Again, the first lesson in Hi Friends 2 is very much a review and expand lesson, and has 2 parts. The second part of this lesson reviews the alphabet for the students, then teaches the lowercase alphabet.

It's on page 4 and 5 in the book, but I did not use that at all. It includes one activity, and it's just a search for finding letters? or something like that? I couldn't really think of a good way to incorporate that in my lessons. I did the following instead.

I'm still using the Musical Months song for the students to practice the months. This will lead into Lesson 2, which subject is Months.

Also, I decided to throw in the Alphabet song, too, for a quick review in some of the classes.

The flashcards are super simple. I wrote all the letters in a word document. I made two columns, so each page has 2 letters. I used the 'Century Gothic' font, since all the letters follow the basic handwriting pattern. 'a' looks like 'a', 'g' looks like 'g', etc.

I colored the letters in a pattern that matches the alphabet song. This is more for the 5年生 when I'm first teaching the alphabet, but also helps the 6年生 when matching the lowercase letters to the uppercase ones.

Before class even starts, I assigned the Alphabet cards on page 41,43 as homework in the previous class. That way, all the students have the cards already cut out at the start of class, and we don't waste 10 minutes in class. Some homeroom teachers remembered to do this.

Anyway, in class, before introducing the lowercase alphabet, I review the uppercase letters, and make sure everyone remembers. I place all the Uppercase letter flashcards on the board in order, as I ask the class about each one. I've had no problems with any of my classes with this. All my classes sang the alphabet song perfectly, and remembered every single uppercase letter. :)

Introducing the lowercase letters was pretty easy, too. Students mostly knew what the letters were, or could easily match them to the Uppercase letters on the board by looking at the color. 'p', 'q', 'b', and 'd' are the ones that students tend to mix up. I place each flashcard next to its uppercase letter.

Then we play Karuta with the alphabet cards on page 41,43. Students play in pairs, and try to grab the letter card faster than their opponent.

As I choose letters for students, I'm spelling a word at the same time. The first letters I choose were: 'c', 'k', 'q', 'i'. Some of the smarter figured out that I was spelling 'quick', and knew that 'u' would be next. :) Then I spelled 'fast', and 'dodge ball'

In every class, we didn't have enough time to go through all the letters in the alphabet. But that's okay.

This class prominently features 2 games for the students to practice the lowercase alphabet.

To start off, we sing the alphabet song, and then immediately start playing Karuta with no "Warm Up" or "Practice" to remind them what the letters look like. This time, I randomly chose letters, rather than spelling words. And then placed the cards in a random order on the board.

Students would sometimes confuse the 'p', and 'q', or the 'b' and 'd'. Also, since they're listening too, they sometimes confuse the 'g' and 'z', or the 'b' and 'v'. I think it's good practice. :)

With all the letters on the board in a random order, I quiz the students on which letters are which, and we say them all as a group.

Then we play a game I call the Alphabet Janken Interview. Each students get an interview worksheet with a list of all the lowercase letters, and a single uppercase letter. Students walk around the room, greet each other, and say which letter they have, "I have 'A'," "I have 'B'." Then they Janken.

The winner gets to circle the other student's letter on their interview sheet. While the loser crosses the other student's letter out. まる and ばつ, essentially. Students try to match the uppercase letter to the lowercase one on their sheet.

At the end, I ask the students, "How many wins?" reenforcing Lesson 1 Part 1.

For the final class of this lesson, I wanted the students to do some kind of spelling activity with their name. And this was the best I came up with at the time.

First, we do more review of the lowercase letters. We play the Row/Column Question Game. This is a pretty basic and easy review game to play with students of any grade and level. All the students stand up, and I ask them a question. In this class, I pull a flashcard of a lowercase letter, and show it to the students. Students that know the answer raise their hand, and I call on one of them.

If they're correct, then I choose either their row, or their "column". (Row and Column really don't make sense in this context, but whatever. It's either down or across.) All students in the row or column then sit down. And then I ask a new question. This continues until there's only a few students left standing, and then I ask then individually.

I usually play this game twice so I can end on different students each time.

After that, the Aim of the day was writing your name. I give students some writing paper, and they practice writing their name based on what I put on their name tag. Students eventually understood what I wanted, but I think I did a semi-poor job explaining it.

I wrote my name on the board as an example, and said that your first name or "given" name goes first, and family name goes second. And the first letter in both names is always capital.

Students practiced for about 10 minutes, and I went around the room correcting students that made any mistakes, and said "Good Job" to those who were doing well. :)

For the game, I wanted students to come up to the board, and write them names as fast as they could and compete against each other. Speed Writing

I originally planned on splitting the class into two teams, and having each pair choose a champion, but we really didn't have enough time to do that. So, I opened up the game to everyone in the class, and asked for volunteers. I had plenty of volunteers in my good classes that wanted to show off. Even some of the students who had difficulties volunteered. I imagine that I won't get many volunteers in my shy class.

Overall, I think this went alright. The students definitely learned the lowercase letters, so I accomplished my goal. Each class was effective, and pretty fun, too. :)

I think in upcoming lessons, if I use text with my flashcards, I'll ask the students if they can spell the word.

Also, maybe to extend this lesson, students could create a poster with the first letter in their name. Or maybe with their initials. And then have some kind of presentation? I dunno. I plan on having posters and presentation in Lesson 2 with Months.

I think having the students write and spell their names is important since they have the opportunity to do that on every worksheet I gave them. Plus, they'll need to do that for junior high school.