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I purchased all of your books a few years ago and we now have an amazing Tadoku library of booklets along the back wall of the classroom.

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I set up the wall 2 years ago and have been steadily printing out booklets in romaji that the younger students have produced to populate the lower left end of the wall. As I said, your books populate the middle section and provide a wonderful transition into full kana booklets on the right side. Much of the right side is also student produced, but I've also been able to find some good Tadoku readers from Japanese sources. It wasn't really until this year that we began the practice of free voluntary reading at the beginning of every lesson for 5-8 minutes 4 times a week. Before this year it was more sporadic, probably once a week. Now it's like clockwork, students come in, select a book or two, sit down, calm down and start reading. One of the students is in charge of the time to let us know to stop reading. Then we "bow in" as normal and start the lesson.

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Although I have bought each series of Alison's books for my classroom library, my favourite way to use the books is to purchase class sets, selecting the book(s) that align best with the language patterns I teach in each year level. Fox's Dream Day is such a rich way of engaging with time vocabulary, and Fruit Crime Story has been a great way to teach the language pattern "Noun   は   Adjective   です".

Whole-class, pair and individual reading tasks as well as translation activities are so much more engaging because the books have been written for language learners (and because they're such fun books!).

A highlight was one of my students asking me, "Did you make this book? It's good for learning!" because it was so beautifully aligned with the content I had taught the class that term.

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I am just sending through some resources/ ideas that I am using with your 'Greeting My Animal Friends' book. I have made animal masks for my Early Childhood classes to engage with the story. We will play a game where they will do animal moves to a song and then when they stop, I will ask them to find whatever animal in Nihongo and they will greet them with the greeting from the story.

The site that I found the masks at is supercoloring.com//masks and there are coloured or blackline masters for colouring. I have attached paper straws to the back and precut the masks to save time. Students will colour the masks after the activity.

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Japanese Dog commands. This is a fun task to get the students to do at home and away from the laptop. They could print out a few desired て form command (teach +ください later and the grammar way after that, if you have primary like me) The students could also take photos with a stuffed toy or even a little sister acting like a dog if they don't have a pet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA4rTICbL6g

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Let’s Speak Nihongo! 【Dog】Simple, Easy, and Fun! Does your dog understands Japanese? Train/ Dog

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I thought this video might compliment Alison von Dietze's book 'Plastic's Journey'.

Last term, a few of my schools asked me to link to haiku. I took an appreciation of nature and caring for the environment angle as well as introducing kanji. I also used Alison von Dietze’s readers Plastic’s Journey and Goni Detective as well as her 2018 Video Matsuri winning entry and a Mottainai Baasan animated book about rivers to base the unit on. We looked at alternatives to plastic bags particularly focusing on furoshiki, Japan’s traditional way around plastic bags. I based my end of term fun activity on designing furoshiki with the kanji they learnt with a justification of the kanji selected and pictures they drew. I had too much white fabric in my stash, so went with it (never again…. I made approx 200 30x 30cm furoshiki and have a few left over). Students used fabric pens and twistable crayons (can be heat set ) to transfer their designs. The designs were spectacular, most are using their creations in their lunchboxes this term. Feedback from parents was encouraging. Next time, we are so recycling adult t-shirts instead.

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Mottainai Grandma Goes to the River  [Official Animation]

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Year 1 Japanese gardens

Thank you to all who have shared inspiration on here. It was a great activity to finish up a full term of remote learning. We had been complimenting the classroom unit by inquiring into how environments impact our wellbeing. We ended our last ZOOM lesson with a mock 'tea ceremony' (they brought along a cup of tea (or drink) as we took a look at all of the class garden creations (they made from materials they could find at home). For assessment purposes the students uploaded a video to seesaw of them talking about their garden using ”これは。。。” as they pointed to each component.

I must also add that we started this term withAlison von Dietze’s reader ‘Plastic’s journey’ and the children learned vocabulary and kanji for aspects of our environment.

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AUSLAN PPT for てform. Giving commands with AUSLAN action (this goes with nihongo shop readers by  Alison von Dietze)

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body_part_kanji_AUSLAN SHARING - I am Handsome reader

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Fans as flashcards (like a まるばつ on the ピンポン buzzer idea) I whipped these visuals up to support Year one in learning "greetings throughout the day" and go with the Greetings book from the Nihongoshop readers. We brainstormed greetings to work out what time of day suited what greeting. "Good evening" had to be explicitly taught as they didn't really know that one. I further supported with AUSLAN and the students amazed me with their recall after one lesson.

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'Amanda Miller's knitted investigator will solve the crime!'

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'Amanda Miller's knitted investigator will solve the crime!'

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It was wonderful to link this book from Year 4 and the following year later, teach the next book in the series called, “Dangerous banana escapes” for the same students when they were in Year 5. The Abunai banana breaks out of prison and takes refuge in a Japanese house. Great use of Japanese prepositions and past tense verbs in this book…

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I taught this amazing unit based on the wonderfully engaging book, “A Fruit Crime Story” by Alison von Dietze. I thought that I would share my ‘Abunai banana’ crafts created by my Year 4 students.

To say that my students enjoyed this unit, is a huge understatement. My students learnt 4 Japanese colours, 11 Japanese fruits and their matching katakana / hiragana names, adjectives like ‘abunai’, various Japanese conversational phrases and they also located Aomori on a map (as the Aomori Apple was the witness to the crime.) The students loved working out by Japanese colour elimination who was actually guilty of the crime. Many discussions were had by my students about what crime the ‘Abunai banana’ actually committed too.

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Here is a PowerPoint made by Joan Smith to match Plastic's Journey.

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Joan Smith Presentation Plastic to share

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Gawler Primary School
"For bookweek all classes/ specialist classes were asked to create a canvas on a book for bookweek. I chose Monsters’ Tour Of Nagano, Japan. It isn’t perfect but I am happy with the results."

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Using the Daruma lost his stomach book by Alison Von Deitz I taught colours in hiragana - Yes the romaji teacher swapped (for a week!) Anyway, huge success and the students can recognise the 5 colours and they especially loved the song/rap. I made this mini book with the help of Kerry Forest and Joanne Aaron. I still can’t get the formatting perfect but if you cut off 1/2 a cm from the right hand side near the title page - it works!  To my delight, the students made their own books in the main class and taught others how to do it so there are story books everywhere this week.

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After a familiarisation and research task with my year 5 students + a vocabulary check, they are now ready to begin reading this great reader called, “Daruma Otoshi loses his stomach!” They love this daruma book with the matching audio file and are counting down to my lesson next week where I “face off” with their male classroom teacher to play “Daruma Otoshi.” I hope I win! lol

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Amanda introduces the Chocolate Series to her class.

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A free song created by Alison von Dietze matching this book