How was your trip?

Have students describe their travel experience in a few short paragraphs.

Task Description:

Students reflect on their experience from their most memorable trip.  They are asked to describe different aspects of their trip according to the prompts. This activity encourages the students to think what makes a meaningful trip.

Task Type:
scaffolding
Task Focus:
content
Task Extension:

Students discuss a trip that they consider ideal and create an itinerary.

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What is a homestay program?

Have students learn what is unique about the homestay program.

Task Description:

Students conduct a research on different types of educational travel programs from one commercial website and find pros and cons of homestay experience from one blog.  In the process of their research, students make a list of high frequency vocabulary related to the homestay program.

 

Task Type:
need to know
Task Focus:
content
Technology Tips:

Requires an access to a computer

Potential Hurdles:

The teacher may want to list the approppriate websites and blogs from which students choose.

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Participating a Japanese cultural festival

Have students participate in a local Japanese festival as a volunteer.

Task Description:

Students learn basic greetings prior to particpating in the festival. They are encouraged to work with other Japanese volunteers and experience the authentic communication in the target language. They are asked to reflect on their experience after the festival.  

Task Focus:
reflection

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Japan vs. the U.S.

Have students research the various aspects of the Japanese student’s lifestyle as well as their way of thinking.

Task Description:

Ameircan students create a video clip to invite Japanese students to participate in a survey.  Students conduct a survey to investigate several aspects of Japanese student’s daily life, such as transportation, leisure, daily schedule, personal belief and more. Students discuss the differences and the similarities between the life of American and Japanese high school students.

 

Task Type:
need to know
Task Focus:
interaction
Technology Tips:

Flipgrid is an easy application to share student's video clip and receive a feedback from students in Japan. Google Forms is good to create a sruvey. You can adjust the settings on Google Forms so that the survey result will be automatically exported to Google Sheets.

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How does that make you feel?

Have students exercise reasoning in Japanese.

Task Description:

Reading Comprehension task: Students work on the worksheet individually first and share their answers with a classmate.  

Task Type:
scaffolding
Task Focus:
content
Task Extension:

The class can continue learning how to describe the emotions and how to ask for help.  

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How would they feel?

Have students conduct a survey on how a Japanese student would feel in challenging scenarios that can happen during the homestay.

Task Description:

Based on the understanding from the frist survey "Japan vs. the U.S.", students discuss what can be challenging situations for a student from Japan during the homestay. The students get in the groups of three and create a survey to investigate the Japanese student's emotional response to those situations.

Task Type:
need to know
Task Focus:
interaction
Technology Tips:

Students create the surveys on Google Forms. They can adjust the setting so that the survey result will be automatically exported to a Google Sheets.

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Guide to be a Good Host

Have students create a written, a visual, or a multimedia presentation.

Task Description:

After the examination of the second survey result, students create a medium to inform the host families of a potential challenge that a guest may have and to introduce the ways to lower the stress for both the hosts and the guests. Students are split into the smaller groups according to their choice of the challnege. After the completion of the product, students share the product with the audience.

Task Type:
scaffolding
Task Focus:
interaction

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Participation

A sentence that summarizes this task.

Task Description:

Teacher gives a participation grade. Teacher take the audience feedback into a consideration. 

Task Focus:
reflection

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Proficiency Assessment

Use the rubrics to assess student's proficiency in writing and speaking.

Task Description:

Teacher assesses the survey and the videp the students created with the rubric.  

Task Focus:
reflection

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Feedback

Ask for a feedback from the American students and their families who receive the product.

Task Description:

At the final presentation, the participants are asked to give a written feedback on student's product.  

Task Focus:
feedback and/or revision

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