Mickey Mouse is a rat and there’s no Santa. Have a nice life kids.

I was given free reign with the sixth grade at Yamato today. They graduate from elementary school (they even “graduate” from kindergarten here) in March, so the teacher wants them to learn something that will help them when they start learning English proper in junior high. I immediately chimed in with phonics. Top idea Colin, shame you know nothing about it. Never fear, google is here. A week later and I’d put together a nice little lesson plan for learning all the basic letter sounds. They know A - B - C, but that’s no use if you are trying to sound a word out. So, we learnt a - b - c. I was impressed. They picked it up and seemed to really enjoy it. I was hamming it up like a freak, but you’ve got to give a little if you want them to respond – there’s no such thing as a free lunch, after all.
I chose a few words that they knew (or should have known) and then, having practiced individual letter sounds, we tried to sound out the words by looking at the letters on the board. Nothing too crazy: dog, ten, pig, sun, car, cup, hot, etc (we didn’t do etc, I just meant that there was more to the list that I have written). The beauty of this is that they can now read words that they have only known how to say up until know. Phonics is the Rosetta Stone for the English language learner.
We came to r and my example was rat: “r-r-rat!” Awesome, I thought, they’ve cracked the r sound. A voice from the back piped up: “rat te nani?” (what does rat mean?). Colin: “it’s a kind of big mouse.” Student: “ah, Mickey Mouse!” Um, well, not really. If you go to Disneyland you will see that Mickey is indeed a big mouse, but it would be un-PC to call him a rat. But, I thought this was hilarious, so I said: “yes, Mickey is a rat.” I know that I’ve got an express ticket to TEFL teacher hell, but it’s f-f-Friday, so why not have a giggle? I can’t wait for the Christmas lessons next month, I’ve got a few crackers up my sleeve (not literally, of course).