Category: Dave and Amy Games

Many people dream of opening their own English School.   Well, you’re in luck.   Japan makes it extremely easy to start a business.    And the start up fees for opening an English School can be minimal.      My first piece of advice: KEEP your job.   Grow student numbers / your school in … Read more

My English Book and Me 3 Classbook and Homebook are ABC phonics texts.   Children will learn many new words as they learn their phonics.   There is constant review and re-enforcement with mini – tests.   Students also learn conversational questions and answers.        We use MEB3 with ANY beginning elementary student … Read more

This is the Kindergarten Lessons at Dave and Amy English School:   Goals   Before elementary school, students should be able to: 1.  Know Lots of Vocabulary 2.  Ask and Answer Simple Questions and Answers 3.  Sing simple English Songs 4.  Recognize all 26 Lowercase Letters: begin reading 5.  Know the Phonetic Sounds of all … Read more

At Dave and Amy English School, we have many returnees and students from other schools.    We do a level check to decide the best lesson for them.  We check reading, writing, speaking and comprehension.  We have found it’s best to begin easily and steadily challenge the child more.  This allows the child to be … Read more

I am often asked by potential students, can my (for example) 2nd grade child join the lesson with his 5th grade sibling.    I answer, IF they are both beginners, YES.      Why?  Because beginners are beginners.   It doesn’t matter if they are in 1st grade or in 6th grade.   If they … Read more

This is the basic Kindergarten Lessons at Dave and Amy English School: Goals: Before elementary school, students should be able to: 1.  Know Lots of Vocabulary 2.  Ask and Answer Simple Questions and Answers 3.  Sing simple English Songs 4.  Recognize all 26 Lowercase Letters: begin reading 5.  Know the Phonetic Sounds of all the … Read more

Despite our best efforts, students WILL quit (I would love to tie them down to lifetime contracts, but somehow I don’t think that would go down well). What can we do about quitters? Pre – empt:   Provide GOOD, QUALITY lessons at AFFORDABLE prices.   If students like your lessons and if parents can see … Read more

  One of the key philosophies at Dave and Amy English School is to give the students thinking time.   What does this mean?   Simply that in ANY activity, give the students TIME to THINK.    Too many times, teachers—-in the bid to TEACH and be HELPFUL —- jump in and give the student … Read more

  In the My English Book and Me 3 Texts, there are many mini – tests.   We want the tests to be meaningful and to test the students (obviously).     Unfortunately, we found that many times, when assigned for homework, the tests would come back PERFECT—with NO mistakes.   Mysteriously when students did … Read more

Many people are surprised to hear that for years we had no Japanese help at all.   NOW, we DO have a Japanese secretary who helps out once a month.    She’s a ninja secretary.  Our students don’t know we have Japanese staff.   Why would we do that? We feel that if we have … Read more

In Japan, there is a saying: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.   In other words, people who are different will be forced to conform.   This has historical and cultural roots that I am not qualified to discuss but I want to show how important it is to be different in a … Read more

My English Book and Me 1 and 2 are black and white picture dictionaries.  They can be used with ANY beginners, but we use them with our kindergarten students.   Ideally, students will come to our school as 4 year olds and begin My English Book and Me 1.    After 1 year on My English … Read more

I was recently asked about hiring our first teachers.   The obvious reason: we had grown as a school and needed more teachers to cover the lessons.    But more importantly, we valued our family time and work life/ balance.    Before our two boys entered kindergarten we spent mornings playing in parks // play centers and afternoons at home together.   Then we … Read more

Our new teacher, a good friend of ours, Nova Scotian Melanie began on the Monday.   I was two weeks past my due date for our 2nd child.   Looking back, we were a bit lax securing a new teacher to take over for my lessons.   Maybe that is why our youngest took his time coming out! Melanie was late for her first … Read more

At Dave and Amy English School, we had very popular, effective Mommy and Baby lessons for 7 years.   And then stopped.  Why?   Hint:  It WASN’T because our own children had grown.   Although it was great having Alfie and Leon in the class.     The real reason we STOPPED Mommy and Baby lessons … Read more

At Dave and Amy English School, we used to have popular, effective Mommy and Baby lessons.  14 – 18 Moms and young children would come to the weekly lessons.   Before kindergarten,  students could usually say their name and age, answer basic questions and knew a lot of vocabulary.     Let’s go through the … Read more

Believe it or not, we have a toilet break policy at Dave and Amy English School.  It sounds ridiculous, but it is necessary.   To begin with, let’s go through WHY we have a policy:    In our experience we found: A.  Teachers who allow toilet breaks have students going to the toilet EVERY CLASS. … Read more

Songs are a vital part of any kindergarten lesson.   But WHICH songs you sing and HOW you sing them in a EFL classroom are important.   Let’s go through some song basics. #1.  Why do you sing songs in kindergarten lessons?      A.  Songs liven and re-focus the class.    In general, we … Read more

At Dave and Amy English School, we have taught a lot of returnees.   We try to help returnees keep their fluency, comprehension, reading and writing abilities at a high level, and improve them.  But it takes hard work.   How do we do this effectively?   ****  We would like to specify that ANY … Read more

 Our students LOVE new materials.   How do we finance new materials?     Over the years, we’ve tried several options.  I will go through the options we have tried:  At first we charged TWICE yearly fees of 1500 yen (in March and December).   Japanese schools often charge a YEARLY fee for materials/ utilities.    The main … Read more