English Teacher

ESL Winter Camp Lesson Plan by A.M. Molloy

So! You're now working as an English teacher in South Korea, having a wonderful time teaching awesome kids. Christmas is near and you've already finished all your lessons for the day. All of a sudden your co-teacher tells you that you need to do a two week lesson plan for the upcoming winter camp and have it done before tomorrow. 

Have you ever been in this situation? If you're teaching in Korea, you may just well have. And if you're like me, you have no idea what you're going to do for the camp.

Well, fear not. I've created this lesson plan (that can also be modified for your summer camp that you're going to have to do) that you can use to hand in to your co-teacher. Note, they may want the lesson plan in a specific format, but you can use this as a base to write it in.

Naturally, you can modify this to fit your studnets age, level and needs. If you have any questions or need clarification on some of the games, feel free to post them in the comments. Also, if you decide to use this, let me know how it worked out in the comment section below! 

 

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Winter Camp 2018 Schedule
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WEEK 1:

Day 1

Theme: You!
Warm up (10 mins):

Intro games:
                        -Two Truths One Lie
                        -Snowball fight (Give each student a piece of recycled paper.
                        *Ask them to write their name and five things about themselves on the paper.                              *Then, split the class into two teams and have them stand facing each other at                             opposite sides of the classroom.
                        *Tell the students to crumple up their paper into a snowball.
                        *When you say go, the snowball fight commences.
                        *When you shout stop, anyone who is holding a snowball must go and find the                             person whose name is on the paper and introduce them to the class using the                             information written inside.
                        *Students continue the snowball fight until everyone has been introduced to the                           class.)

Main Lesson (30mins):
                        -Learn about different ways of introductions (Such as: hi, hey, hello, and maybe slang, like sup and yo).
                        -Introduce the banner activity and explain key words.
                          >Students will receive a piece of paper each day of camp. Every day, the students will draw the theme of the day on the paper. (At the end of the camp, all of the papers will be collected and the teacher will create a banner/quilt using all of the artwork to be put on display).
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Day 2

Theme: Winter
Warm up (5 mins):

Musical Chairs:
                        -Play a song relating to the theme and have students play musical chairs. (Ex: There are 10 students in the class yet there are only 9 chairs. Have the students walk around the chairs while the music plays. The moment the song stops, students will have to rush to sit down in a chair. The student who is not in a seat is now out. The game continues until there is only one student left in a chair).

Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Verb tense and sentence structure
                                    >Use Sesame Street (YouTube) for younger grades and other YouTube videos for older grades to help demonstrate the lesson.
                                    >Teach about Direct Objects (younger students) and Indirect Objects (older students) using winter themed words: gloves, boots, scarf, snow pants.

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Favorite thing about winter)
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Day 3

Theme: Winter Activities
Warm up (5 mins):

Play “Do You Want to Build A Snowman?” (YouTube) and have the students act along:

Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Teach about the parts of a snowman (Nose ((carrot /vegetable)), eyes, balls, arms ((twigs)), scarf, gloves, and hat).
                        -Play reinforcement game: Make your own snowman! (Students will build their own snowman other using the materials provided or buy using items in found the classroom. Let them get creative! Best snowman (voted by fellow students) will win a prize!

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Students favourite activity).
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Day 4

Theme: Winter Related Things
Warm up (5 mins):

Charades:
                        -Students will get a word/sentence and act it out while their classmates try to guess the answer.

Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Teach about winter related things, such as holidays, weather, and food eaten during winter. Also learn about winter in Canada vs Korea. (10 mins)
                        -Play reinforcement game: Pin the Winter Item! (Younger)
                                    >Various posters of winter related items will be posted around the room. Students will be given item cards and will have to go around the room and place their item on the correct poster.
                        -Play reinforcement game: Hot seat (Older)
                                    >Put the students in teams. Each team will choose one member to be in ‘the hot seat’. The teacher will show a sentence or word on the screen behind the student in the hot seat and their team members will have to describe what they see without saying the word/sentence. The student in the hot seat will have to guess what their teammates are describing to them. They can have many guesses, yet they have to come up with an answer within one minuet or they don’t score a point for their team.

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Students favorite winter vacation)
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Day 5

Theme: Fun Times
Warm up (5 mins):

Telephone game:
                        -Divide the class into teams. Each team will form a line to the front of the classroom. Teacher will whisper a phrase or word relating to the weeks learning to the student in the back. Each student will then have to whisper to the next student what they thought they heard. The student at the front will then have to write on the board the sentence/word they heard on the board. If the sentence is correct, the team will get a point. If the sentence is close or correctly heard but grammatically wrong in writing, then the team will get half a point. If it’s nowhere near correct, no points are given.
Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Review the week’s lessons using the Four Corners Game.

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (What they found fun during the first week)

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 WEEK 2:
 


Day 6

Theme: Music (Most likely winter themed)
Warm up (5 mins):

Musical Chairs with a Twist:
                        -Play a song relating to the theme and have students play musical chairs with a twist. (Ex: *Assign one person to operate the music for the game. Have them start the music and all players begin to dance around the chairs in a clockwise pattern. At the musical director's discretion, stop the music. Everyone must find a chair to sit on. BUT, one person will be missing a seat. That person must find a lap to sit on.

*The first person in the seat, the one on the bottom, gets a point. All others in laps get no points. Remove one chair and repeat. Now there are two left without seats. You can see how this can get funny really quickly.

Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Intro to music videos (conversation and terminology)
                          >Use a variety of different music video styles from YouTube (Such as Peter Hollens, BTS, Dua Lipa).
 
Follow Up (10 mins):

Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Student’s favorite K-pop idol or musical instrument)
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 Day 7

Theme: Movies
Warm up (5 mins):

Have each student tell the class what kind movies they like.

Main Lesson (35mins):
                        -Introduction to English movie conversation (Terms and their use). Words can include film genres, such as western, sci-fi, holiday, fantasy, and documentary. Use PP presentation.
                        -Movie pt 1 (Most likely Frozen).
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Day 8

Theme: Movies pt 2
Warm up (5 mins):

Discuss thoughts on last movie.

Main Lesson (20mins):
                        -Continue movie (most likely Frozen).

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Students favourite movie. Activity can be done while watching the movie or after).
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 Day 9

Theme: English Activities
Warm up (5 mins):

Play “Let it Go” song and quiz the students.

Main Lesson (20mins):
            -Guess Who
              >Without saying who (or what) the subject is, students will have to try and describe the subject to their team mates while their teammates have to guess the correct answer. (Time limit for guessing: 1min). (10 min game)
            -Battleship
              >Try to know down the other team’s ships using English! (10 min game)

Follow Up (10 mins):
Draw the banner for the theme of the day. (Make their own version of Frozen DVD movie cover OR their favorite game – other from the winter camp or in general).
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Day 10

Theme: Final Review
Warm up (5 mins):

Reveal the student’s banners made into a “quilt” (put together by teacher. This will sty up for the remainder of the class. Students can choose to take their drawings home if they wish at the end of class). Discuss which drawings they like and why.

Main Lesson (30mins):
                        -Review the two weeks lessons using the game Jeopardy. 

Follow Up (5 mins):
Reveal the student’s banners made into a “quilt” (put together by teacher). Watch the “Moment’s In Korea” video of the 2017 Winter Camp made by the teacher as a wrap up.

A long overdue update by A.M. Molloy

Well, where do I begin? It's been a little over a year now since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then and I feel the need to address it in this post. Call this post more like a journal of my past year, so to speak.

If you follow me on social media (such as Twitter or Instagram) you may know that I've recently graduated from the University of Prince Edward Island, first class standing, with a BA in Spanish. Before graduation, I was almost finished my third round of edits for my novel. Yet as the end of my final semester came around, I became too busy to finish writing. Then, graduation came. Not much editing was happening there. After graduation, I was busy looking for jobs abroad. I spent a lot of my time working at my part-time job at a Dollarstore, bonding with my family, and the rest, preparing resumés and essay's and all other sorts of documents needed to teach English abroad. Needless to say, I've kind of put the novel on the back burner for a while.

Then in September, I found an amazing recruiting company based in Seoul, South Korea, called Korvia Consulting. They are super amazing, and should you wish to teach in South Korea, I highly recommend you use their free service.

Anyway, I soon landed a job in a Korean public middle school. On October 21st, I moved over to Korea with my wonderful soul-kitty, Sorren. It's been amazing so far. Both my cat and I really enjoy the Korea way of life. (Videos of said life to be found on my YouTube channel. Check out my social media links for it).

Sadly, with the excitement of moving abroad, and then actually living here, I haven't done much editing since my last semester at UPEI. It's been so long that I'm now currently re-reading the whole novel so that I can remember all the cool new changes I've made and so I can also remember where I was heading with the novel. I'm almost back to where I left off. And since I was so close to the end, once I start editing again, it shouldn't be too long before I'm finished this round of edits. I don't think there are too many edits left. This may even be my final round. I'll just have to wait and see what my editor says. (And I'm very lucky to have an editor who understands my adventurous lifestyle). 

So! Now that my update is over, I've decided to use this blog not only for my novel and writing related things, but as a helpful inside to being an ESL teaching in South Korea. While you'll get all the cool videos and picture's elsewhere, I'll go into more details here. Maybe even share lesson plans that worked out amazing for me. And anything I post in regards to ESL, you can feel free to use.

And do, with Christmas next week, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!~