About the Genki Japanese program
GENKI Japanese Curriculum
The Genki Japanese curriculum is an artistically delivered Japanese language course for young children at Kool Kids and is delivered by Head Japanese teacher Hiromi Sensei in conjunction with a trained team of 10 Kool Kids staff.
The curriculum consists of nine units, 75 Japanese target vocabulary, song and dance, drama and visual and written components.
The program operates regular Japanese cultural events such as food tasting, festivals, visits from Japanese children and child care professionals from Japan, performances for parents and friends.
Using screens mounted in all Kool Kids classrooms; ‘real time’ Skype lessons allows the children to converse and sing songs in Japanese with Japanese children at our sister school (Woody Kids) in Tokyo. This is a very exciting component of our curriculum.
The Kool Kids Genki Japanese curriculum philosophy
The lessons in the Genki Japanese curriculum are anchored to six fundamental elements:
- Respect for any race of human being
- Importance of family and friends
- Movement
- Colour
- Music
- Art
GENKI Japanese is an original curriculum based on methods utilised within the most successful second language program for children in Japan - Genki English. The genkienglish.net website has a multitude of great educational ideas that we highly recommend.
Kool Kids Genki Japanese classes promote participatory learning in the context of evaluating the processes behind creating a work of art
Art, like language does not discriminate, it stimulates by providing a wide frame of reference - both analytical and artistic using the left and right brain. Studying Japanese language with dance, song, movement and color, the Kool Kids program will increase learning ability, make children healthier, happier and better learners.
Movement is an important key to Genki Japanese learning. Expressing the feeling of sentences through movement and choreographing our way through language education challenges creates a feeling of teamwork and absolute equality in the classroom. Gifted children discover new and exciting ways to learn and interact through movement. Challenged learners quickly become actively engaged and advance due to many more artistic entry points or different ways to learn the activities of each unit.
Why the Artistic Element in the Genki Japanese Curriculum
Our curriculum and art
- Keeps children engaged in the learning process
- Closes the achievement gap
- Reaches all learners, addresses special needs of learners, and provides education for the "whole child”
- Celebrates all of the cultural and diversity needs of children
- Improves reading, writing, and speaking
- Inspires parents to actively participate in their children’s education
- Takes into account that: Arts are languages that all people speak that cut across racial, cultural, social, educational, and economic barriers and enhance cultural appreciation and awareness
- Takes into account that: Arts, dance, music, movement and color are symbol systems that are just as important as letters and numbers
- Integrates mind, body, and spirit
- Provides opportunities for self-expression bringing the inner world of the child’s imagination into the outer world of concrete reality
- Develops both independence and collaboration
- Provides immediate feedback to the child
- Exercises and develops higher order thinking skills including, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and problem solving.
The Genki Japanese curriculum scientific fact
It is a fact that the brain physically changes when we learn, and that change is most extensive and powerful when art is part of the learning. Art is proven to arouse chemicals of emotion, such as adrenalin, serotonin, and dopamine; these act by modifying neurotransmitters in the brain, and this is the very root of learning.
The important fact then is that the arts trigger emotion and this is responsible for brain stimulation and increased use, and we are aware of this.
The Genki Japanese curriculum and teaching framework is based on these understandings. They are structured to engage children and their imagination to therefore expand learning portals, motivation, positive results and happiness.
Through the design of this curriculum children are not passive observers; they are artistically guided by the Kool Kids teachers on a proactive program containing multi layered learning experiences and lessons that will form valuable platforms for their entire lives.
To work with children or to be a teacher you must be a caring prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future, and that is what we are doing - in some part - with the Kool Kids Genki Japanese Program.