How are you?

This is a lesson that I often use early on in the year, as it fits well into the circle-time system that I begin each class with.

Starting the lesson, I ask the students what kind of greetings they might use every day with their friends, family, and teachers.  Just as in Japanese, we also ask "how are you?" often in English.

After practicing the pronunciation of the question, I tell the students that we will first learn 6 different answers that we can use.  I show one picture of a face at a time, and ask the students to guess what the feeling/emotion is.  For my lesson I use happy, hungry, sleepy, sick, hot, and cold.  After practicting each word, I remind the students that they must use "I'm..." with each one (I'm happy, I'm hungry, etc.).

Once they are familiar with all 6 feelings, I tell them that I want to check their gestures.  Our faces and body language can tell people just as much as the words that we use, so it's important to show these feelings to help with our communication.  I announce each feeling and ask the students to show me their "happy face", "sick face", and so on.

After the gestures, I tell the students that we will play a card game.  However, first we must make the cards.  Each student is given a paper with 4 equal boxes on it.  A volunteer chooses any one of the feelings, and then all the students write "I'm ______!" at the top of one box on their paper.  For example, if "happy" was chosen, then everyone writes "I'm happy!"

Next, I ask the class to think about what makes them happy, and give them 2 minutes to draw a picture in the same box that they just wrote in.  They can draw anything they like, as long as it is something that makes them happy.  We continue in the same way for the remaining 3 boxes, with students drawing simple pictures of what they want when they are hungry, sleepy, sick, hot, or cold.  There are only 4 boxes on the paper, so 2 of the 6 feelings will not be used.  It is essential to give the students a strict time limit for their drawings, as many of them will enjoy drawing for the entire class period!

After the drawing time is finished, I ask each student to cut their paper into 4 pieces, so that each feeling is 1 card.  Finally, I explain the rules of the game and model it with the teacher or a volunteer student.  All students begin with 4 cards, and find a partner.  Then they play rock, paper, scissors.  The loser asks the target question, "How are you?"  The winner can respond with any of the 4 feelings that were selected, "I'm happy/hungry/etc."  If the student who asked the question has that card, they give it to the winner.  If they do not have it (they gave it to another student in a previous match), they can say "Sorry!  See you!"  Then they both move on to find new partners.  Students should keep their own cards a secret, so the winner of each match may ask for a card that they can't get.

The game is played for 5 or so minutes, and then students sit down and count how many cards they ended up with.  We check together to see who has 1 card, 2 cards, 3 cards, until the champion (or champions) is found.  As the class ends we review all the feelings once again, and I tell the class that I will always ask "how are you?" at the beginning of each class, so they should try hard to remember them.