Some people asked about the workings of my maru batsu game, so here we go :D
Materials:
Maru Batsu Cards
Christmas Items Posters
Supplemental videos, props, etc
Time Allotment:
about 30 minutes
Procedure:
Divide your class into 4 or 5 teams. Make a scoreboard on the board. Give each team maru batsu cards, like this:
Also have one set of cards for you and your JTE.
The JTE is the game show host. You will have a series of statements about Christmas in your home country. The students must decide if the statements are true or false. They will hold up a circle card for true and an X card for false.
I try to include things that are the same in Japan and things that are different from Japan. These are the statements and answers we're using in my class:
1) In America, Santa wears red and white. (O)
2) In America, girls go on a date for Christmas Eve. (X)
3) In America, people go to work on Christmas Day. (X)
4) In America, people have a Christmas tree. (O)
5) In America, people put presents under the Christmas tree. (O)
6) In America, people eat Christmas cake. (X)
7) In America, people eat KFC for Christmas dinner. (X)
8) In America, shops and houses have Christmas lights. (O)
9) In America, snowmen have two balls. (X)
10) In America, children get presents for Christmas. (O)
You will be the lovely assistant who shows the class posters to help with their comprehension of the statements. Make some posters like this:
Many of these statements will really surprise the students, especially #s 2,3,6 7, and 9.
As the JTE tallies which teams get points for having the right answers, you can elaborate on some of the answers. For example, on #4 you can explain that Christmas trees are not plastic and are very big. I am doing this by using a clip from Christmas Vacation. For #8, you can explain that people can often go pretty nuts with their Christmas decorations on their house. I am showing that with this video:
http://www.youtube.com/v/szLmAPW39uE&rel=1
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This should be a more interesting and entertaining way of talking about Christmas than your standard "listen to the following speech and fill in the missing words on your sheet" activity. I already played the game with some PE teachers at my work and they loved it. Hopefully my students are as entertained on Monday ;)
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I did a very similar lesson with a group of maybe 75 adults for a community Christmas day, and they loved it. Recommended. The other hit from that day was Jingle Bells, but JHS kids can be less than enthusiastic singers.
You can get cardboard maru-batsu paddle things at 100-yen sometimes.
I wish I had thought to check the 100 yen store before making 12 maru batsu cards Friday. Do'h.
This is great! I will use it at my party. Thanks for posting!!
No problem :D
I just finished doing it with two of my OCI classes and they loved it. I got lots of "ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" from the crowd.
For #3, I drew a person in a McDonald's uniform and made a detachable no symbol like this:
Then I told them that for New Year's Day (お正月) you DO have to work usually if you have a part time job and removed the no symbol from the picture. They did not like the sound of that haha.
great christmas culture ideas! and is that a real live kitty in the picture?? i miss my kitty...
lol yeah, that's one of two. They're driving me nuts recently though :/
For Elycia, I bumped this :D
For those of you wondering how to access old material:
It's not super easy but here's a way to do it. Click on classroom materials. From there you can click on a tag for junior high school, high school, etc, on one of the entries listed. Then it will list the activities for your target group.
Kyle how did you show that YouTube video in class? I mean do you have internet in your classroom?
Also who drew those pictures of the statements? I can't draw for sh** - any suggestions on what I can do?
I'm thinking if I use real pictures of that stuff it might give away the real answer, right?
I uploaded all the videos I would be using in the teacher's room, then plugged my computer into a projector in the classroom and showed them that way. As long as you fully upload the video, you don't need to be connected to the internet to play it back. Just don't close your browser by accident!
I drew the pictures. Honestly you can just draw stick figures and they should be able to get it. We also did a lot of pantomiming in class too.
Another fun fact my students have been shocked to hear is that at least in the US, Santa has a set number of reindeer - 9. We used it in a quiz game with the question "How many reindeer does Santa have?" but you could adapt it to something like "Santa always has the same number of reindeer" or "Santa has 9 reindeer." The students got frustrated with the question and said "But it changes! Sometimes he has 3! Sometimes 2!" They were even more shocked to learn they all had names and that I could say most off the top of my head.
hah, I didn't even think about telling them that. Though they were amazed enough that Rudolph has a name.