English Training Camp for Teachers

When: March, 8th-10th

Where/Location: Kahom Beach, Nakornsrithammarat

Who/Schools participating: 3 – Songkhla Technological College, Odom Soksa Technological College, and Hatyai Technological College

Teachers: 37

Participants: 29

Volunteers: 4 – Francesco Corrieri, Maïlys Formaggio, Enrica Milanese, Ignacio Tévar

Day 1 – Wednesday, March 8th

08:00 – 12:30 Travel

13:45 – 14:00: Welcoming speech

14:00 – 15:15: Activities to check the participants' level of English.

15:15 – 15:30: Break

15:30 – 16:15: Activities to to check the participants' level of English.

16:15 – onwards: Free time

         Some very simple activities have been carried out in order to reach the objective.

         Activity 1: Ice-breaker "Bum Chica Bum"

         Activity 2: "The red rope"

         All the participants were asked to do a circle and answer in a complete way to some basic questions like "What's your name?", "How old are you?", "What scares you?", "What are your hobbies?", etc. In the meantime, they had to pass each other a red wool string, keeping one part in their hand and throwing the other one to another participant. Finally, a net was created.

         The second part of the game was about collaboration and cooperation wordless. Three bottle were put in three different places under the net, and three pens were hung in three different knots of the net. The participants were asked to set up a strategy in one minute and then put the pens inside the bottles, keeping them in at the same time. The only two rules were: don't speak, don't touch either the bottles or the pens with any part of the body.

         Activity 3: "Instead of..."

         A simple game about numbers where participants were required to count from 1 to 15. Once finished the first round, the person who said "15" was asked to choose one number and one action to be done instead of saying the chosen number in the following round. For example, instead of number 10, say "Hello!", or instead of number 6, sing!

         Activity 4: “Guess the question!”

         The volunteers wrote a list of answers on the blackboard. The participants, one by one, were asked to guess which was the most appropriate question the sentence just written was the best answer to.

Observation/Feedback:

At the end of the first day, some teachers asked us about the activities scheduled for the following day, as some of those done that afternoon were quite simple. We explained them that no one had provided us any kind of informations about the camp, the participants and their English level, therefore we had to propose very simple activities to get an idea by ourselves. According to what we understood, we would have thought more suitable activities for the following day. Nevertheless, it was not that easy, as the difference in level among the participants was quite huge and we had to think about activities able to involve all of them.

Day 2 – Thursday, March 9th

08:00 – 09:00: Breakfast

09:00 – 10:15: Activities

10:15 – 10:45: Break

10:45 – 12:00: Activities

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 15:00: Activities

15:00 – onwards: Free time

         Activity 1: Ice-breaker "Remember.."

                  All the participants were in circle and, one by one, were requested to say their         name and do a gesture to be associate with it. During the second round, every     participant, before saying his/her own name and do the gesture, had to repeat – in         order – all the names and gestures of the participants coming before him/her.

         Activity 2: "True or False"

         The participants were requested to write down 6 sentences about themselves, 3 true and 3 false. A music was put as background. The teachers were asked to walk randomly in the room and stop in pairs when the music stopped. Once in pairs, each of them was supposed to read the partner his/her own questions making him/her guess which ones were true and which ones were false, explaining the reason. And vice-versa.

         Activity 3: Story

         All the participants were divided into groups of 5-6 people and asked to invent a story with a list of given words. After 20 minutes, one group member had to read the story to the other groups while the other group members were putting it into scene.

         Activity 4: Taboo

         Literally, “taboo” is a topic or something people don't like to speak about. The game consisted in providing special cards to the participants. One by one, divided into teams, they were supposed to make the others guess a specific word without saying other words related to it and belonging to the same semantic area.

         Activity 5: “Who am I?”

                  Each participant had a name stick on his/her forehead and was supposed to         ask     a series of questions – whose answers could be only yes/no – to the other players in   order to guess who he/she was (an animal, an object, a superhero, a vegetable, a        celebrity, etc.).

         Activity 6: Taboo – level up

         The participants were divided into pairs and each of them had a paper with a list of special words written on it. The aim of the game was to make the partner guess the works saying just one word each per time. For example, the word to be guessed is: UMBRELLA. Player 1 (P1) says: water, P2 says: fire – P1 says: sun, P2 says: hotness; P1 says: protection, P2 says: cream – P1 says: rain, P2 guesses: UMBRELLA.

Observation/Feedback:

The afternoon of this day was quite challenging. There were many changes in the program, even half an hour before the beginning of the activities. Moreover, for unknown reasons, we had to leave the meeting room and do the activities at the beach. Obviously, most of the people were not focused or didn't want to participate. That is the reason why we finished just at 15:00.

Day 3 – Friday, March 10th

09:30 – 18:30: Travel

         The travel back was definitely longer because we stopped on the way to visit a couple of temples: Watchari Ai Khai and Wat Phra Mahathat.