Last week before Winter Vacation

The last week before winter vacation has been both busy and slow. 

It has been slow in that I worked from home four of five days this week and had only one in-person class. I was set to have two classes on Wednesday, but the schedule got shifted around so the students at home could watch an online orchestra during the third and fourth periods. Of course, there are only fun (or time-wasting) classes the week before vacation. Also, I naturally assumed that we would be operating on the Wednesday schedule since it was Wednesday. How foolish of me. When I got to school, I learned that we would have the Friday schedule instead. Just another fun last-minute change. Actually, it could have been really problematic because I had submitted online recordings for the specific Wednesday classes, but instead, the Friday classes were shown my lesson recording. It was just by sheer luck that those classes hadn't already viewed that lesson in the previous week. If we used a Thursday schedule on Wednesday instead of the Friday schedule, those students would have had the same lesson twice. Does that make sense? Bottom line, the school changed the schedule without telling me and luckily it worked out without problems.

Apart from the shenanigans for my one in-person class, I was actually really busy working at home this week. I even put in several hours this weekend all because I was preparing my Winter English Camps for next week. I didn't receive the details of these camps until very late, so I had very little prepared until now. Also, because one school wanted an online-recorded camp and the other school wanted an in-person camp, I essentially had to prepare two camps. Putting together the lessons, activities, and doing the recordings were very time-consuming.

There are English Camps during vacation in summer and winter. This winter my camps are 3-half days each. Just now I finished recording the lessons for my boys' school, so for all intents and purposes, I am finished with that camp. My main school camp is in-person and the theme is outer space. I will be teaching students about the planets, stars, moon, sun, and other fun things like making spaceship origami and learning to do Michael Jackson's moonwalk. I think I'll also show Captain Marvel as a space-related movie.

I'm a little nervous about how the camp will go because it will be my first in-person camp. Last summer I had an in-person camp that was changed to online at the last minute. As I understand it, the camps are meant to be fun and have activities that encourage the students to speak English. They aren't as formal or as structured as typical classes. I expect to have about 14 students who are a mix of grades 1, 2, and 3. I think I have a lot of material to keep them busy, but I'm not sure how long each activity will last. Each half-day is to include about 2.5 hours of camp time.

I assume that the students are interested in English since they have volunteered to come to the English camp during their winter vacation.

I hope it all goes well and will write a blog next week with details from the camp.