P6 English Camp

Recently I had the chance to work at the P6 English camp.  Our theme was based around Sahathai shopping mall, so each of our themes modeled an element found there.  Stations such as the cinema, food court, stationary store, department store, and grocery store were represented.  In the morning, the kids rotated stations.  Each station consisted of 30 minutes each.  My station was ‘at the food court,’ which was an idea that needed some explaining.  Unlike a lot of food courts I’ve seen, I needed to explain to the kids about how they prepay their card before selecting their food (and are reimbursed if they have extra).  Pre-teaching words like prepay, cashier, beverage, and certainly was necessary, but I was impressed with how quickly the kids picked up the material.

After walking them through the dialogue, the kids practiced in pairs–luckily I had some volunteers present at the front of the group.  After our lunch break, we headed over to Sahathai and the students practiced their sentences.  I thought it was going to be a very long afternoon (about 360 kids!), but it was a very smooth running show.  I was lucky enough to have a Thai teacher assistant to help mark the students’ performance.  Each student was marked on a 1-10 scale.  I was impressed with how many kids were able to repeat the dialogue without looking at their sheets!  That definitely received 10 points.

I did see some of my old MEP students–Jan, Hugo, Ice, and Pok.  It was cool to see how much they’ve grown and how they’re developing not only as students but as kids in general.  In my mind they’re still P3 or P4, but hard to believe this group is advancing to the next part of their life.

I thought the afternoon idea was a good one and I’d like to see it implemented at other camps.  It added some practical use to what the kids learned in the morning and hopefully reinforced their knowledge or helped them understand the process of ordering at the food court in English.

That was the last camp for the semester before we break for the October holiday.  The next camp on the books is the Thai Teacher camp in mid January.  Also, there will be a P1, P2, and P5 camp at some point!