Mixed Lessons

Mixed lessons are a wonderful way to bring together the two Divisions of the school, and provide students with an opportunity to learn from one another. These lessons provide an authentic context for students to use newly acquired language skills. Therefore, these mixed lessons are crucial in providing context for tacit learning – a natural transfer of language skills and knowledge.

There are 3 main areas of learning which are provided in a mixed lesson context:


Music & Art

The Sydney Japanese International School offers students music lessons run by Japanese teachers. Learning both Japanese and English songs promotes language skills and cross-cultural learning. From Year 1, all students learn the keyboard harmonica (Pianica), which is widely played in Japan.From Year 3, students are taught the recorder. From Year 4, various instruments are incorporated into Music studies, including xylophone and accordion.

Each year, a school concert is held in November, which showcases both Japanese and English songs and is an opportunity for students to display their developing musical skills to their families.

Visual Art classes at SJIS are conducted as mixed lessons, and offer a means for students to express their creativity and build on artistic talent. The School provides opportunities for students to involve themselves in various intra-school design competitions throughout the year.

Personal Development, Health & Physical Education

The SJIS Personal Development, Health and Physical Education mixed lessons are taught using attributes of both Australian and Japanese culture, in relation to health and wellbeing. For example, Sports Day provides students with all the usual events associated with an Australian Sports Day, coupled with traditional Japanese sports and dances.

Every year we invite special guests to SJIS as part of the PDHPE program, such as members of the Japanese AFL team, who conduct football lessons. Swimming classes are conducted by an external full-time swimming instructor.

Physical Education classes are held throughout the year, with mixed lessons occurring once a week.

Coding

From this year we also offer Coding as a mixed lesson in the first two terms of the year. This highly popular education is provided by an external expert highly experienced in computer programming. Students will learn how to input instructions into a computer in order to move objects in different and varied ways.