Well, today I'm going to talk about preps.
At the cram school where I worked, classes for elementary school students were 40 minutes per session and classes for junior high school students were 50 minutes per session.
In this article, I'll talk about class preparation for elementary school students.
The Japanese language textbooks for elementary school students were very well designed.
In one class session, six pages of the textbook were used, and the contents were as follows.
Elementary School Japanese Textbook Contents
Page 1, 2 Lesson (fill-in-the-blank format)
Page 3, 4 Exercise
Page 5, 6 Homework
The Lesson pages (Page 1, 2) were designed in a fill-in-the-blank format, students could listen to the explanations and write key words in the blanks of the text to make the class work.
After listening to the explanations and completing all the blanks in the text, students try Exercises (Page3, 4).
Then, I will check the answers with students and explain the exercises if necessary.
By the way, the exercises can be solved if they can fill in the blanks on the Lesson pages.
The remaining Homework (Page5, 6) is to be solved at home by the next class for the students.
It takes about 30 minutes from filling in the Lesson pages to the end of answering and explaining the Exercise pages.
I check students' attendance and administer a Kanji test, which take about 10 minutes.
A series of checking attendance, Kanji test, fill-in-the-blanks in the text, and exercises make up exactly one 40-minute class.
Therefore, it is OK for me to prepare for elementary school students class when I can explain the contents of textbook and to explain the exercises.
Now all I need to do is research three small tips for the class and I am ready to prepare.
I often used books from Obun Sha for small research.
There are two versions of this, one for elementary school students and one for junior high school students, and the junior high school content was very useful for the elementary school classes as well.
The elementary students were also very excited when I told them that I had looked up the university's entrance exam questions and found that the Kanji characters on this test were on the exam. 😜✨
Preparation time for elementary school students class was about 30 minutes per grade level and per unit.
I was in charge of grades 4 through 6, so my weekly prep time for elementary school classes was 30 minutes per grade x 3 grades = 90 minutes.
Roughly, this is how class preparation for elementary school students.
Well, in the next article, I'll talk about class preparation for junior high school students!
to be continued...
