ALT Day!

To quote myself from a February entry:
Every now and then all [thirteen] Kiryu ALTs gather at one junior high school to do a big English conversation workshop. It's fun for the ALTs to visit a different school and meet new students, and it's wonderful practice for the kids--they don't get many opportunities to have an unscripted interaction in English, so these ALT days really help them to realize how much English they know and gives a lot of positive reinforcement and motivation to improve.
Last week my school played host to 11 ALTs from different junior highs around Kiryu. It was our first ALT day and the students were excited beyond even my expectations. We themed the event "Travel the World with English!" and I designed a "passport" where they could write the questions that they prepared for each ALT. My teacher and I assigned each ALT an international flag and wrote "travel itineraries" for each group of students--each group visited 3 "countries" (for 10 minutes each) to have an in-depth conversation with the ALT at that station. Then for the last 10-15 minutes of class, the students were encouraged to get up and wander the room asking each ALT at least one question in exchange for a stamp in their passports. We were thrilled that most students got somewhere between 9 and 11 stamps by the end of the activity and ended up having to forcefully throw them out of the room once the bell rung for the start of their next class.
These activities have a tendency to draw out even the quietest students and to give the best students room to be more impressive than usual. They asked silly questions and some of the more outgoing kids ended up dancing, hugging or asking ALTs out on dates. By the end of the last class, the ALTs were raving about how great my students are... things I obviously know already, but it made me feel like a proud momma to hear it from so many other people. (^-^)v