Before starting this activity the students and I practiced this song to the tune of Frère Jacques UPDATE: I have also added a power point slide with the lyrics and a Japanese translation.
What is your name? What is your name?
My name is (Person 1), My name is (person 2)
It is nice to meet you. It is nice to meet you.
Let’s be friends. Let’s be friends.
Activity
– Students write their name in hiragana.
- Teacher/ALT writes their names in romaji on the line where it says "Hello! My name is ~".
- Students then have to write their name 9 times in the boxes then cut their names out.
- Students make partners, janken, (if you dont want to play janken the students can just practice the exchange)
- winner introduces “Hello. My name is ~ . What’s your name?”
- losers answers “My name is ~ . Nice to meet you”, loser “Nice to meet you.”
- Students exchange cards,
- Once students have exchanged all their cards, they glue the cards they received onto "My friends paper", for the students that are very fast I have also made the word "My friends" traceable to give the students more to do.
My class only has 8 students, I am not sure how well this would work with a larger class. If you do this activity please let me know how it goes.
UPDATE: I have done it with 3, 4, 5, 6 ES and it went really well. In class sizes from 2 students all the way up to 21 students. It was a lot of singing to say all the kids names in the class of 21 but it was worth it. I plan on doing this song again from time to time in future classes as review(but only calling on a few students in the name part).
For my grade 3 ES students, it will be their first time writing which is why I estimate this to take 20-30mins, this activity would go much faster for older students.
I like that chant. It beats the one in the first unit of 'Let's Try one'. I might try this next week when my 3rd grade classes start.