El mundo es un pañuelo: First Week of English Camp

English Camp - 2 weeks of conversation, crafts & games in English, based loosely each day around a specific English-speaking country. When I came to help with English Camp in 2004, English Camp was shorter - only 1 week long & highlighting 5 countries. Eight years later, the camp's directors have developed 3 different possible weeks and rotate them each year so returning campers will get something new. In the early years of English Camp, Ivan Wall (media guru extraordinare) created video clips for the opening, snack, and sports segments of each day. For instance, "Professor Passport" greets kids each morning & introduces them to the country of the day & the day's events. "Chef Sherman" tells them about the snack they will be eating & how it is (vaguely) related to the country. (Example: kiwi jello when we focused on New Zealand.) "Mean Gene the Sports Machine" tells them about the games they are going to be doing and fails miserably himself so that no one will feel bad when they try. They used to have a segment by "Al the Artist" too, but I think their outdoor craft area this year made it difficult to view those videos. Gene Smiley, former worker in Spain, plays all these parts, so the kids end up seeing him acting in all different costumes & scenarios. It's really a good way to tie things together throughout the day. And it provided the counselors with great things to quote or make fun of throughout the day. ;)

I should explain the whole "teaching" about a specific country. For Jamaica we watched a clip from "Cool Runnings" where there was a lot of Jamaican English. We learned to say "Bless, mon" and "Lata, mon" for Hello & Goodbye. Professor passport wore dreadlocks. We sang the song ""Don't worry, be happy" and ate fruit for snack. :) The focus on a country is not really to learn about that country as much as to give a theme to the day. Although we had a day on India, my personal expertise on the country was hardly important. I did manage to throw one of my girls into giggles with my imitation of Indian English, but it might have been my head wagging that did it.

On a whole, the lesson time doesn't touch much on the country of the day. Instead, the content is pretty basic. The first Tuesday we learned about getting dressed. All the classes were read a book called “Froggy Gets Dressed,” & the teacher I work with had one of the students pretend to be froggy (putting on & taking off clothes) while he read aloud. It worked well for the oldest kids & ok for the middle ones, but the youngest kids knew/understood almost no English. Turns out a kids book of normal length is way too long when a kid doesn't understand any of what is happening. It's also a challenge to read kids books to the youngest ones because much of kids books in English revolve around the sounds things make. It is assumed that the child knows what a boot is, so the focus is on it going "stomp, stomp." It took us a bit of trial and error to figure out what parts of any story would work for ELL students, since few of us has experience teaching young English Language Learners.

Gabriel's eraser "boat" & waterway - so
creative, even if it had nothing
to do with English prepositions. :)

During the first week we discovered that while it was a good policy to only speak in English with the middle and older kids, the 5-6 year olds needed much of their explanations in Spanish in order to stay engaged. Even then, many of these kids were at English Camp b/c their parents wanted them to be, not because they were interested or enjoyed the challenge of a different language. One of my favorites, Gabriel, got way more excited about drawing dinosaurs and creating boats/ waterways with colored pencils than he did about doing anything oral or written in English. Others, however, became more comfortable knowing I could speak to them in Spanish & began to open up to me in English as well. Whether they were being intractable or sweet & loving, I really enjoyed working with them and giving them good experiences with English.

Working on passports in the morning

Who's the queen of the comedor (cafeteria)?

I think I mentioned in my last post that each monitor led a small group of campers during various points of the day. My group consisted of four 10-11 year old girls. Every morning, I'd meet them as they came in & sit with them in a circle to look through what we'd be doing that day. The girls could color the country's flag or do activities related to the lesson of the day. I would ask them how they were, what they had done after camp the day before, and to tell me about things they enjoy. After singing songs and hearing from Professor Passport, we'd break out into our first morning section. We'd meet again for snacks which often turned into times of playing hand clap games & giving piggy-back rides. After the next two sections, we'd meet in the cafeteria for lunch. Eating times gave me opportunities to have the girls tell (in English) about what they had done that day. The girl would also have conversations in Spanish, which I would usually interrupt & make them tell to me again in English. This brought up some pretty interesting lunch conversations. One of my favorite was on their experiences with first communion in the Catholic church. Two girls attended Catholic churches & told us about the big shindigs they had recently gone through for first communion. So I told them about what a first communion was in my protestant church - more of a time to join in how the adults of the church worship God rather than a really big party with fancy dresses. It was a pretty cool opportunity to talk with them about what the purpose of communion is, and it opened up other conversations about God later on. Since this is a secular camp, it was fun to see these kinds of conversations come up of the kids' own accord.