Merry Christmas Maniwa!!!

Last night we had a teachers' "Step-Up Seminar."  It is a night when Japanese teachers can meet with non-Japanese teachers to practice English.  For the past year these meetings have been planned by the women who is in charge of English for the board of education.  But, after hearing her tell me she has been very stressed this year I offered to plan and present the meeting.  Rather than do what she usually does (a word puzzle game where you match the Japanese card to the English card in groups of two or three) I created a pub quiz featuring questions about Christmas, Japan, and Christmas music.  Though the quiz was a little difficult for the non-English speakers, I think it went well overall.  Here are some sample questions...


Christmas
In the song the 12 days of Christmas, what does he bring 9 of?
What country do Christmas trees come from?
What are the 4 ghosts in Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol?
How many points does a snowflake have?

Japan
What year did Tokyo Disney open?
What does "nikko nikko" mean in English?
How many times has Japan hosted the Olympics?
What is shiragi-jo?

Christmas Songs (name the title of the song the lyric comes from)
And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas.

Kiyoshi Kono yoru.

Well way up north where the air gets cold there's a tale about Christmas that you've all been told

Prospero ano y felicidad

For bonus rounds we played a game where they made a sentence using a gird.  Vertically were the words, "I will, I won't, I might, I can't" and horizontally were the words, "eat cake, see santa, go to a shrine, get a present."  They made a sentence and then got the mystery points that were in that grid spot.  Then for the other bonus round we did the game where each team member gets a small whiteboard.  They draw a category/topic such as "a yellow fruit" or "a convenience store."  The team gets points if two people have the same answer and more points if three people have the same answer, etc

"The Grumpy Angels," came in first place followed by "The Blushing Snowmen," in 2nd and "The Cheeky Rerindeer," in third place.   Its nice to be able to teach English and yet have fun at the same time.  Although the trivia was a bit hard, overall everyone had fun and the BOE lady has asked me to plan the next event for Valentine's.  Very excited!  I really should have been a game show host...