What Do You Want To Be In The Future? (Karuta Race)

Sonja Rittweger

Preparation:

∗ Ask your school if you can use the assembly room/activity room (集会室 shuukaishitsu) for your lesson.

∗ Make six equal sets of small picture cards by compressing the A4-size picture cards you used for your lesson on jobs & professions down to a 6x9cm format and putting them into protection foils for magic cards (sold at 100\-stores as “trading card clear pockets”). If you have the budget for it, you may of course laminate your cards (however, with a set of 25 words, you will end up laminating 150 cards!). Stick pieces of magnet tape on the back so that cards will stick to the blackboard.

∗ Randomly stick all the small cards to a blackboard or whiteboard in the back of the room. If the room doesn’t have either one in the back, spread the cards out on the floor (picture side facing up).

PROCEDURE:

1. Split the class into six teams and get the students to line up in 6 rows. There are usually set groups within a class (lunch groups, etc.), so this shouldn’t take long. Ask the homeroom teacher for help.

2. Review the words that you’ve taught before (e.g. taxi driver, hairdresser, magician, police officer, nurse ...) with the A4-size flashcards. If the class doesn’t concentrate, make it a competition and have the students do gestures with the pronunciation and let them sit down if they get a word or a gesture wrong.

3. Review “What do you want to be in the future?” and “I want to be a ~!”

4. Game time! Six teams compete against each other - one student out of each team at a time. The first student in each row (team) steps one step forward. These six students have to ask you (together) “What do you want to be in the future?” and with your answer (e.g. “I want to be a teacher”) students run to the back of the room, look for the card with the respective picture (“teacher”) on it and run back to the blackboard in the front and stick the card onto it. The first student to stick the right picture onto the blackboard earns 3 points for his or her team; the second earns two points and the third one point. The student who earned three points for his or her team gets to stand in front of the class and answer the next question. The others line up behind their teammates, and the next six students step one step forward to ask “What do you want to be in the future?” The student in the front answers “I want to be a ~” and gets to choose a profession, etc.

The game is over when all the cards are gone or if the time runs up. Leave some time in the end of the lesson to count the points and honor the winners (or even give prizes: in my school, e.g., Spongebob stickers are MOST WANTED).

Usually, the students also like to share what they thought about the lesson (感想 kansou).

NOTES:

∗ The Karuta Race might not work well for teaching a new sentence or set of words – use it for review or as a reward for the students after a complicated lesson!

I used the following words: baseball (and other team sports they know) player, carpenter, conductor, cook, doctor, fire fighter, golfer, hairdresser, magician, nurse, pianist, pilot, police officer, singer, taxi driver, teacher, truck driver, vet... Please see example pictures below.

∗ The Karuta Race is also good for the last lesson of the year when you want to review the different lessons you have taught: Target question could be “What do you like?” and answers (“I like …”) could include numbers, colors, sports, four seasons and seasonal items, family members, fruits, vegetables, etc. Divide the blackboard into different sections (colors, numbers, sports, seasons…) and have the students stick the cards to the respective category, e.g. “cherry blossoms” to the “4 seasons” section.

∗ Don’t forget to reserve the activity room for your lesson ahead of time!

∗ Make clear that you do not accept any forms of pushing, pulling or punching during the game. Also, it might help to tell the students that if they slide or run into the board or their fellow students, you will subtract points from their team score.