AI-generated transcript:

I like this time of year.

I'm not a big Christmassy person, although we have it, we have the tree and the advent calendars and everything, but that's for the kids.

But I do like this time of year because it's, well I like the Japanese approach.

Yeah, they have Christmas, but it's not over the top.

You give you one present, all done and dusted.

December 26th, Boxing Day in England.

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It's a nice time because it's a holiday, right?

And it's thinking about the new year and all that stuff.

And we can forget about all the past things.

You know the deal.

You know the drill.

But I like it.

It's looking forward to a new year with new luck and new things to do.

One thing I'm going to do this new year is introduce a book that I'd made, I think, two years ago, three years ago.

for the kids to write in, and it's called This Is Me.

This is me!

And it's all different ages.

I'm going to show you now, okay?

Latent self-promotion.

I know.

I mean, come on!

You don't pay anything for these videos.

This is one for age 7.

It runs from ages 6 to age 15, so that's like elementary school all the way to the end of junior high school.

But it's all in English, and it's something that they can fill out themselves.

The idea is to get them writing.

This starts from a very, this is seven, I couldn't find my age six one.

Here's a contents page, look.

And it's all, this is me, this is my hand, this is my foot, my name is, and they write that out, right?

There's just 20 pages, so it's not too much they can do that.

My hand, draw your hand, this is for seven year olds, right?

My foot.

That's just for a laugh, because they have to draw their foot.

Draw your face.

Draw a picture.

So there's a lot of drawing, right?

It's not too scary.

And then tall.

I am something centimetres tall.

I want to be something centimetres tall, right?

What else have we got?

My family.

I have ex-brothers.

I have ex-sisters.

I have pets.

Draw your family here.

No mention of mummies and daddies, right?

Nothing too dangerous.

Not dangerous, but you know, uncomfortable.

Nothing to make a kid feel uncomfortable.

Okay, now write your answers.

Today is... How's the weather?

Draw a picture.

You get the idea, doing that sort of stuff.

And then they have to circle things.

There's a lot of circling, not too much writing.

This is a seven year old who can barely read English, maybe.

Circle your favorite item for each line.

Swimming, running, yoga, riding a bicycle, baseball, soccer, dodgeball.

J-pop, K-pop, Jazz, Classical, Internet, TV, Books, Games.

They just have to circle, so it's a kind of reading thing.

The whole point of this though, I'll draw a picture of your best friend.

There's 20 different items here, and writing about the future, and your New Year's resolution.

The whole point of this is, at the beginning of the year, they'll fill this out, a bit of practice, and then you keep it.

So Scary!

Circle the Three Scariest Things

The scariest thing in the world is... A bit of comparative practice, but it's kind of fun to see what they've got.

Free time.

Circle your favourite for each thing.

Now.

Today is.

How's the weather?

Who is with you right now?

My favourite things.

Write your three favourite possessions.

That kind of thing.

Write my best points.

Write your best points.

If you won the lottery, what would you spend it on?

Here are five options.

This is a blatant sales pitch to you, of course.

It's all on Amazon somewhere, although I can't actually find it on Amazon.

You have to type in This Is Me, Age, whatever, and Patrick Sherriff, double R, double F, and then it doesn't always pop up.

I'll see if I can figure that out.

But anyway, I'm going to introduce, I say introduce this, I made this three years ago and it's just been sitting unloved on Amazon, unnoticed.

And I'm going to sell them to my existing students and I've got, you know, I don't know, this age group, maybe 100, close to 100, a bit less than 100.

I make a small profit on it.

But more than that, the kids will have a chance to write in English.

And like I say, the parents can keep this.

I'm going to try and do it every year.

It'll become like a New Year tradition.

You might consider that if you are teaching English.

Have a look at this.

Or if you have a kid who needs to practice their written English.

Try it.

See what you think.

Or make one for yourself.

Or just, you know, buy one copy.

Buy, buy, buy.

Have a look at it and do it.

I think actually it's a good exercise to do with kids.

You could just get some questions together.

and get them to fill it out and make their own book.

I did that one year, making their own book, but I just thought it would be cool to have an actual thing that they will want to keep.

So that's what I've done.

And yeah, no more blatant self-promotion, honestly, but I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that stuff.

And good luck in the future.

Good luck with your

online business or in-person business, your self-employment, your own business or even if you're still working for a horrible chain school.

Good luck with that and I hope you manage to escape in 2024.

Okay, thanks for bearing with me and normal service will be resumed shortly.

Okay, have a good new year.

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