Summer English Course (short duration) for 10-12 year olds - The 1st of August 2014 (cont.)

The final day of the course didn't exactly start as I had imagined, once a minor computer problem didn't allow us to finish listening to and working on the last pages of "The white oryx". I had them do some exercises around the map of the world, traditional costumes and a whole page of new words to be matched with images. They asked to see some extra chapters from the film depicting the hard school life of some of the children from other continents, which according to their expressed written opinions was definitely what they liked most.

Filipa finally finished the artistic scratch work she had started the first day and which I realised, though already into the week that it was too hard for her to do in the daily amount of time they were into Art. I was nevertheless proud that she managed to finish it, despite a certain feeling of sadness on her part for having only done one work for the final exhibition.

Two of the girls managed to finish some paper cuttings in which they wrote special messages for their mothers in English, which I felt to be quite a thoughtful thing.

To my surprise the last rehearsal before the presentation for the parents was one in which they definitely showed me how much they had progressed in the pronunciation of the English Language. I felt particularly proud and am sure they did as well.

They got ready for the performing act and awaited their parents with the invitations we had especially done for the occasion.

It all went extremely well (I was fortunate enough to have filmed it, as I don't have a single photo because a minor problem with the camera , which I didn't realise at the time). 

Having tried to encourage them into wanting to further develop themselves in regards to the English Language and other subjects wasn't easy, once I had to adapt my methodology and "reinvent" what I had had in mind in terms of the subject sequencing prior to having got to know them, but I am especially happy to have realised I did influence them after all and many of them, who won't be able to attend next year's courses because of their ages have actually requested the substitute director to reconsider that matter because they would like to continue attending the Summer courses.

As I was heading home, at the end of a tiring day, I had the privilege of taking one last photo with two of the children who have been regularly attending my classes for the last two years and are maybe among my most faithful "followers".

Summer English Course (short duration) for 10-12 year olds - The 31st of July (cont.) and the 1st of August 2014

(...)

I brought along some rag dolls from my collection to illustrate the different traditional clothes from three of the continents we had spoken of, which the girls really enjoyed.

As some of the children, whose artistic works were fairly meticulous, continued to work on them during the daily half an hour dedicated to fine motor development, two of the boys tried to assemble two fairly big puzzles with the various continents on them, so as to further help them locate the countries which had so often been mentioned throughout the week.  

  

Some of the  artistic scratch works were finally finished and the girls were mesmerised by their final effect, which led them to want to frame them afterwards. The paper puppet dolls from India and the 3D animals were equally beautiful to look at and what seemed difficult at the beginning, taking into account the fact that most children are used to computer games and not necessarily this type of  materials to build things with, was now being marvelled by the children, who kept on  asking to do more than one artistic work during the course.

Children like Patricia, Oliver, Beatriz, Carolina, and Clara initiated their second artistic works, this time  using glitter, metal sheets, coloured brush pens, scissors,  sand and thread in a series of different techniques, though I was worried they wouldn't be able to finish them in time for the exhibition considering the limited amount of time they were done in.

A few were able to finish them and I must confess I was happy with the final results.

(To be continued)