高校多読クラス②

I like reading aloud picture books. I'm positive picture books will work beautifully on learning English no matter how young or old you are. Picture books will pull you into a imaginary world where you can experience amazing things with lovable, or sometimes wicked, characters. They let you have a variety of experiences, which you'd never be able to have in the real world, in English. If you enjoy and appreciate the story, then there has to be some words and phrases that would remain in your mind without your noticing them, and chances are, you'd encounter the same expressions somewhere in another book or videos you read in future. You might have an AHA! moment and those new expressions are finally kept deep in your mind. They won't leave you like such words you remembered by root memorization because they're stocked in the long term memory.

Anyway, the picture book I read at the second class this year is:
on the Bed

You may be surprised or thought how pathetic that I chose such an childish book for high schoolers. But believe me, they do appreciate my reading those easy books. You know, Japanese students, especially the ones in highly acknowledged schools are so much burdened with a heap of textbooks and drills they have to tackle all the time, so they're dying for the time when they can be just relax and feel comfort. 

Two of  my classes are with many reserved students, so they just listen to my reading quietly, but in the last one with about thirty students some started to giggle as the story came close to the end. The story repeats the same phrase, some little monkeys jumping on the bed..., so the simple repetitious storytelling style can make the students laugh and giggle.

After the reading, we listened to one story of Frog and Toad book, Spring. First, I had the students listen to the story without reading the book. Then I asked how much they were able to follow it, well it turned out to be rather difficult for my students since they barely an opportunity to read or listen to those a bit long stories without knowing any framework, and again I played the CD and we tried to mumble while listening to the sound.

ORT and FRL for individual tadoku time. I encouraged to look around the room and look for books for them to read, and some got to find Disney books.