Giving students the confidence to discover the language without their teacher’s constant support is an important skill. In today’s post I’m providing part of my multi-literacy lesson that focuses on becoming comfortable looking at authentic material for beginning learners and using a kanji dictionary for intermediate learners.
This is the worksheet that goes along with the Introduction of the Shichifukujin from yesterday’s post. If you have not read the set up of Unit 2 Discovering your Nihongo strengths, start there.
NOTE: Today’s set of worksheets is challenging. If you are teaching young students, Step 3b may be the best exercise. If you are teaching older students or you are diving in as a self study learner, do both Step 3a and Step 3b.
Step 1: Learn 4 new kanji (福 来 今 日）
Step 2: Listen to the a New Year’s commercial
- Listen and then record your observations
Step 3a: Annotate the lyrics to 福よ来い
- Novice: new learners may only be able to identify the 4 new kanji and some hiragana. Encourage them to identify the Shichifukujin names
- Intermediate: after annotating the lyrics, use a kanji-english dictionary to find the pronunciation of the kanji in order to identify the purpose of each Shichifukujin. Those using an online version can copy paste the phrases into jisho.org or your favorite online kanji-english dictionary. They can also learn to use the radical look up or the character drawing feature. For more of a challenge, introduce students to the original hard copy dictionaries such as The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary.
- Sensei: use a jigsaw activity to complete the chart faster. Divide students into groups and assign one Shichifukujin to each. Next divide into new groups so each member teaches the group what their former group discovered about the pronunciation of their assigned Shichifukujin.
Step 3b: Annotate the lyrics to 七福 童
- Listen to the song about where the Shichifukujin come from. The lyrics are not provided. Instead, aim for the gist of the song by relying on context clues in the video and the words they are able to catch.
- Complete the chart about were they are from.
Step 4 Let’s Analyze: 七福神
- Complete all or most of the information chart about each of the Shichifukujin.
Step 5 Introducing the 七福神
- construct a short introduction speech about one of the Shichifukujin. A template is provided but not required.
I’ll admit that this lesson is quite challenging. Primarily it is a chance for students to learn how to look up unknown kanji in the dictionary. I believe it is important to train our students how to use these resources correctly so they will feel confident when faced with unknown kanji in the future. It is not practical to expect all of our students to be able to learn and retain 2000+ kanji in a short time, but they can all learn how to access this information.
In my classroom I do not expect my students to complete the entire lesson on their own. I know there will be parts that are beyond their current skills.
Click here for the Discovering your Nihongo Strengths Worksheets
Tomorrow I will post the Creating section of this unit where students use their new knowledge of Shichifukujin to research with authentic materials in order to create a cultural artifact aligned with Step 2 of Possible Selves.
Let me know what you think of these multiliteracy activities in the comments section.
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