Welcome to the English Board Life of an ALT

Self Intro and Resources List

Hello, I’m J-Sensei, and I am a third year JET ALT working in the countryside (inaka). I remember finding out rather suddenly the number of schools I had to work at (5 elementary schools!), and feeling rather overwhelmed. Along with assisting with creating lesson plans and assisting with teaching classes, one of your responsibilities as an ALT will most likely be managing the school's English board space.

An English Board is a dedicated space within the school for ALTs and English teachers to put up posters about topics ranging from class-related to miscellaneous fun cultural facts.

Another situation might be that you may have limited access to a color printer.

Farewell, digital convenience. It was an adjustment, to say the least.

And so, this blog was born.

I hope this blog will be helpful to anyone who is looking for some fun English board ideas!

*Please note that I only work at elementary schools, so my examples are made for that age group.

Before jumping in, I want to introduce the resources I used to make most of my English board posters.

Drawing/Writing Materials

• Zebra Mackee Work Double-Sided (brand) markers (I use the general 8-color set) - Oil based

• Uni-Posca Paint (brand) markers - Water-based

• Illustration Alcohol Marker (Seria brand) - Brush and broad tip type

Poster Paper/Decoration Paper

• Toyo Color Paper (10 Colors, 28 sheets) - roughly B4 size?

• 100 yen store origami paper

• School poster paper (have larger sized (A3) paper, sometimes even a larger selection of colors)

Miscellaneous

• 100 yen store washi tape (called masking-tape) - Seria and Daiso have a good selection

• 100 yen store colored paper sticker sheets (looks like regular paper, but acts like a sticker)

• 100 yen store themed stickers

Basically, many of what you can find to help decorate your poster can be found at Seria any 100 yen store. I will try to include a more extensive list of my materials for each poster in this blog.

Helpful Links (Will update as I post):

• Iratsutoya (search engine is in Japanese, but they recently added an English search bar too!)

#ALT #Japan #EnglishBoardLife