Past Events

On Wednesday August 10th Year 7 students from Hallett Cove South PS, Thiele PS, Calvary PS, Sheidow Park PS, Woodend PS, Hawthorndene PS and Woodcroft PS battled it out for the annual hiragana champion’s title. This is our 13th year running the very successful event which is open to all schools in the area through our Southern Japanese teachers hub group held at Hallett Cove South PS twice a term. This year Woodend Primary School defended their title placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd! Students thoroughly enjoyed the day allowing them to showcase their skills in reading Hiragana and hopefully boosting engagement in to high school.  

Joy in Japanese learning at Primary school was on display at EDC on May 30. The JLTASA Year 6/7 Quiz was again a reminder that the language learning programs in South Australian primary schools are successful and in full force! With 16 schools from all three sectors attending, 156 SA kids enjoyed teaming up with different schools and sharing in a fun Japanese Quiz. This year’s quiz introduced some new material with greater emphasis on the current Australian Curriculum for Japanese along with some new activities such as team captain selection with hachimaki prizes and kendama. The traditional favourites were again popular such as entertaining you tube clips, heads and tails true or false games and the ever so popular Jan Ken Pon warm up game. Quiz categories varied from Hiragana, Kanji and Vocab to Modern Culture, Traditional Culture, Geography and a Listening Section prerecorded by committee member and native Japanese speaker Keiko. The quiz questions were mostly new this year and pleasingly the score results showed amazing skill and knowledge by contestants as well as some challenges which allowed for new experiences and further learning. The staff attending provided great enthusiasm and support which helped keep the positive atmosphere for all the kids. The prizes from Japan were yet again a big hit! This event is now run over two sessions to cater…

It seems that the Year 10 Movie Making Day was a great success. We had 4 schools, 32 students, 4 teachers and 2 student teachers. The students enjoyed the warm up games and quickly broke down the barriers working together really well to produce authentic Japanese commercials. In just a couple of hours they planned, wrote, designed, choreographed and produced commercials of a high standard showing authentic use of language and an high level of understanding of features of a Japanese commercial. Our tatami room, Asian garden, and every yukata, sumo suit, Totoro and Japanese item at our school were put to good use. I am seeking permission from students to put the final products on the website so I can share them with you. There was a really positive atmosphere and lots of Japanese being used. However there were also lots of individual successes with students connecting positively with language learning. Several students came up to me at the end of the day to say thank you and some of the comments made my day! One boy said that he had had the best day and just wanted to do it all over again. Another girl said that she had made new friends and would love to come to any other…

On Tuesday the 5th of April, JLTASA held its annual Year Eight Speech Recital Competition. Students who enter in to this event are required to recite a specific passage in Japanese, and are graded on the pronunciation, fluency, intonation, memorisation and presentation. This kind of event is chosen so that it is accessible for all students, whether they are new to Japanese that year, or have been studying it throughout primary school. English recital competitions are also a popular activity in Japanese schools. This year we had 35 students attend the event from eight different schools, including for the first time, video entries from a country school, Mount Gambier High School. It was a fantastic turn out, which included high schools from all three sectors, and all areas of Adelaide. The quality of the recitals was excellent. One of the lines the students had to recite was 日本語が大好きです！ and it was so wonderful to hear so many students recite it with such enthusiasm. Another wonderful aspect of this event was the parent support on the night. Many students were accompanied by parents, siblings and even grandparents, all of whom spoke very highly about how hard their child had worked at…

Below is a reflection of the 2015 Annual Conference in pictures:

This project was partially funded by a Hub Group Grant provided by the JLTASA. On 21st October, Open Access College hosted the North East Hiragana Competition. 32 students from 8 schools in the North East of Adelaide participated in a competition to recognise the 46 characters of the hiragana alphabet, including more complex characters and reading words. Schools that participated with their Japanese teachers cheering them on were: Tea Tree Gully (Elin Gubbin), East Para (Eunkyoung Kim), One Tree Hill (Carmen Kowalski), Keithcot Farm (Lou Hanna and Jodie Wallace), Redwood Park (Jenny Liivamagi), Greenwith (Kym Toomey) and Open Access College (Kazuko Glass, Christina Challinger and Casey Hall). Students also participated in alphabet games and activities between competition rounds. Students wore hachimaki and were treated to a sushi morning tea to celebrate. Congratulations to all that participated; as always, scores were very close. Redwood Park placed 1st with 36 points and took home the impressive perpetual trophy. One Tree Hill came in 2nd place with 30 points, and Keithcot Farm came 3rd on 27 points. As in previous years, the students and teachers put in a lot of their own time to practice, and showed an impressive mastery of the hiragana…