Unit 3

THINKING

Thinking about my hopes, expectations and fears as a language user and beyond

Unit 3 Thinking

Unit 3 explores your student's hopes of what they want to do with their lives after school. This section and for the rest of the program there is a distinct effort to make students think about their lives as a language user not just a current learner. If your students have well- defined career paths, adjust the wordage for Worker to reflect that. At KCAI the term is replaced with "Professional Artist"

The questions about hopes, expectations and fears are presented as a survey. Creating a survey style lesson for the language exploration portion of the unit is ideal and makes a good tie in.

Check out the KCAI Unit & Resources below!

Downloadable Template

Unit 3 Thinking Template

KCAI Sample & Adaption Suggestions

Possible selves Lesson 3 template

EXPLORE:

Cultural Artifact: Maneki Neko, The Beckoning Cat
Kanji Micro-skills: 招 beckon 猫 cat 手 hand 右 right 左 left
Linguistic Awareness: Two characters phrases from the song 招き猫ねネコネコ
Linguistic Activity: Survey taking in Japanese
Linguistic Skill: Students develop online dictionary (Jisho.org) skills to look up kanji characters based on their parts (radicals)

Language Substitution: Activate your students to think about their own hopes, expectations, and fears. What talismans or cultural artifacts do you know of that are related to the one you used in Units 1 & 2? Are there other songs, stories, or artifacts that can be used to highlight one's hopes and fears? This unit includes a survey in English in the CREATE section. Consider making a survey that focuses on the cultural artifact and linguistic awareness you selected.

CREATE:

Discovery: Students explore how mankeki neko are made and consider why makers use the colors, phrases, and hand positions that they do.

Apply: Students complete the English survey about their hopes, expectations and fears. Using their responses, students create their own maneki neko that represents calling in hopes or warding off fears.

Language Substitution: Adjust the language and career ambitions in the English survey to align with student population. Introduce students to authentic materials that highlight the cultural artifact you selected in the first section.

REFLECT:

In English, students write about how they hope to improve as a Japanese language user, artist and as a person. They also consider what fears might be negatively impacting their future as a Japanese language user, artist and as a person. They must include the words generated in the survey in order to answer the question: Who am I?

Language Substitution: Adjust the language and career ambitions in the English survey to align with student populationIf your students have a variety of career paths, you can change this to "preparing to enter the workforce"