Crocodile Saves the Day

It;s Tuesday so I was teaching at Tsunan Koko. It was Tsunan's Foundation Day so the students were treated to a history speech by teh new principal, complete with powerpoint presentation. I was hoping for more pictures, but there were only slides with Japanese, so I'm none the wiser about local history.

To accomodate the history lesson, lessons today were ten minutes shorter, which made teh day easier for me. The lessons carried on the same 'Introduction' theme from last week and we had teh students swap papers and introduce their neighbour. Im trying to encourage the students to be assertive and confident, so I asked for voluteer pairs. In each class, one or two pairs would volunteer but the rest were too shy. So the age old JET problem: how do I choose a pair at random without appearing too biased? And the solution? Use a crocodile.

The crocodile in question is a toy Mana-sensei has had on her desk all year. You open it's mouth and then take it in turns to press down one of it's teeth. If you're unlucky, the mouth will snap shut and the crocodile will bite you.

So, since teh students would volunteer, we used teh crocodile to choose for us. And it worked a treat. The students became more genki though scared that they might trigger the mouth. It definatley got their attention, and teh attention of teh rest of the class. Most important of all, the pairs that the crocodile choose were happy to stand up and introduce their partner. Job done.