Language Resident Name: Ayaka Matsuo

Day and Date: Monday, October 1st

Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class): Intermediate Japanese 

Class theme/topics discussed: Food 

Goal of the class: To be able to use vocabularies related food and to be able to explain their favorite food.

How did you structure the class?

Activity1 (10 min): Warm-up

We dice-talk about the weekends. Students are divided into 2 groups and each dimension of the dice has words related to food.

Activity2 (10 min): Brainstorming

I show some pictures and ask the whole class to describe the food. For example, I show a picture of sushi and ask students some questions such as what is it made of? How do you eat it? What taste is specific to the food? Where do you find it? Where does it originally come from? Do many people like it? Is it expensive? etc. They’re not supposed to say just “that’s sushi”. Words brainstormed during this activity are written on the white board. 

Activity3 (10 min): Favorite Food

Students come up with their top 3 favorite foods and write them down on a piece of paper, keeping them secret to other students for now.

Activity4 (25 min): What is it?

Students are divided into 2 groups. In each group, one student starts “This is my best/second/third favorite food” and then, the other members of the group start asking question to reveal what it is. For the last 5 minutes, we play this game with the whole class picking one student’s favorite food whose hasn’t done yet. 

Activity5 (5 min): Wrap-up

A brief announcement about the upcoming cultural activity is made. 

What worked well in this class? What did not work?

It worked well. Students talked a lot, which was really good. One thing I should have added is that for the Activity4, one more rule should have been clarified that they cannot ask WH questions. Also, I could have prepared more expressions related to today’s topic, which could have been introduced while Activity2 and could have been a more efficient exercise for students with more words or expressions.  

How could this class be improved/ modified?I would add a rule that students cannot ask WH questions during Activity4. Also, I would prepare more words in advance, which students must know but forget for the moment.