Summer Camp

I had to do a three-day summer camp with Hye-Jin, having about 17 students and lasting about 4 hours each day. We tried hard to make some fun activities, since the kids are giving up part of their already short summer vacation. I like the camps to have themes so it's not just a series of unrelated lessons, and also so the same words can be repeated many times throughout.

This camp's theme was Peter Pan, a theme I tried out last winter with success. I taught them lots of useless English words like "sail," "treasure" and "pirate." Oh, wait. Pirate is a useful word, right? Then again, I don't think pirates have the same iconic coolness they have in the States.

Anyway, here's some photos to sum up what we did. The VP wanted us to take a lot. He also wanted us to videotape some of it and get the kids to write some kind of articles, but he didn't get those wishes. Oh, well. You can't have everything.




Day 1

First thing we did was make name cards with "English names." Technically, I am against English names. I don't think young people should be taught to be ashamed of their names or language. Plus Korean names are actually NOT that hard for English speakers to say. However, it's kind of a fad, and Hye-Jin (whose English name is Jinny) wanted to do it, so I agreed. In any case, the kids mostly chose names like Jerry (they are all girls), Lemon, Crong (??), and Hey.

Next we played a game to help remember the new names, even though it was only for three days. I personally hate these games, but it involved eating M&Ms, so I'm sure it was bearable.Next we played Charades, but I didn't get any hilarious photos of it. Some of the words were hard, like Tuesday or Japan.

Next we introduced our Peter Pan theme with some not-useful vocabulary! I made all those colored-paper cutouts, and I'm quite proud of them. You can't see them that well in this picture, but trust me, they are awesome.

Next we talked about pirates and, specifically, their flags. After showing the traditional flags (Jolly Roger, Calico Jack, Blackbeard, etc.), we moved on to silly flags. One Piece is popular over here, so it was an easy lead-in to personalized pirate flags. Which, of course, lead to...

Making our own personal pirate flags. Sadly, we couldn't use black paper, since drawing on that is a little more complicated. But they made very cute, colorful flags. This also ties into the Peter Pan movie well, as Wendy goes through a phase where she wants to join the pirates and even comes up with a "pirate name" for herself. 

After the flags, we had a "Treasure Hunt." Here  I am explaining the rules. Basically, I hid clues all over one building of the school. Each clue described an object the students had to find in another room. When they found that object, they had to take a picture to prove it. Also, hidden near that object would be the next clue. The clues led in a big circle, so I started the teams off at different points in the circle and had them race.

Here are some students checking the DVD case for a new clue.

Another group checks out a classroom. The Treasure Hunt almost got called off because of the school construction, but we managed to make do.

Students taking a picture of the object they found - the carrots on this poster about healthy foods.

The winning team. All the teams got prizes, but the winner got the best. SpongeBob is also popular here.

Day 2

We started the day with a review of our non-useful vocabulary. Savvy people will know that we are watching LazyTown's You Are a Pirate video. In my defense, it uses all the relevent vocabulary!

In accordance with our theme, I showed them the live action Peter Pan film. It works very well as it is age-appropriate but also exciting, funny, and cute. Additionally, they are at the perfect age to think the boy playing Peter Pan (admittedly a cute kid) is a heartthrob. In fact, one girl came to class the next day showing me a picture of her "new boyfriend," Peter's actor.

I made them break up watching the movie to do activities. For the first activity, we made maps of Neverland by listening to English instructions. Basically, we all started by drawing the shape of Neverland Island on a piece of paper. After that, I read out descriptions (ex: In the middle of the island is a mountain. Behind the mountain is a big tree. Etc.) and students had to practice both listening skills and prepositions. Plus it used some of the vocabulary.

Here they are working on the maps.

And holding up the finished creations.

I spent the break time hanging up our pirate flags, so here's a sampling of them. Personally, I like the bull.

Our final project of the day was dubbing. I showed my students a short clip from Disney's Peter Pan. I then showed them how I had dubbed over the clip myself. They couldn't believe it was really my voice! Next, we learned the dialogue together. It was a very simple dialogue so that they wouldn't have to concentrate on scary, new words, just on pronunciation and timing.

Next I took each team into the adjacent classroom where we recorded the dialogue. We did it in a very simple fashion. First the students would listen to the original audio. After each line, I would pause the video and have the student playing that character record the line. They were able to listen to and mimic the intonation and emotions they heard. Well, some were anyway. Others were too busy giggling and being shy.

Day 3

First thing we did was watch the dubs, which I had put together overnight. Here's an example of their work, which I thought they did a very good job on!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJmxEWRGF8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5m2gtTcTBw

Next we had a cooking section. Except we weren't allowed to use the cooking classroom, so we had to stick to strictly non-cooked foods. The theme was "outdoors" with the following snacks:

Tuna and Corn Salad Sandwich
Fruit Flowers
Ants on a Log
Dirt Pie

Here I am reviewing some cooking vocab words.

The sandwich-making group had a little too much fun. Not that many sandwiches survived to the actual lunchtime. But at least they were delicious.

Dirt Pie was a challenge because some of the ingredients are not popular in Korea. We couldn't find whipped cream and had to whip it ourselves. I had the instant pudding and gummy worms sent from America. There was also no regular cream cheese, so we used Pineapple flavor. But actually, you couldn't tell. It worked fine.

I included the gag with the flower pot and fake flowers. It worked really well and looked good.

Ants on a Log was not popular, as neither celery, raisins, nor peanut butter are commonly eaten here. Fortunately, I love all those things, so I ate the majority of them. That's ok, because I didn't end up getting any sandwich!

To give the sandwich kids credit, they did turn out very cute! Korean culture requires that any snacks prepared or presented as gifts during a school function like this be first given to the principal and vice-principal. Those smiley-face sandwiches in the upper corner were specially prepared for the principal. I wonder if he actually ate the Ants on a Log...

Speaking of the principal, here's the man himself. He kindly agreed to give a speech (boy, do principals like to do that around here!) and hand out the "graduation certificates" Hye-Jin made up. You can also see our Dirt Pie flower on the table. :)