performance. Students reflect on similarities between English and Japanese, including formal and informal language, recognising that some words are borrowed from English (banana / banana, orenji / orange, pikuniku / picnic, aisukurimu / ice-cream).
Grade 4
Mt Fuji
Students are applying all sorts of Japanese adjectives to descriptions of Mt Fuji, the biggest volcano in Japan. They have been tasked with creating their own Mt Fuji to then describe it in Japanese, written and verbally. They can do this with the basic sentence ‘Fuji-san wa _____ desu.’ They can also manipulate this basic sentence and add conjunctives and negatives. Very impressive!
Stationery
Using many different stationery objects to assist with our learning, we will soon be able to ask for these objects and talk about them in Japanese! We will use sentences starting with ‘This is a ______.” and “That is a ____.” Students will then consolidate their learning by creating a song all about stationery.
Grades 4, 5 and 6
Hiragana
Writing in characters is a foreign concept to most of us. During this ‘Hiragana writing and reading’ unit we learn about all of the 46 hiragana characters, one of the written systems in Japan. We play games using these characters and use our knowledge to start to read simple Japanese texts and play games.
Where in Japan?
Grades 5 and 6 classes are exploring the geography of Japan by planning their own trip to a city of their choice. Students must plan seven days in Japan, using a Japanese sentence to describe what they did there: eg. ‘Nichiyoubi ni Tokyo Disneyland ni ikimashita.’ (On Sunday I went to Tokyo Disneyland.) The intention is to be able to recognise the Japanese characters for days of the week, and use simple verbs and basic sentence structure to describe an event in past tense.
