This research investigates how primary senior students (6th-graders) reflect their learning at the time of their 1st-grade learning and how they develop their active learning in a project-based learning where they teach English to the present 1st-year students based on what they learned five years ago. If their first year of learning of English at primary school is a happy and motivating one and stays in the learners' mind even up to the last year learning, it is assumed that this unforgettable learning is worth being transmitted to their lower-grade students.
Five years ago, the present 6th-grade students learned English with a picturebook "The big turnip," where they listened to reading-aloud of the picturebook and learned vocabulary, expressions, and the animals' cries in the book. They are going to graduate from primary school in March 2023 and have an opportunity to transform their learning five years ago to teaching the present 1st-grade students by using the same picturebook. They are expected to read it aloud and teach vocabulary and expressions to the 1st-year students by taking a role of a teacher in a collaborative way.
In the course of this project-based learning to teach what they learned to lower graders, they are going to write a journal that records what they feel, observe, and find out. By analyzing their journal, it will be revealed what they will have learned through the project. This is also going to be an opportunity to review what they will have learned by the time of graduating from primary school. This research guides early language learners to grow into a learner responsible for their own learning and an active and social learner-teacher to create a collaborative learning environment in school early language learning (ELL).
Education in Japan has been shifting evaluation to be more learner-centered and emphasize active learning, which is expressed as a fixed phrase "proactive, dialogic/interactive, and deep learning" in the Course of Study (MEXT, 2018). Under this Couse of Study for primary school that has been implemented since April, 2020, ELL started at primary school as a school subject (two 45-minute classes per week) for the grades 5th and 6th. Prior to this, ELL was conducted as a form of "foreign language activities (one 45-minute class per week)", not as a school subject, for 9 years from the 2011 to 2019 academic year. During this transition to a school subject, a nation-wide preparatory practical research projects had been conducted from the 2014 to 2017 academic year. One of the primary schools that participated in the research projects is a school in this research and provided a short version of foreign language activities (one 23-minute class per week) to the 1st-grade students and used a picturebook "The big turnip."
Bibliography
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. (2018). Shougakkou gakusyuu shidou youryou [Course of study for elementary schools]. Tokyo.
