Build a Town is a game where teams create small towns from paper tiles and then debate over which town is better. This game and its recommended lesson plan allow groups of students to engage in quick, practical encounters with reason in a scaffolded and enjoyable setting.

「町を作ろう」は紙タイルを使って小さいな町を作り、どれが理想的かとディベー トするゲームです。 短い、実践的な関わりをグループ内でする働きのある活動です。

Click here to read now. Download this issue as a PDF to get access for a ready-to-print version of the game.

Published in Volume 3, Issue 2 in the Journal of the Saitama City Educators.

Whether your event is local or international, there are common questions whose answers you’ll need readily and immediately. What is the booking number of the reservation, and who reserved it? Where can we receive packages? Who is our contact for Group X? Worse than not having the answers is not having asked the questions in the first place. Presented is a checklist and possible lifesaver for anyone interested in holding a conference.

小さい大きいイベントに関わらず、同じ問題があります。「予約番号とは?どこで荷物受 け取れますか?Xの代表者は誰ですか?」など。これらに答えがないのは悪いことです が、聞かない事のほうがもっと悪い状態です。このチェックリスト(多分ライフセーバー) は、次のイベントのためのものです。 
Click here to read now.

Published in Volume 2, Issue 6 in the Journal of the Saitama City Educators.

Learner Autonomy? Clap clap Nice! Whooo  

There’s a reason I love my job. It’s because I see people award themselves every day; it’s because I see communities built and strengthened every day; it’s because I send packages full of science experiments on their way to the edge of space… sometimes. I’m talking about Learner Autonomy, about learners enabling themselves to be the people they want to be, making connections within themselves and the world around them.  Learner autonomy is vitally important to me. Without it, I can’t think of a more boring job than “teaching”, and there are a few lessons I’d love to share with you.

First, do your learners know how they feel about their efforts? Have they been given a chance to reflect on their activities; to make the connections between themselves and their performance, rather than their performance and the goal? Make it happen. Grab it; embrace it. Consider this remark: “at first I didn’t understand, so I couldn’t do the activity correctly, but now I understand. I want to try it again.” Now imagine that same student without the opportunity to reflect and to clear their chest: how damaging would that same performance be to their relationship with the subject? In these opportunities students are enabled to support themselves; an encouragement and assessment fundamentally different from what teachers can give, but through negligence can definitely take away.

Matt Shannon is an educator, cultivator and curriculum developer who works with 
elementary and junior high school students in Saitama, Japan. His goal is to provide real-world opportunities for EFL learners, specifically in the areas of debate, journalism, and science.  Some of his students will have an experiment launched into space soon. He enjoys cooking, gardening, and the life sciences. He likes to build things.

What are you passionate about, Matt?

I’m passionate about thinking, sometimes just about thinking itself. Whether it’s a purposed sort of thinking to help you go from a gut feeling or idea to a realized vision, or the unstructured process of seeing where you are, seeing what’s possible, and then seeing what else might be possible from there. That moment that happens a short while after you’ve emptied your mind across enough sheets of paper or blackboards, when all the new thoughts rush in? That’s the best, and we’re fortunate as humans to be able to pick up on that energy from those around us.  As a mind lives in a body, and a body in the world, our thinking affects the world as it affects us. It’s a reciprocal relationship. I believe that a deep appreciation of the possible realities afforded by thinking leads to increased stewardship to the world we live in now. Buckminster Fuller used to ask, “What is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment?” That’s a beautiful statement.

All of the participants in the Nakasendo Conference sought to improve themselves and their field through the sharing of improved techniques, informed perspectives, and the strength of their character.  

As the conference chair and proceedings editor, I offer praise for their concrete success, and a demand that we see more good work like it.

This work is presented to you as a call to action - in this case, we ask that you embrace the goals of Nakasendo, and expand your knowledge of fields beyond your own. We ask that you talk about if, use it, reflect on it, and pass along your experiences forward. Respond to the authors if you can. 

Volume 2 Issue 4 of the JSCE. Featuring the works of Larry Cisar; Taeko Doi; Aiko Minematsu; Peter Mizuki;  Hitomi Sakamoto. Click here to read.

Volume 2 Issue 5 of the JSCE. Featuring the works of David A. Gann & Nicholas A. Bufton; Katrina Harata; Leander S. Hughes; Ayako Kanamaru, Joël Laurier, Taron Plaza, Chie Shiramizu & Ethan Taomae; Caroline Pomietlarz-Yamasaki & Satchie Haga. Click here to read.

Volume 2 Issue 6 of the JSCE. Featuring the works of  John Finucane; Robert Morel; Matthew Shannon; Yaeko Hori Shibata; Darren M. Van Veelen. Click here to read.

Produced with Emery Premeaux of Tokyo Hacker Space.

Good lesson ideas often meet their doom at the hands of the most petty of practicalities. Printing and cutting and laminating and re-cutting and trimming allows you to enjoy an activity several times, but takes forever. The construction of your clever passport is too complicated to do with just a regular stapler. Lesson plans, materials, and notes exist in a constellation around your desk - these are all common problems for the authors. We hope a review of some alternative uses of school supplies and the introduction of lesser-known tools will close the gap between idea and execution that so often exists.

Read on for

• Problems with Paper
• Restickable Glue
• Variable-Axis Staplers

and some applications of these resources.

小さいな実情でよいな授業計画がはずれるのはよくあることです。あそこを 乗り越える助言をこの記事で提案します。 

(This is one of my FAVORITE pieces, and I keep coming back to it. If you have five minutes, check it out immediately, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions, complaints, or suggestions.)


Published in Volume 2 Issue 2 of the JSCE. Click here to read.
Variable Axis Stapler showcased in a short youtube produced by the author.

This entry contains both the Model School Research Report completed in the 2011-2012 school year, and the Recipe PDF component of a presentation given at the Saitama City Institute of Education in March 2012.

"Everyone knows the value of a cool newsletter, but who has time?

Consistent and easily adapted, these “recipes” turn questions into discussions, interviews into stories, and sheets of paper into a voice. 

Get started with these ideas from Minami Ward Group, start off easy, and get ready to swap results and stories with your friends."


Report published in Volume 2 Issue 3 of the Journal of Saitama City Educators as 
"Program promotion: Using school publications / プログラムの広報- 学校のニュースレターの使用" Click here to read now. 


Click here for the recipe book here. For extra fun, print this double sided and bind it with a bookbinding stapler, as shown here.

In 2011, educators under the Saitama City BOE and JETs under the Prefectural board were tasked with making a list of activities to introduce young learners to non-Japanese culture. These lessons had to be low on instruction and preparation, and be accessible to students without prior knowledge of the activity. Of the 14 lessons submitted, all take something familiar - a game of chance, a rhyme, or the sound a duck makes - and used that as their stepping stone into a quick, smart, and enjoyable lesson.

What is Double Dutch, anyhow? 
     Double Dutch is a muti-person jump rope game originating in the Unite States. It is a popular schoolyard game accompanied by a song or chant. The jumping activity may be modified to increase difficulty or cooperation, to include jumping in pairs, reacting to cues in the song, and synthesizing their own songs as they jump or swing.

This article contains several song prompts and suggested variations for your students.

World Telephone Greetings 
This article combines two common elements, "Telephone" or "deng-dong game", and the "Flyswatter" word-recognition game into an activity about how we greet each other on the phone. 

Published in Volume 1 Issue 4 of the Journal of the Saitama City Educators. 
Click here to read.

Japanese in Japan
Train your brain with a dose of reality
Metropolis, Issue 909

Just as a book on swimming would fail to prepare you for a dive off the high board, so are flash cards, study guides, and long hours of J-dramas unable to prepare you for the reality of everyday Japanese in Japan. But there is hope—in the form of many enterprising people willing to help you, and many free resources available to all.

http://metropolis.co.jp/features/feature/japanese-in-japan/

Creating writing assignments for students is difficult. This article introduces a simple journal writing activity that has a photo requirement. This requirement makes self expression less dependent on ability and also encourages peer to peer feedback.

生徒にどのような英作文の課題を出かを考えるのは難しいことです。ここではシンプルな 写真付きの課題が提案されています。作文に写真を付けることは生徒が文法を気にせずに 自己表現したり、お互いに感想を言い合う機会になります。 

In order to provide students with a project that is personal, as well as appropriate for a class with diverse skill levels, a writing composition can be paired with a photo requirement. Photos help establish a narrative, as well as reduce complexity. Furthermore, they are perhaps most helpful in attracting readers or viewers who may share their feedback. Due to their personal nature, they discourage cheating or copying, and the exercise may be repeated, for improvement or for enjoyment. Finally, a photo journal is functionally dynamic, and may be shared in an exhibition, created as part of an exchange program, or com- pleted in a series to create an even larger work.

Published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of the Saitama City Educators, Volume 1 Issue 1. Click here to read.