Winter Camp

The first classes I ever taught independently (with out a co-teacher or any sort of guidance for subject material), in my first few months in Korea back in 2014, were a mess. I had lots of big ideas for sure, but I know now my execution of them was poor and overall they were generally unorganized. After a year of teaching regular classes, after school classes, 2 camps, and several Saturday classes, I was ready to make my last Winter English Camp the best of all.

Not only did I collect a plethora of great ideas for this 2 week camp from my year of experience and from my other teacher friends, I was able to finally put everything I've learned about teaching together without any outside assistance and create a camp itinerary, system and syllabus I was proud of.


For starters, the theme of my camp this year was "America". I wanted to take the students to the USA in terms of teaching about the country, culture and language. I told them that while we were in English camp together, as soon as they entered the classroom, to pretend that we were IN America.


This began with the making of ID cards, or an "English speaking license". Each student got to choose which state they wanted to be from. I took pictures of them, laminated the cards, and then we made duct tape wallets to keep them in!


During normal classes or camps, teachers usually give out stickers or stamps as a reward to students that answer questions, do well on tests, and win games. Then at the end of the term, students can collect candy or prizes based on how many stickers they've won.


During my American English Camp this winter, I chose to use MONEY instead of stickers! One of the resources in the English classroom was a set of fake American money, so throughout our 2 weeks of camp, I would reward the students with cash. $5 for winning a game, 10 question pop-quizzes where they could win $1 per each correct answer, $2 for helping me clean the classroom after camp was over each day. They kept their money in their wallets with their IDs, and everyone loved it!


There were even English classroom laws posted that I reviewed on the first day. If a student broke one of the laws, they had to pay a fine, and give me some of the money back that they had won. The students were really good about self-policing each other for this. Cheating? Pay $15. Drawing on the desk? Pay $10. Talking while I'm talking? Pay $5.

The biggest cash-rewarding opportunity was a project that I had the students work on for a little bit of time at the end of every day. According to the IDs they chose, each student was from a different state and they were required to do a research project and presentation about it. (I only did this with the high level class.) Students were given this worksheet to learn some things about their state... what's its nickname? How big is it? When did it become a state? What are some famous places there? Then, they had to make a PowerPoint to show the rest of the class on the final day while they did a presentation of what they had learned about it. In a combination of marks from the teacher and a voting on how well the student did from the rest of the class, each student could win up to $50.


The project went over very well. Most of the students were very motivated in their research and even decided to do extra work outside of class even though I gave them plenty of time during camp to complete it.

On the last day of class, after 2 weeks of opportunities to win some cash, students had an opportunity to SPEND it! We had a "Market Day"! I was able to get a $20 gift certificate from the school to buy some prizes from the local stationary store, and then I spent about $15 of my own money. With the lower level students, we simply acted out a 'market' scene where students took turns being the clerk and customer and practicing their English to buy items with their money. With the high level class, we did an auction. The most coveted prize... a stuffed animal (a large, yellow penguin) sold for $120! I don't think any of the students had experienced an auction before, but they had a lot of fun. And I had a lot of fun trying to host it like a real auctioneer.


Aside from the money winning and spending scheme, we did lots of other things during camp. With the lower level students, we mostly studied new vocabulary and then played games to memorize them. For the day of learning weather words, we drew a picture map and then played a listening game. Each team had a fly swatter and would ask me about the weather. They would need to listen to my answer, find the word on the board and hit it. The first team to do so would get a point. The young kids love this game and can get very competitive about it.


For the older, higher level students, I tended to have daily themes for our lessons. One day we would learn about US geography... another day about US history or school, then some days were not as much about the US and were just about science or art or sports. During our special craft day, we made dream catchers using popsicle sticks, sting, beads and fake feathers.


Science day was my favorite. It actually wasn't so much science though as it was engineering. In teams, students completed a series of challenges that they could get points for depending on what place they came in. The team at the end of the day with the most points was the winner. The two most difficult challenges were the "Textbook Tower" and the "Egg Drop". In one, students were required to make a structure, at least 10 cm tall, using only chopsticks, string and glue. After letting them dry while we completed the rest of the challenges, we tested them to see which one could hold the biggest stack of textbooks before collapsing.


For the other big project, the egg drop, each team was given an egg (in a plastic bag so as not to make a mess) that they would have to drop from the 2nd floor of the school onto the courtyard below. Eggs that DIDN'T break were the winners! So teams had to build a structure to protect the delicate egg. The students were actually so good at this that the first round, no one's egg broke! We had to do a second round where we dropped them from the 3rd floor before we could get a loser.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more