ALT Teaching: My first lesson

OK here I am in my first lesson to my cute little 2nd graders at Isurugi Elementary. I'd done this lesson so many times that I asked my assistant to film it. The other adult in the room is the homeroom teacher.
I start off with a drill of Hello/Goodbye, Yes/No and High/Low. I split the class up, one half had to stand up and say hello, the other half had to say goodbye with gestures. We then did it to the Beatles song “Hello” (with a lot of help from me!) The kids seemed to enjoy it. Good bit of exercise for Jessie too!



After passing a beach ball about the class asking “what’s your name” and the catcher responding “My name is”… I put the class into teams. The first person in each line had to run up to me and say their name, run back to their line and the next person did the same thing until everyone in the line had introduced themselves. You can see some of the game in the video below. Tip: you might want to wash your hands after shaking 40 very sweaty, snotty fingered ones...



They are really genki (upbeat, fun) at this age and seem to soak up the language better than my 6th graders!
I have done this class to 1st-6th graders making small adjustments (i.e making it easier for the younger ones) In one 4th grade class, I was demonstrating the game with one of the lines. One little girl comes up to me and I say “Hello, what’s your name?” She didn’t really answer back so I said again (and a bit louder) to her and gesturing to the class “What’s your name?” Again she didn’t respond. I then said “I can’t hear you” with a hand to my ear gesture. At this point the teacher runs over and says no shaking her head, she’s deaf, she can’t speak. As you can imagine I was mortified!!