Summer Camp

One week of summer camp remaining, and we are two-thirds of the way through Beastly by Alex Flinn. The students are really enjoying the book, except for the three who really don't have the command of English needed to sit and read twenty pages, or around 4000 words, per night.

Each day, I review what happened in last night's reading, mostly by making the students answer questions, occasionally reading a couple of key paragraphs, etc. Then I go over the vocabulary words for each night's reading; I don't know what they do and don't know, so I try to get them to add to the list the next day.

We then typically watch a video clip or two from one of the film versions that roughly approximates the same point in the story (it is based on the Beauty and the Beast legend). A few times, we've watched a clip from some other movie or story that is referenced within the book--Kyle reads Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera, for instance. Tomorrow, we are going to watch some clips from The Princess Bride.

And we also do some kind of speaking/conversation game or activity--ideally one that ties in somehow. Today, we told jokes. I start with a bunch of riddles and their answers in a table in MS Word. I print these out and cut them into strips, then I cut the answer away from the riddle. These I hand out randomly. A student reads out his riddle. The person who has the answer slip has to read it out. Then, everyone laughs.

Next, I give them a few minutes to think of a joke to tell us, and we go round again. From sixteen students, I got two that I thought were pretty good:

1) Q: Where does a mouse go when it loses its tail? A: A re-tail store.
2) Q: Some muffins are baking in an oven. A muffin turns to the one next to it and says, "Boy, it sure is hot in here!" What does the second muffin say? A: "Oh my God, a talking muffin!"