On October 4, our school hosted the 24th educational research conference. In parallel with this regular conference we also had our first SGH conference. 245 attendants came from around the country.

In the morning we had open classes of “SGH-oriented subject”, presentations of “regional studies” made by the students, and an evaluation meeting for these programs. In the open class program the math class had a lesson of “practical math in a real-life” based on the theme “relationship between break time and labor efficiency” adopted from a Netherlandish math contest “A-limpiad”. The students in three groups worked out appropriate answers for a certain condition. In the English class the students had an intercultural discussion with foreign students at Kanazawa University. In the discussion, several groups, each of which comprises of six high school students and one foreign student talked about traditional events of each country in English.
“Regional studies” are the first step of our SGH project. 3-5 students jointly submit a proposal for the task “Bring more happiness to the region and the people”. We had 7 excellent proposals, “Festivals in Noto area in the past and today”, “Boost popularity of Japanese sweets made in Kanazawa”, “Plan to host a global symposium with a view of the sea and mountains”, “Activate the area utilizing a local mascot”, “Attract more tourists by better sightseeing apps”, “Local production for local consumption, using all home-grown vegetables”, “Make the region better known with smartphone game apps featuring our region”. All of them received a very good reaction from the participants.
In the afternoon, a research presentation of our SGH was given following a speech by the president of Kanazawa University, Mr. Koetsu Yamazaki. The research presentation was made by two people in our school who have responsible positions in the SGH project; the chief of SGH, Mr. Masayoshi Shibata talked about how to govern the whole SGH project, and the head of SGH promoters, Mr. Yoshitsugu Yamamoto followed about our background for applying for SGH model school, the outline of our SGH, and the ongoing and future SGH projects.

The conference ended with a lecture delivered by Mr. Tsuyoshi Enomoto who is chief of International Education Division,Elementry and Secondary Education Bureau, MEXT. His lecture titled “Our goals through SGH” was about English education targeting four objectives, and the importance of inquiry-oriented learning in SGH.