Today, was my 2nd last class for the nursery school kids who will be going into elementary school. As always, the class is split into two - one week half the class have English with me and the next they do a swap with the other half and go for a pottery class - and today it was the least energetic (lethargic?) of the the two so it'll be nice to finish on a high note next week. This year quite a few of the mothers have asked about joining regular lessons which is good since most of my students are coming up for their last year of elementary school which means there is a good chance they are going to be lured away to juku (cram school) in a year's time so I should try to start getting some more young ones in the door.

Around December, a few students wanted to join but because it's too difficult to let them join part way through, I started an 'intensive' 1.5 hr class on a Saturday afternoon with the intention of having them come until April to get them up to the same level as the other kids and then have them change into a regular lesson. I didn't realise just how quickly they would progress and they are more or less up to where I wanted them so I'm seriously thinking about keeping that class going and also adding another 1.5 hr lesson after it. If it was in anyway possible, I would change all the classes to 1.5 hrs because the difference is amazing. Mind you, the kids are also really good and when I ask them to do a couple of pages of their worksheets for homework, they usually bring them back the next week and they've done the lot - on average 10 -15 pages - I just wish all the kids were like that! After talking to another mother about the class yesterday, she decided to have her daughter come to that class rather than the 45 min one so I think there may be quite a lot of interest. Unfortunately I don't have the time to change all the classes to that length without letting some of the current students go but I'm definitely keeping it in mind for the future.

Now I just have to try to work out what to do about one of my JHS lessons which just seems to get worse and worse........One boy is painfully shy, one talks non-stop - in Japanese of course - and the third one who joined last year just isn't making any progress. Can't have it good all the time I suppose!