First Day with My New Group

Global Volunteers has a rule that one doesn't take photos until relationships are established, so no pictures from the first day. We always have the students make a name tent to help us learn their names. Hobby is a word in Polish that we share in English, so we can ask kids about their hobbies and have them put something on their name tags. When that all was done I reviewed the alphabet. They have pretty good pronunication, and can think of things that begin with each letter of the alphabet.

For the second class I started out with To jest in English is This is and Co to jest is English is What is this? I told the students we were going on a walk around the Reymontowka campus. When they knew the name of something they were to say: This is ______________, and if they didn't know they were to ask What is this? They ended up using 65 English words in the walk. They also can respond to questions such as What color is this or How many-- such as how many horses do you see? They did find 19 new objects for which they didn't know the name, and couple of things associated with swimming pool maintenance for which I didn't know the name.

We happened upon a wheel barrow carrying dried leaves, a shovel, and a brush. Later in the morning I heard someone working right outside my classroom with the wheel barrow and ran to take a picture. I had the plan to take photos of everything that was new and put it in a power point presentation to use later in the week. I was thinking the woman would probably soon be putting the wheel barrow away and I'd miss the photo. The fence and gate, other objects for my project, will be there 24/7. The woman doing the yard maintenance thought it was quite funny that I was taking a picture of the wheel barrow.

In the third lesson we worked more on vocabulary, but in fun ways, and for the fourth lesson we played Number Bingo. These students do a good job pronouncing the numbers, although sometimes they default to Polish.

The afternoon seems short when one isn't done with obiad until 2:30. I proofread the journal for the last team and sent that out to all the team members. Then I started to try to figure out what to do for tomorrow's lessons.

Again I have delightful kids, but this time 4 boys and 3 girls, whereas in the last camp I had all girls. There definitely in a difference in the activity level when one has 4 boys who are 9 years old and in love with "futbol.'