Japanese

In Term 1, the Year 4 students revise weather words and learn how to incorporate these into full sentences about the weather. They are also exposed to the culture significance of the four seasons in Japan, as well as significant events like the Sapporo Snow Festival. Hiragana study is continued.

The Year 5 students learn about popular hobbies in Japan, and in particular, study the Japanese phenomenon of “kurabu katsudou” (club activities). They learn how to say their hobbies and simple descriptions of what they think of them, such as “It’s hard”, “It’s easy” and “It’s fun”. They also continue to practice their Hiragana.

Lastly, the Year 6 students embark upon a story-telling unit. They are exposed to various famous Japanese folk stories and learn to express their opinions of the stories using simple adjectives. Students start learning an entire folk-story, “Kachi Kachi Yama”, in Japanese using the ACTLAN gesture method.

In Term 2, the Year 4 students continue to study their hiragana, and build upon their grammatical knowledge by using the same sentence structures taught in Term 1 to talk clothing. They look at Japanese fashion and learn to describe the colours of clothing.

The Year 5 students begin the term by learning about some culturally significant leisure activities in Japan - including “hanami” (flower viewing) and karaoke. They also learn about other significant events of the sprint season in Japan, primarily Children’s Day and Golden Week. Through learning about these events, they increase their vocabulary of hobby and leisure words, and learn to have small conversations about what they do on different days of the week, and their holidays. Study of hiragana is continued.

The Year 6 students continue to deepen their understanding of sentence structures and particles, and finish off their unit on story-telling by presenting the “Kachi Kachi Yama” story in pairs. Throughout the term, they also look at some famous Japanese legends such as sumo, samurai and ninja.

In Term 3, all grades continue to have a focus on hiragana learning.

The Year 4 students dive into the “Animal Kingdom”. They learn how to say a selection of animals and where they live. Colours are also reviewed and students construct an understood descriptions of animals using colours and simple adjectives like big and small.

The Year 5 students start a unit on directions. They first learn how to say left, right, up and down, and then how to direct others using these words. Throughout the term, new places around town are introduced (eg: school, hospital, restaurant) in Japanese and cultural similarities and differences are discussed as we explore what these places look like in Japan.

The Year 6 students work on a pop culture unit. They learn to say different media types and genres, as well as how to say what they do in their free time. Then, they focus on communicate likes and dislikes, before also learning to analyse Japanese graphs about pop culture trends in Japan.

The Year 4 students move into a Pokemon unit for the final term of the year. As well as their hiragana study, students revise body parts from earlier years and learn to couple these body part words with the sentences they have been learning throughout the year. The culminating activity for the year is to design a Pokemon and present it to the teacher in Japanese, using simple descriptions of colours and adjectives. After completing the assessment, students will watch a recent Pokemon movie in class.

Term 4 wraps up the directions unit for the Year 5s. They practise reading maps and locating specific information, before designing their own town to present to the teacher in Japanese. Of course, hiragana study is also continued.

The final unit of work for the Year 6 students is on Japanese inventions. After learning the art of Chindougu, students design their own chindougu invention, as well as researching a Japanese invention that is used in our modern society. They present their inventions to the teacher in Japanese. The unit finishes off with the movie “The Wind Rises”, a cartoon film about a Japanese aeroplane inventor in WWII.