My Winter English Camp
Or Why I Stopped Having Winter Vacation and Need to Work

When Korean kids draw and color suns in their pictures, they're always red. I need to bring a camera to school one day and take some pictures of some of their pictures. Some are quite funny.

Here's a tip for anyone who ever may have to teach new English vocabulary words to ESL (or EFL as they are in Korea) students: They friggin' love playing Go Fish! I think they could play it all day. I made some playing cards/flashcards of different winter words (with the picture and the written word) and had them play Go Fish! The next day I had them use the same cards but play a different game, but all throughout they just kept saying, "Teacher!! Go Fish!! Go Fish!!" Fine! Play Go Fish again. I don't care...as long as it takes up some time... :D Wow, what a great teacher I am.

The kids today were also obsessed with word searches. The kids in the first week of camp weren't too thrilled with them, but this week's kids ate it up. "More! More!" I'm glad there's a website to make them online because I quickly made up a big one and had a team word search race--the first team to find them all wins!! It was hilarious...6-7 heads all circled around one word search as they frantically searched for their words. One team totally kicked ass because a girl in the group does them in her free time. She actually had a word search book with her! It was actually quite impressive.

I also had them draw a picture and label all the winter words...for 5th graders a lot of them are really good! We also made paper snowflakes...which is kind of confusing to explain to kids when they don't know English very well. You always get the one kid who opens it up and it falls apart because they made one too many cuts in the wrong place. Then there's the other kid who opens theirs up and it's practically a solid square still. Haha...cut a few more chunks out there, kiddo... The kids last week got really into it and made some pretty awesome ones, including some really tiny ones. This week they weren't as enthused about it, but they did enjoy doing it. I guess they've never made them before. My co-teacher didn't know about them either.

Last week I had the kids play Red Rover and they loved it, but I couldn't get them to play it right. They'd all bunch up together and create a wall instead of a chain. Not a one single person managed to break through (except me, once). I kept trying to get them to seperate more, but it was not happening. I thought they'd think the game sucked because no one ever broke through, but they still loved it. They also really get into Bingo and this team speed spelling game/competition. Those games are coming up tomorrow.

I'm showing Home Alone on Friday...with Korean subtitles. I feel kind of bad having subtitles because then they're not really using English, but without subtitles they wouldn't understand anything. Hey, they're hearing English! And seeing American culture...And I'm lazy and just want to show a movie...

This week the principal's son is helping out with the English camp. I don't really know why. He's really nice...although his dad is an ass. I think his dad is making him because he has already failed his teacher licensing test thing twice. And the test has an English portion (and an English interview)...even if you're just going to be a homeroom teacher and not an English teacher. So this is supposed to be helping him with his English, maybe? I don't know if he's going to be here the next 2 weeks or not, but I hope not because it makes me more nervous and conscious of what I'm doing (as in, "Do the kids seem to be learning or just having fun?"). Because my general aim for these camps is more in the vein of, "Hey, let's have fun and play some games...by the way, I speak English!" I mean, they're learning some new vocabulary, but nothing hardcore. They can go to their hagwans (private academies after school) for that.