Shirogane Primary School - Day 1

Today we spent the first part of the day at Shirogane Primary School.  Most of us walked to school from our host family's house. Shirogane Primary was built ten years ago, and currently has ten classes from Year 1 to Year 6 (two classes in each year level, except for Years 3 and 5, which have only one class). Class sizes range from 19 per class in the two Year 1 classes, to 39 in the Year 5 class! There are 220 students, so it is slightly smaller than All Saints' College Junior School.

During Period 1 we attended the school's monthly assembly. The teachers and students had worked hard to translate parts of the assembly into English, so we could follow what was happening. It was quite similar to our assemblies - singing the school song, a speech by the principal, presentation of merit certificates and an item by the Year 6 student leaders. After the regular assembly had finished, the Year 6 students ran a short "Welcome Ceremony" for us. The whole school sang "It's a Small World" in both English and Japanese, Tate-Sensei made a speech thanking Shirogane Primary for hoosting us, we presented the school with a gift, then the All Saints' students introduced themselves one-by-one in Japanese. They were very nervous about speaking in front of the whole school, but they did a great job!

During Periods 3 and 4 we did some fun relays and played "Dodge" with the Year 4 classes. With Mr Baptist's help, we also taught them how to play "Wicket Ball", an All Saints' variation on the standardgame of Dodge.

We had our first Japanese school lunch today, half of us with the Year 3 students, and the other half with the Year 5 class. Japanese primary schools serve a cooked lunch to the students every day. It is delivered to the classrooms in big pots, and the students serve it out to their classmates. Today's meal was vegetable soup, spaghetti "Napolitan", a small chicken cutlet, a green salad, pineapple jelly and milk.

Serving, eating and cleaning up after lunch takes about 45 minutes, and then the students have about 20 minutes to play. At 1:10pm, a bell sounds and it is cleaning time!