Relevant Vocab.

The first 10-15 minutes of all my junior high classes are mine. From there the Japanese English teacher plans the regular class to incorporate me. Back in the day I used to do the day, date, weather, and time (now I have added temperature and season) before asking each student "How are you?" But that quickly became boring so I would follow the "How are you?" with a "Why?" to make them think. But they learned stock answers. So then I moved on to "How was your weekend?", "What did you eat for dinner/breakfast?", etc. But that was starting to challenge me too much to come up with interesting questions.

So I began making flashcards in response to feelings of "that's a word my students should know" that I would occasionally get. Now at the beginning of each junior high class I run through 10-15 of these cards that have words I've pulled from their books or, more likely, from my mind. Some are relevant words to life here, some are just good phrases to know. But it's fun because the kids recognize that these words are hand-picked for them.

[a sample of the 100+ cards I've made. It also gives me good practice writing the kanji/Japanese on the back (the back of "You can do it!" says "Yes we can!")]

Do you have any word suggestions?