The Snake Game

Many of you back home might not know this yet, but starting this new contract year with Mito City (April), I have been teaching at another school close to the other two schools I taught at last year. So that makes three schools – Iitomi Jr. High, Iitomi Elementary, and Watari Elementary, that I am now teaching at and it keeps me relatively busy. The Iitomi schools are two of the smallest in Mito City (I have only 87 students at the Jr. High and 167 at the elementary) and I feel like I have a special bond with my co-workers and especially the students because we have a year together under our belt, they speak a little more English and I speak a little more Japanese, and, well, the small school atmosphere allows you to know each other more personally. My new school is a little bigger (somewhere between 550 and 600 students) and this is their first year to officially have AETs (I and another AET alternate days within a week), so the students are pretty darn happy to see me when I come during the week. I am really enjoying getting to the know the students and I am having a lot of fun with the teachers as they learn to teach English with a foreigner who doesn’t speak much Japanese and who does things a little differently than they are used too.

Well, yesterday was just a very enjoyable day because my 5th and 6th graders really enjoyed an English game that I planned. Actually, I stole the idea for this game from other AETs, but I was still very happy to see it work so well. This game is known as the “Hebi Gamu” to the Japanese, but we call it the Snake Game in English. The version I used yesterday actually derives from a very simple game that children learn and play in kindergarten. In this game, there are two teams that stand at opposing ends of a curvy line (which resembles a snake). A person from each team runs at each other along this line and when they meet in the middle, they Janken (the Japanese version of Rock, Scissors, Paper). The winner continues forward and Jankens the next person who runs up to them from the opposing team while the loser goes back. The team to get the most people to the other side wins.

My six classes of the day all played this game except the line consisted of English vocabulary cards that they had to say as they passed. They also had to play English Janken (Rock, Scissors, Paper) when they met in the middle. Almost every class did not want to stop the game when class was over. Every student was into it (which is simply amazing that 30+ students in any class would be so much into a game that makes them speak English) and it broke my heart to stop the fun they were having with English.

And my goodness, they love Janken, even when it is in English. After I taught them how to Janken in English a couple of weeks ago, I can’t walk down the hall without some student challenging me to English Janken. Gosh, I love it when my students are so excited about English. It refreshes me and encourages me to be a better English teacher for them.