Это - английский лагерь!

Someone asked me a few days ago how I was going to determine the success of my English camp. The only thing that came to mind was this—if one student will say a word with /th/ in it with the correct pronunciation and without any prompting, I will have succeeded at something. I heard five different students pronounce their /th/ sound correctly during this second week of camp, so someone learned something!!

Over the past two weeks, I have been working with Jayne and Patti to do an English camp for the church where we attend here in Kremenchuk. Most of the students live near the church or attend the church where the camp was held. We had a morning session for the younger students (ages 6-12) and an afternoon session for the teenagers (ages 13-18).

In the morning session, we had from 20-35 students each day. Most of the students were under the age of 10, so we were challenged with trying to keep them all busy. We did lots of hands-on lessons and activities with them. Our daily schedule included learning new vocabulary with motions, singing, a Bible story, grammar, outside games, and small group activities.

In the afternoon session, we had from 8-12 students each day. Most of them were connected with the church in some way, but they were a very diverse group. We focused more on conversational English with this group, so they worked in small groups frequently and discussed things with each other. They also had new vocabulary each day, singing, a Bible lesson, grammar, games and small group interaction. They really opened up by the second week and had a lot of fun with each other.

It was sad to have our last day of camp on Friday. It’s amazing how much you can get to know someone in two weeks. Even though I was the teacher, I learned so much over the last two weeks—about children, about Ukrainians, about teaching and about English. I still have almost a month left of my trip here in Ukraine, so I can’t wait to see what else I get to learn before I leave.