Kids Web Japan

At reading time the students can read any book they like

Shinanodai Elementary serves a school district with a radius of seven kilometers, so many of the students live too far away to walk to and from school. There used to be a public bus service, but it has been stopped, and now a school taxi service operates, subsidized by Seto City. So instead of taking the bus, kids from the same neighborhood now share a taxi to school.

The first classes start at 8:55, but before that there is a morning meeting organized by the students themselves, where they take turns taking the roll each day. In Japan people are usually called by their surnames, but because there are so many people in this region with the same names - like Kato, Nagae, Mizuno, and Eshiri - both the students and the teachers at Shinanodai Elementary call each other by their first names to avoid confusion. For example, the principal, vice-principal, and another teacher all have the surname Kato. Next comes morning study time, when the students drill themselves on arithmetic or kanji. Twice a year the school holds a reading week, when morning study time is given over to reading books. Even without their homeroom teacher watching over them, none of the students messes around or talks during study time.

The school is wide open, with no walls separating the classrooms and corridors

Singing a song in the stepped music room

There are four classes in the morning and two in the afternoon. There are two 25-minute breaks called "Shinanodai time," one in the morning and one in the afternoon. At these times the kids are free to go outside and play ball games or tag, or to stay inside and read books or use the school computers.

Shinanodai Elementary School is a wide-open single-story building. There are no walls separating the classrooms and corridors. In an ordinary elementary school, each classroom has an area of about 64 square meters, but those at Shinanodai are about twice this size. Each class has enough space for a classroom section, where the students' desks are, as well as a low workspace for special activities.

Dance practice during a physical education class

The classrooms are separated only by screens, meaning that if you stand in the corridor you can see all of the classrooms at once. The noise of a normal class is not enough to disturb other classes, but for music classes the students move to the music room, which has a stepped floor like a theater, to sing and play instruments.

Every autumn the school holds the Fureai Festival, where each grade performs a dance routine, and as the festival approaches the students spend most of their physical education class time practicing their dancing. As the teachers check how well each grade has remembered their choreography, the students take their practice very seriously.