Here is Y-kun, recently he joined our school in Shiwa.
He is going to be in grade school starting next year and well, he's the blog of the day article.

His perseverence to learn English is amazing. Today he walked in to the school and said, Mr. Mark? Excuse me, Mr. Mark? So I replied, yes? There was no reply after that, but his mom explained that he learned a new phrase and wanted to use it.

He refuses to speak any Japanese in class, and to all other students his favorite phrase is 'no Japanese please'. Of course when he says it, he isn't sitting down, he is standing on his chair, shaking his finger and demanding.
Today, in class, we didn't do any TBL lesson, we did some phonics, they use the reading rods to match the letters and then we did a small science lesson, learning about planting seeds, giving them water and seeing the plant grow, flowers blooming and then turning into tomatoes. 'I don't like tomatoes! Yes!' was his reply.

His greetings and his funny character make the class so fun to teach, and due to his love of copying everything I say, he is so fun to teach! Recently I bought colored pencils from Canada, and they all have unusual names, there are even metallic colors. He has them all memorized. If the children want to color in class, they have to ask for the color they want before taking it. He loves the metallic colors, maybe not so much because of the color, but because he loves saying the colors. 'metalllllllic purrrple please!'


I don't have to teach anymore. Not this class. He makes sure everyone knows what the new vocab is, or the new activity is, before we move on.

He will be in my next research group when I start to link Vygotsky to TBL. It will be fun to design a lesson around Vygotsky's ZPD and keeping him in mind, see how I can have him teach others through scaffolding and through his world of social interaction.
He will be learning to read soon so his demands will increase I'm sure.

Thank you Y-kun!