English Day Camp for Primary Level II

Thursday was a different school day schedule because today I was going to be an English teacher, not for the Starfish Country Home School children, but students in grades 4th, 5th, and 6th from the Pajeewangdaeng Wittaya School at the Starfish Country Home School site. I was a bit nervous about teaching because I had no idea what level the children were, and I received only a day’s notice for planning. I knew I was not alone because Lawson and Pauline, two other volunteers at Starfish School were also going to be teaching English in my group. The camp is an English Day Camp (for) Primary Level II students, and it is set up to be a day of fun for the students to learn a little more English. They arrived in four groups of about thirty students each so there were about 120 students total plus the teachers that accompanied them. After the students arrived, the opening ceremony began and it was nice because it really helped to set the mood for the rest of the day. The head teacher, the Mae Tang mayor and Richard Haugland all spoke a few words about how the students were lucky to have native English speakers on hand today to help them and even though they would not become fluent, they would become a little bit more confident (I was also becoming a little more confident at hearing words like this). The opening ceremony ended and the four groups were identified - the Red Group, Blue Group, Pink Group and Green Group. Each group was to visit each station for about 30 minutes each. The stations were the Speaking Station (my group), Reading Station (Richard Haugland), Writing Station (Gap, Haugland’s translator) and Dancing, Listening and Singing Station (Izume, another volunteer, had to lead this group all by herself, so this became the joke of the day). Though each group did something a little different, my Speaking group had three smaller groups of ten where the students were able to work with Lawson, Pauline and me on English speaking questions (i.e. What is your name? What do you want to be when you are older? What is your favorite color?) After I spent a few minutes telling them the questions and what they meant, I then went around to each student in the semi-circle and helped them form a one-sentence response. The purpose was to help the students not just say one word answers, but to be able to say a whole sentence with the answer. At first, I could see that most students were nervous when the group of ten came over to me, so I helped them to relax by showing them that after introducing themselves they should also shake the other person’s hand using their own right hand. Most students thought this was funny and fun because they are so accustomed to bowing their head with their hands in front when introducing themselves and saying hello. I think I had to shake over a hundred students’ hands all during the camp’s day because they found it to be so much fun to shake my hand. A group of students would come up to me throughout the day and say, “Shake hand!” and each of them would stick their hand out. It was not until the very end of the day that some of the students began to have a strong handshake because I kept telling them that it was important to have a firm handshake when shaking another person’s hand. That was one trick I used to help the children feel more comfortable in my group, but I also made animal sounds to help with understanding animal names (they liked to hear my favorite animal because it is a pig, for which I snorted to give them the sound). The colors were also fun for them because I had them stand up if they were wearing the color that I either said or pointed to. It was fun to see how many did not stand when I named the color of their nametag, but I told them they should all stand up even when some did not, and they laughed at the idea. After getting through each of the four groups, I could tell that they began to open up a little more with each group and it also became easier and easier for me. When it was lunch break, I began to feel more like a celebrity because all the children wanted me to write my name on the back of their nametags. I found this to be funny and interesting, I was even asked to write my phone number (I gave them my American cell phone number, whether they understood it or not) and some even wanted my home address in America (maybe I will have a letter waiting for me when I get home). There were games in the afternoon and candy given to people that could answer the questions that were asked in English. I think that I ate way too much candy so by the time the closing ceremony rolled around, my stomach began to ache. The closing ceremony was nice, the students did short English skits and the Starfish Students did a dance that they had practiced at the beginning of the week. I was able to film a lot of this, so I hope to make a movie before I leave to give to both the schools. Each student at the Pajeewangdaeng Wittaya School received an Award of Achievement, which they all were very proud of receiving. I was also given a gift of appreciation at the closing ceremony and later, when I opened the gift, inside was a wooden box with a lid that slides open and an elephant covering on top. When I turned the box upside down it says “From: Pajeewangdaeng Wittaya School,” so I will always remember how much fun I had on this day. After all the fun at the English Camp had ended, my batteries had finally run out in both my camera and video camera, my stomach was starting to feel worse from all the candy, and after I signed all the name tags and shook everyone’s hand good-bye, I decided it was time to call it a day.