Hyeonseo School English Camp

Today I had my first school-run English camp. I wasn’t looking forward to spending a Saturday at school, but hey, the other teachers do it on a regular basis every other Saturday, so I can bear sacrificing a few of my weekends…right?

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For the camp, I made a points system to give this Saturday some worth. I made twenty fashionable paper wristbands for the students so that they could record the points I gave them for each activity or game they participated in throughout the day. The student with the most accumulated points would win a fantabulous prize. I also had a bag of a hundred or so mini chocolate bars to hand out throughout the day.

I planned a bunch of outdoor activities as a starter to the day (to tire them out, of course)… I had my students playing ‘Waiter!’ for which they would have to take orders of food from their friends (in English), and double-check them with me. Once all the items on the menu were requested, the team with the most ordered items won. It was quite the speed game.

(It’s amazing how much focus and effort most of my Korean students will put into a game…all for a few pieces of candy.)

Next on the agenda, I had my students running again, in a game of ‘English Nouns Capture the Flag’. The students were divided into teams and had to sprint across the field in search of the opposing team’s flag. If members of one team were caught by members of the opposing team, the captives had to say five different English nouns to be released. My Korean co-teacher and I walked around the field, acting as monitors to make sure the students weren’t cheating. After 45 minutes of the game, the students still had enough energy to run a marathon. Go figure. Three-thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday? I should’ve known that they could keep going and going and going…

The following item on my list for today was my favourite. All of the students were going to make pizzas and no-bake chocolate cookies. “Where was the English in all of this?” you might ask. Well, the recipes were in English and the students had to ask all of their questions in English as well. My responses were also in English. Picture yourself baking with a bunch of young teenagers…they asked me A LOT of questions.

The best part about this activity was that everything was made from scratch. So I’m sure you can imagine all of the flour fights I had to stop and how closely I had to keep my eye on the students while they were cooking the dough on the stovetops. The final product from the activity – six perfectly round, perfectly dressed pizzas with rich, garlicky spaghetti sauce, stringy mozzarella cheese, juicy, savoury ham, and crunchy red bell peppers, and six plates of flaky-chocolaty cookies, ready to be consumed. Total preparation and cooking time: one hour and fifteen minutes.

The final event for the afternoon consisted of eating our kitchen concoctions while watching the movie Bruce Almighty, and since this was a school camp, they had to complete a multiple choice quiz on the movie. I promised delectable prizes to the top three ranking students.

Overall, not a bad experience at all. Sure, it was exhausting to keep up with twenty energy-packed teenagers, but I had a fantastic time running with them, laughing with them, cooking with them, and having some quality downtime with them.

- Jess