Cristiano Ronaldo is better than The Pope

It's only halfway through, but I'm pretty sure this is the best camp I've ever done.  Usually I have a favorite or two in a class of 10-12 kids.  It's hard not to.  But in this group of 5, I do not have a favorite, because they are all a pleasure to teach.  As previously mentioned, the director is great, and the snacks are unbelievable.  Fresh bread every morning and granitas every afternoon.  And there's always fruit around.  One of the campers already brought all the tutors presents (we still have another week here!) and we have multiple dinner offers from other campers' families for next week.  Oh, and we spent all of Thursday at the beach.


There are pictures throughout the post from this past week that are not connected to the stories they're adjacent to (except for the last one). So quickly here are brief descriptions of them:

1. The view from my host family's house
2. Lunch at the beach
3. How many campers can fit on a surfboard? (This was their favorite game that day) And one of my campers waving.
4. Morning snack one day.  The breads had ham and cheese inside so the director ordered two small pizzas for me and the vegetarian tutor.
5. My favorite anti-mafia poster in the school.  There are dozens.
6. This is actually connected to the story, it's my group's city.  Hopefully if you click on it you'll be able to see the pretty buildings when it's zoomed in.


And now on to the best part... Stories from the last couple days at camp:

1. One of my favorite games to use is this one where everyone stands in a circle.  Everyone has one action they act out, and describes the action in English.  For example, when teaching the present continuous, a kid says "I am swimming" and acts it out.  But you have to say your action and another person's action.  So it goes like...

"I am swimming (acts out swimming), and I am running (acts out running)"
The person whose action is running says "I am running (acts out running) and I am jumping (while jumping)"
And so on, until somebody messes up.

So yesterday my co-tutor Lynne and I were teaching the past simple.  So they acted out their verbs while saying them in past simple, and then acted out another person's verb and said it in the past simple.  It was all going fine until somebody unknowingly used a combination that caused Lynne and I to laugh pretty hard for a while.  It went something like this:

"I swam and I ran"
"I ran and I played"
"I played and I drank"
"I drank and I drove"

2. Another game that our classes played together was a simplified version of Taboo.  One of the words was... I'm gonna let you guess.

Describer: "It is a drink.  Red or white."
12-year old girl in my class: " Rum? Vodka? Bacardi?"

It actually took them about 8 guesses to get to wine.  They're Italian.

3.  Also during Taboo, a girl had to get the group to guess "supermarket."

Describer: "A place where you go to find pasta and bread."
Girl in Lynne's class: "Italy!"

4. Italian kids say funny things when they don't know what you're talking about.  One is "Bo," also pronounced "Buh."  Another is "COSA?!" or sometimes "CHE COSA?!"  Which mean "What" or "What is it?" And there's always "EH?!"

But for the first time, I have a girl (the same one who guessed several varieties of hard alcohol) who, when I say something she doesn't understand, scrunches up her face and exclaims, "WHAT?!"  I think it's the most shocking thing I've had a camper say this year.

She's the youngest in my class, but she just has these instinctive English sayings.  "What" is one of them, but when I say something that is apparently unbelievable, she says "Oh my god!"  Ok, so she might be my favorite.

5. To teach comparatives, Lynne and I assigned celebrities to each camper, and in groups of 3 they had to make sentences like: "Brad Pitt is stronger than Jennifer Lopez, but Michael Jordan is stronger than Brad Pitt." I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but Lynne and I combine our classes for the second lesson because we total 11 campers and they all use the same color book.

One group had Silvio Berlusconi (the rather interesting Italian President), Cristiano Ronaldo (soccer player) and The Pope.  They decided to compare them using good, better, and the best.  Their sentence was as follows:

"The Pope is better than Silvio Berlusconi.  But Cristiano Ronaldo is better than The Pope."

6. Friday's activity involved brainstorming a list of things that are in cities (supermarket, post office, bank etc.) and then drawing a city.  A few funny things happened. 

I tried to make the activity more interesting by providing anecdotes about the US.  So one boy suggested "toy shop," and I thought I would tell him that in the US, the most popular toy shop is called "Toys 'r Us."  They all nodded in recognition.  "We have in Palermo," one said.  Thanks, globalization.

Another one suggested "pizzeria." I was ambivalent because it's an Italian word but it is one we use back home.  So I allowed it, but only if the used an American "r" when saying it.  So for the next minute they were all laughing and saying "Pizzerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrria."

I can't remember if I suggested it or they did, but somehow the subject of a thrift\second-hand shop came up.  I explained what it was, and used "second-hand," but then decided that hearing Italian children try to say "thrift" was an opportunity not to be missed. They really struggle with "th" and "r," and "ft" never happens in Italian.  I got a lot of "trif" and "thrist" before anyone got it right.  None of them got it in the first 5 tries, and it took one girl 5 minutes, but she finally got it. 


All these stories are from the last two mornings, and they're such funny story machines, because they really want to learn.  I never really thought about measuring how much kids wanted to learn last summer, but one of my campers at Food Camp really made me think about it. When I asked him a question, he would respond, and then sometimes tell me something else that I hadn't directly asked him about.  And, for example, when I pretended to swing a baseball bad using a paintbrush, he said "Baseball!" and then asked me how to say "glove," which he described by just pointing to his hand and closing it.

When I was little I didn't really understand what other kids meant when they said that they "wanted to learn." I thought of it as something geeky, and that you had to be someone who wanted to learn meant that you had to really intentionally always inquire about things. And I thought of myself as someone who did what he was told, and if that meant learning, I did it.  But now I'm picking up on the little things that indicate that a child wants to learn-  Who knows why they want to learn, if it's an innate thing, or if they just want to satisfy someone.

In this group, they've never once chatted with each other while I'm explaining something (unless it's to help another camper understand). Part of that is because there are only 5 kids in the class, but part is because they really want to understand.  Today one of them wrote a period after a word on the city map, and I asked how to say it in Italian.  I've found that inquiring about Italian words for things often makes them more curious about the English words for things.  After she said the word in Italian, she asked me how to say comma... and then question mark... and then exclamation point.  And she was repeating all of them for a couple minutes after. 

I can't say how much of a pleasure it is to teach this group.  If it was at all possible, I would definitely do 3 weeks of camp here, and if I had a whole summer teaching them, I'm pretty sure I could get them like 5 years ahead.  But right now I'm just glad that I know I'll be working with this bunch next week.