English Camp for Winter 2021 is now in the books.
I organized two camps - an online camp featuring recorded video lessons and activities for my boys middle school and an in-person camp for my main school. Approximately 12 students joined each camp for extra-curricular English learning which were held during the first few days of their winter vacation.
The students volunteered for the English camp so attendance and interest were very good over the three half-days, although I obviously didn't interact directly with the online students. It was nice to spend time with a small group of students at my main school camp because it has been really hard to connect with individual students this year due to the pandemic and generally larger classes.
Of the 12 students, abilities were mixed. Some students were nearly fluent in English and could hold regular conversations with me. It was clear that they have spent years studying English and have invested extra time in conversational practice. Other students had lower confidence when speaking, but working in a low-pressure environment and with help from their friends, I think they did quite well and had some fun.
The students made name cards for the camp and were asked to choose a nickname. Humorously and unexpectedly, many of the girls in the camp chose traditional boys names, such as Timmy, Harry, Tom, and Jerry. Oh well, all in good fun.
The challenge with the camp was that there were very few guidelines that I was aware of. I had near-complete freedom to choose a theme, develop lessons, activities, and games. The only goal was to ensure that the students had fun and participated in English language learning. No grades or credit were issued for camp participation.
Here is my plan for the online camp, and I used a modified version for the in-person students with more flexibility and interactive activities:
Day 1
Introduction
Planets
Fly Me to the Moon (song)
Create a Fictional Planet
Day 2
Stars and Constellations
Moon landing and Moon Walk (dance)
Life as an Astronaut
Rocketship (origami)
Day 3
Astronaut Training
Star Wars
The theme of the English camps was Outer Space, so I started each day with cheesy space jokes that I don't think the students truly understood. Jokes don't always translate across languages but the Korean co-teacher encouraged them to laugh out loud anyway.
I assigned a project to be completed and presented by the end of the camp. Students needed to design their own fictional planet, and include drawings and descriptions in a comic book or poster format. I think it was a good teaching strategy on my part because it required students to work in groups, converse in English, and they had something tangible to show at the end of the camp. Also, if I ran out of ideas or an activity took less time than expected, I had the option to give students more time to work on their projects.
Students designed a Hogwarts planet based on the Harry Potter series, a K-Pop planet for Korean idols, a planet of dinosaurs, and a half-frozen, half-hot planet. They put in a lot of work and I was proud of their final presentations.
English camp was not without its challenges though. For the duration of the camp, we had to do without running water as the pipes had frozen at the school. Toilets, faucets, and drinking fountains were out of order.
When I trained as an ESL teacher, I was required to meticulously plan my lesson time. It is a pet peeve of mine when last-minute changes are thrust upon me that disrupt my plan. I had a co-teacher helping with the camp and 30 seconds before the camp was to begin, she asked for some time during the first day to complete an activity. My plan had to be tossed and reworked to accommodate the change. Her activity was worthwhile but as a professional courtesy, at least some advanced notice would be nice.
I thought it would be fun for students to watch a movie that related to our theme of outer space. I chose Captain Marvel because I already had it downloaded on my computer. Unfortunately, it didn't have Korean subtitles and the students quickly lost interest. Also, many students had already watched the film, so not a great activity. The co-teacher also dropped not-so-subtle hints that I should shorten movie time or cut it altogether.
Again, if a teacher is going to have opinions on my activities, it would be nice if they were involved in the initial planning or at least state their expectations in advance. There were other notes and instructions from the co-teacher to make sure to do this or that during the camp despite the teacher not knowing what I was planning to do.
To top it off, after Day 1, my co-teacher said that she wanted to run a scavenger hunt activity on the final day of the camp. I thought, "great, so I don't need to plan my own activities for that time." Well, I started to get a little skeptical of my co-teacher actually leading an activity, so I asked her how much time she wanted for the scavenger hunt so I could plan the rest of my schedule. She said, "Oh, actually I don't recommend that you do a scavenger hunt this time because of COVID-19." So, there you go. I had one evening to come up with a new activity to fill the time slot that I had reserved for the co-teacher's scavenger hunt. It's not like COVID-19 was a sudden concern, we've been dealing with it for months. And the scavenger hunt was her idea.
Despite all of this, I have become accustomed to these last-minute changes and don't let them throw me off too much. To the co-teacher's credit, she purchased chicken burgers and snacks for all of the students at the end of the camp. She took our photos so students would have a souvenir of their time in English Camp.
The camps are now complete, so I can start my much anticipated two-week winter vacation. With lessons learned, I am looking forward to my next English camp in August.
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