Activity

Japan Family Visit Activity

This April\May my family is visiting Japan and my school is allowing me to take my brother and dad to a day of classes! If you have family visiting, feel free to use this activity too!

In this activity, I want to students to interact with my dad and brother in English as much as possible!

First, before this lesson I will give the classes I will be going to with my family the worksheet attached below. Here, they can write any questions that they have for my dad or brother! I figured this would be nice for the shy students who are afraid to ask a question themselves, but are still interested in hearing what my dad and brother have to say.

My family visit class will be conducted on May 1st, so I haven't done it yet, but here is how I expect the class to go:

1) My brother and dad will introduce themselves to the class using the PowerPoint as a background. (Their information is written in Japanese because I might have a lot of 1st year classes. This was they can listen to English, but reference the PowerPoint if they get confused).

2) Next, we will open up the floor for questions. My students tend to be prettyyyy genki, especially when there is a new person in the classroom so I think this may take a bit which is totally fine. First, I will ask if there are any volunteers to ask questions. After the volunteers are done, I will reference the previous worksheet and pull from those questions so that the quiet students may get their questions answered as well.

3) After letting the students ask questions with myself and the JTE helping to translate my brother and dad's responses, we will jump into the day's activity!

4) I normally get stuck with review games at my school, so I am very excited to carry out this activity with my students! Here's how it works:
- Students will make pairs
- The must write at least two sentences in English about their おすすめ place or food in Japan. I'll encourage them to give local
recommendations since my family will be staying with me in the area.
- They can use their iPads to add pictures next to their sentences, so they have something to show my brother and dad.
- Once they are done preparing, students will be able to present their recommendations to my brother and dad in exchange for a
sticker. After their presentation, I will encourage my brother and dad to ask follow-up questions as well!

I think this activity will be a fun way for students to interact with my family and will leave them feeling accomplished that they were able to talk to foreigners with no Japanese ability!

Of course, if you would like to use this, switch out the pictures of my family for your own! (I also went crazy with the gifs on each slide because my kids love them, but feel free to tone it down if you need)

Files:
Small files
  • Let's Interview Dom-sensei's Family!.docx (826 KB)
  • Large files (requires a subscriber account) -
  • Family Introductions.pptx (47.2 MB)
  • 8
    Submitted by Domdijock April 5, 2023 Estimated time: 40-50mins
    1. Keith Miyazaki April 20, 2023

      Excellent! It's so exciting having family visit your schools. My parents came to one of my elementary schools in November 2022. The students sat in groups of eight and made conversation and self-intros. My parents and I moved to each group round-robin style (only eight minutes per group).

    2. Domdijock May 8, 2023

      @KeithMiyazaki That's such a good idea too! It was very fun having them in my class, the students loved it! :D

    3. AnpanSwag October 10, 2023

      Hey this sounds great! My mom is coming soon and I'd love to check out your ppt. Is there any way you can make the file smaller so I can access it without having to subscribe? Thank you!

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