Kitahara Sensei Guest Speaks at ALT 101 course

Who is Kitahara sensei?

Nobuaki Kitahara has a range of impressive academic credentials. He lectures at Sophia University and is a Senior Lecturer at Aichi Shukutoku University. He was also a Supervisor for the JHS textbook, ‘Sunshine English Course.’ He has built his career to become one of the most respected and distinguished experts on English education at the secondary level in Japan.

Kitahara sensei has years of experience contributing to seminars and presentations for both teachers and student-teachers all over Japan.

He is most famous for his teaching training method, the ‘Kitahara Method.’ Each month, he organizes ‘Kitaken,’ a nationwide study and research group for teachers to learn how to apply the techniques of the “Kitahara Method.”

We were extremely pleased and honored to welcome him to our ALT 101 course session at Temple University.

What is the Kitahara Method?

The Kitahara method can be divided into two lesson patterns:

Pattern A:

• Routine warm-up (such as a standardized greeting)
• review of previous lesson
• introduction of new grammar
• practice

or Pattern B:

• Routine warm-up (such as a standardized greeting)
• review of previous lesson
• Q&A using picture cards
• oral introduction
• introduction and practice of new words
• understanding the contents of the text
• reading aloud
• writing

What is the ALT 101 course?

RCS has worked with Temple University to develop this unique ALT 101 course for current and future ALTs. The course is designed to explain the role and objectives of an ALT in the Japanese educational system.

Although this is an introductory course, each module has lots of beneficial advice for working ALTS.

This includes:

• How to build rapport with Japanese colleagues and navigate cultural differences
• The requirements of team teaching at each educational level
• Advice on successful team teaching in special needs classes
• How to plan effective lessons and activities for Japanese students in different contexts.

The best part? All classes are online. Learners can conveniently complete the course in the comfort of their own home.

Kitahara as a guest speaker

We were exceptionally proud to have Kitahara sensei guest speak at our ALT course. He spoke for 40 minutes, explaining the Kitahara method. His talk centered around before-test activities and fun activities. This included a word definition game, a vocabulary game for listening and a ‘sentence telepathy game.’ This is where a teacher writes sentences on the board with blanks. The students then guessed each sentence from the textbooks. This type of game is an excellent review activity before a test!

Thank you to all who helped

We would like to express our huge appreciation for all the ALTs who helped support the ALT 101 course.
We wish a big ‘thank you’ to:

• Allison Cooke
• Anne Le
• Mikayla Govern
• Christine Dashiell
• Jerami Vanderholm

Interested in the ALT101?

The ALT 101 course has now finished for this year. If you would like to learn more, we are planning to run the course again from Spring 2023.

Benefits of the ALT 101 course:

• A highly regarded addition to your resume
• A great experience to meet and learn with educational experts
• A unique qualification, only attainable through Temple University
• 15% discount – available only for RCS ALT!

Please get in touch if you want to learn more.