Hello again! This is Sade Moore, a Learning Mentor at the Hakusanroku Campus! From Saturday, June 7th, 2025, International College of Technology (ICT) has had the pleasure of hosting a delegation of 5 high school students from Columbia, Missouri, United States at the Hakusanroku Campus. Along with two teachers from Columbia they have been participating in classes at the Hakusanroku Campus with our students and also various activities in and around Hakusan City and Kanazawa City. To facilitate welcoming them to our school the Learning Mentors decided to have a quick Ice Breaking Session for the students during the beginning of Learning Session on Monday, June 9th. 

 

 At the beginning of Learning Session, we gathered all of the students together in the Math Classroom. We started with normal announcements for our students to tell them about their necessary assignments and homework and any events that are going to happen soon and after the announcements the fun could begin! First, to wake up the students and let everyone loosen up, the Learning Mentors decided to play a game as most of the students seemed sleepy and not interested.

 The first ice breaker that we played is called “Fruit Basket.” It is a game where all the students sit in a circle and one student is in the middle. The student in the middle has to say, in English, something that pertains to them. It can be anything like what food they like, what color they like, what pet they have, or what class they like. After the student says the statement, then for the students who have the same answer, they must get up and move to a different chair. For students who say things like “my favorite color is pink” or “I have a pet fish” not many students can say the same so not many students move. But for statements like “I am a human” or “I like animals” or “Fruits Basket (where all the students have to move chairs)”, it can cause a lot of chaos as most students have to move to a different seat! The students had a lot of fun trying to find a new chair and not be the student left in the middle.

 At the ICT Hakusanroku Campus we have implemented a House System where all of the students are separated into 4 separate houses. The students have to work together with their Housemates to collect points based off of good behavior, such as doing their homework, completing assignments, helping their other classmates, and cleaning up after themselves. They can also lose points if they behave badly, for example, if they are being too loud during Learning Session, not completing assignments, not cleaning up after themselves, and not acting in an appropriate manner. To help integrate the American students into ICT, the Learning Mentors thought it would be a good idea to sort the American students into one of the 4 ICT Houses. So, we held a quick sorting ceremony for them and they were quickly welcomed into their houses by their ICT house members. 

 With the sorting done this led into our final ice breaking activity of the night where we would play English-only Charades. In a usual game of charades there are only gestures used to try and guess a secret word. However, today for charades the students must give hints in English only as to what the secret word was. Each house had to work together to give the best hints so that their teammate could guess correctly as fast as possible. The first House to guess correctly would receive 20 House Points, 2nd fastest would get 15 House Points, 3rd would get 10 House Points, and the last team to guess the answer would get 5 House Points. The students really enjoyed working together to use their English in order to get as many points as possible!

 After English-only Charades the ICT students and the American students were all released to regular Learning Session to work on any assignments, homework, or presentations that they needed to get done or to get to know each other better if they had free time. It was really nice to see all of the students laughing and smiling together and crossing cultural barriers through the Ice Breaking Activity. It is the Learning Mentors’ hope that this will lead to good memories and a great start to good relations between our students and the students from Columbia. 

Sade Moore