As of today, I'm back in school, starting the second semester of the year.
My summer was quite busy with 2 summer English camps, one at each of my schools, and my week-long summer vacation.
I'll focus on the summer camps here.
My first summer camp was in my main school. It lasted 2 weeks at the school from 9 am - 12:10 pm. So you see, that was not so bad. We taught 3rd-4th graders the 1st week, and 5th-6th graders the 2nd week. Therefore, we taught the same thing twice; only we made the grammar more challenging for the older students. My co-teacher and I taught one grade for 2 hours, and another English teacher taught the other grade for 2 hours. When we finished, we switched grades and taught the same thing to the 2nd batch of students that we taught the first. Pretty easy, eh?
The camp theme was "The Five Senses." We took on one sense each day of the week from Monday - Friday. We went over vocabulary, sentences, and comparisons (for 5th & 6th graders). The plan went as follows:
Monday - Smell (activity: potpourri sachets/air fresheners)
Tuesday - Sight (activity: draw 3-D hand)
Wednesday - Sound (activity: Bim Bam/Orchestra Song/(much simpler version of) Pentatonix' "White Winter Hymnal" clapping sequence)
Thursday - Taste (activity: make bingsu)
Friday - Touch (activity: Guess the object & Ultimate Review of the week)
There was a kind of guessing game each day. For Monday, we had a few paper cups with different food stuff, and the students had to guess what it was just by the smell (cups were covered by another cup with a small hole or with toilet paper and small holes).
For Tuesday, I introduced them to optical illusions. They had to say what they say.
On Wednesday, I had a few sound clips, and they had to guess what the sounds were.
On Thursday, each group of students was given 4 clear plastic cups, 3 different flavors of ice tea powder, and a small cup of soy sauce. They had to mix each in a separate cup, add water, and try to make them all look alike. They then went to another team's cups and played a safe(r) version of Russian Roulette. The lucky 3 kept their ice teas (lemon, peach, or blueberry) while the unlucky soy sauce "tea" drinker was not made to drink the entire cup. Then we made bingsu (a summer dessert made of shaved ice and whatever you wanna put on it. This case, the kit we had included red bean paste, strawberry syrup, canned fruit, some tiny rice cakes, and corn flakes). I have only seen this in Korea. Is it popular elsewhere too?
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| 4th graders taking videos of a recording of them. |
That was my first summer camp.
The second summer camp was just like it (same theme, hours, and grades), but for 3 days and 3 hours per day, instead of the 2 hours in the other school. We made several adjustments, and it all went well. Yes, there was inadequate communication and we did not necessarily have everything we needed, but it all turned out alright in the end.
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| My "Friday School" Gapo Elementary (가포초등학교) |
Ah, random fact: even though the students left at 12:10 or 20 pm every day, I had to stay until 16:40. Doing what? Whatever. This is what we NETs (Native English Teachers) call "desk warming."
Next post will be on my summer vacation. That will be a series of posts since it's too long for just one.
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