Thanks to the Embassy of Japan, we, SJETs, were given a chance to observe lessons at the Japanese Secondary School. This is rather important to SJETs who are posted to high schools. Though most of us would have visited the Japanese Primary Schools, techniques and engagement activities used would be very different as our target audiences, the students, are very different. One group is children, while the other is teenagers. And of course, it was very crucial to me, as I have no classroom experience teaching teenagers.
We were not given a detailed introduction of how classes are split in the secondary school, but the general idea is that classes are split by ability too, for English lessons. They are basically split into basic, intermediate and maybe advance classes. (We did not visit any advance classes, but I think they exist.)
Classes are kept small, too. There are, however some instances, whereby basic and intermediate classes were combined too, like the speech class which we observed for a Secondary 1 class. Basic and intermediate students were grouped together in this class, and they presented their speeches in English.
For English classes, there are ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) who are native speakers to assist the Japanese teachers. While about half of the lessons are conducted in English, the Japanese teachers usually give 2 sets of instructions, both English and Japanese to the students.
Thanks, Embassy of Japan, for the arrangement!
