Every year we are give ample vacation days but they come with one caveat: plan for and host a camp after school has let out. Typically our most enthusiastic students tend to be the ones that sign up for camp but they never really know what they are in for until we get underway.

For this year’s Winter Camp, Stephanie and I decided to call upon our students’ creative and artistic abilities in a ten day camp called “Music Video Camp.” While the name is less than inspiring, we hoped to encourage and aid our students in making lip-synced music videos where they were in charge of the song selection, concept, performance, and ultimate editing. While this might not sound like the most in-depth English Language experience beyond requiring that an English song must be used, we were very hands-on in most of the video’s production so that students would be forced to use English in our interactions while they were working on a goal of their own design. In this way, wanting our help, suggestions, and input required that the students strive for communication to accomplish their goal. For the first three days before getting started we also did team building exercises and games such as tongue twisters. Since these camps are always held after the semester’s completion, we do our best to incorporate English in a way that is disguised or isn’t seen as a lesson. We know these students should be on vacation/holiday, so we try our best to make camp feel less like school.

Throughout the two weeks of camp, our students created some awesome concepts and filmed some truly creative videos. Their creativity was inspiring and reminded us of why we teach. Please enjoy the video, and let us know what you think.