The Sixth Grade Problem

From first to fourth grade elementary classes, I usually cannot get the kids to be less enthusiastic about English. I show up and they're hugging me, trying to talk to me and are ready for just about anything I throw at them. Likewise, seventh through ninth graders are typically compliant and willing to do activities with me. My classes are breaks for them. We study English, of course, but my classes usually have them doing something that gets them away from the studying grind and working on communication skills.

But there's a dead zone working with the fifth and sixth graders. Right now the fifth graders are really energetic and willing to work on anything, but as they approach the sixth grade year, their interest plummets. At Ie elementary, I have little to no problem with fifth and sixth graders, but at Nishi elementary, the sixth graders are incredibly ambivalent, at least when it comes to my classes.

They're a big class, almost 40 students, and ever since I started classes with them all the way back when they were fourth graders, they've been less-than-enthusiastic, to put it lightly. When they were fifth graders the problem continued, even though they had what I thought to be an excellent teacher, and one I liked working with. Shotoro-sensei left the island at the start of the new school year and they have an all new teacher, Hisato-sensei.

Our first class of this year was on Thursday, and true to their previous behavior, I came off as the most boring teacher in the universe in the space of a minute. Now true, I'm not the best or the brightest teacher, but I had prepared for this contingency.

We warmed-up and I asked some simple questions before leading into the grammar point for the day. Their waning interest waned more and I knew it was time. I told them we were going to play a game.

I told them we were going to play baseball.

This form of baseball is a vocabulary game. The class is divided into two teams and a member from each team stands at the front of the class, looking toward the back of the room where I am standing with a stack of vocab cards. One student is the batter, the other the pitcher. I hold up a vocab card with a word in Japanese and the batter and pitcher must say the word in English. Their entire team must then repeat the vocab. If the batter and their team is correct the fastest, the batter is allowed to take a base. If the pitcher and their team prevails, it counts as an out. When someone makes it home, that's one point.

They were slow at first, and quiet. The boys took to it faster than the girls and seemed to enjoy being in direct conflict with one another, but soon the girls were responding just as well. When teams tied over a piece of vocab, the students began to bicker over who had finished first, and there were audible groans when a teammate lost it for the team with bases loaded.

Oh ho. I had them now.

We ended the game a minute before the end of the period with a tie of 3-3. We went over the vocabulary one more time (with more enthusiasm then they displayed previously) and we finished up.

I won the first battle in a war of eleven classes. Ten more to go before they become seventh graders.