Thailand | Saturday English Camp: Older teaching younger

On February 16, 2013 one of our University English teams conducted a Saturday English Camp. Four schools participated in the camp with about 75 elementary students, grades 4-6.  Eight second year university students – English majors who want to be teachers set up 4 teams and rotated four groups through the morning. Each session was about 45 minutes long. Lunch was from noon to 1 pm. After lunch the students returned to their groups and spent a little over an hour in games and review. Then there was about a half an hour to prepare for a skit – based on what they learned in the morning and at 2:30 pm the show began. Everything was finished up and we were ready to go home about 3:30 pm. All went very well.

On February 21, 2013 I thought I was going to visit the four schools – arrangements have been made or Saturday, but only one school was in session today. The three other schools “forgot” to tell me that they had other things planned for today. However all was not lost.

The school we did visit is a school with about 40 students. They have taken the “Older Teaching Younger” to heart. Not only are they using this philosophy in doing English, the principal saw it was going so well that she has instituted the same program in teaching Math, Thai and will be doing it in Science soon. Win some lose some? This one was a winner. We are not through with our English teaching program until sometime in May.  Many schools still do not know the start day of their schools for the new year.