Saturday I visited Matsushima with a junior high teacher, Koko. We met in Shiogama and took a tour boat the traveled through the many islands which were beautiful. We visited a temple and then went back to her house in Shiogama. She is a talented koto player. She taught me a little bit- I wasn't that great! She also played and it was wonderful music.

Sunday I tried to attend another baseball game but it got rained out.

Monday I taught some more classes. I also went with the vice principal and another teacher, Aoike, to the Center of Special Education. Aoike is an English teacher and he tried his best to interpret for me but because the terms were educational and technical (words and ideas you don't encounter on a daily basis) he had some difficulty. From what I gathered, the place provides two main services- one for teachers who want to take a sabbatical or workshop related to special education and secondly, counseling for parents with disabled children and also the children themselves. I'm not sure though if "counseling" means the same as it does in the US. It was an interesting visit and the concept of the place is a good one.

Tuesday I taught some more. I also got to spend some time with the preschoolers. They were adorable. Later I asked Yao if the preschool philosophy was still oral since during calendar time I saw the teachers using speech without sign. But since he has nothing to do with that program he wasn't sure. I can understand that. I did see sign being used during play time. There was also some use of language expansion with the children. That is basically a method of providing language modeling for the students. For example, if a student signs "ball", the teacher might reply, "Yes, you have a blue ball".

The highlight of the day was observing a jr high science class taught by a deaf teacher and then teaching a science lesson myself. The teacher was very good and used visuals and written language with the students. As for my lesson- I demonstrated the effect Mentos candy has on a 1.5L of cola. I wish I could attach the video because it was awesome!!!!! If you have no idea what this experiment is- ask me! The kids will be amazed.

Wednesday- more teaching. Yao and I then visited a museum that had a special exhibit on the human body. Full bodies and parts of bodies were displayed in various ways to show bone, muscle, organs, etc. And come to find out....they were real!!!! They looked like wax but a special process was applied to the bodies to dry them and then somehow a silicon was added during the process. Very interesting. I bought a book with pictures. Next we went back to Miyagi University of Education and met again with the students studying to become teachers of the deaf. I asked a few questions too. Reading ability of Japanese deaf students seems to be a bit higher than US students. They graduate HS with a reading level of 6th - 8th grade compared to 4th grade in the US. That could be contributed to the fact that kanji is a conceptual writing system compared to a phonetic one. I also learned that Japanese deaf students make similar grammatical errors with verb tense and prepositions. This is based on the fact that in sign language those items are generally left out so the students tend to write as if they were signing.

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