The second week of the 2014 Baseball Summer Camp was held in Xiejin Elementary School in Tainan City from 7 – 11 July, 2014.
The first week of the summer camp was held at Xinjin Elementary School in Xinying District. The content of the first and second weeks were similar, with only a different location, different teachers and different students.
With the first week already under their belts, Mike and Gilkey from Xinjin Elementary School were able to give a lot of advice and fill us in on the details of the first week. With most of the creases ironed out, things went off pretty much without a hitch.
The aim of the camp was not to train baseball players as the name of the camp might imply. Tainan will play host to the 2015 Minor League World Champs and so the kids who came to our camp were being trained on how to welcome the baseball players who come next year.
The schools in the greater Tainan area got to pick the kids for this camp.
Xiejin Elementary School
The school is located in Tainan City proper.
As it’s summer vacation, all the students are on holiday. We were given classrooms in the kindergarten buildings and as a wonderful treat, they had air conditioners. These were to be our spots for the week.
Curriculum
The decision was made to give each teacher a specific topic and then each teacher prepared three classes based on that topic. In essence this would reduce the burden on the teachers to produce a whole weeks worth of classes and instead put their focus on just three different classes. The six groups of kids then rotated between our classes.
Six teachers, three different lessons each, six groups of students.
Teachers
The six teachers were: Gilkey, Jeremy, Jose, Kelly, Ben and myself.
Gikley was in charge of teaching baseball.
He introduced the game and how it is played.
Jeremy got the honor of doing “Western Music” where he introduced musical styles and genres.
Jose taught “Western Dance”. He showed the kids how to do various types of dance. We were treated to doing some Elvis and the twist at the closing ceremony thanks to him.
Kelly did “Local Culture” where he introduced some of the local area’s specialties and treats for three different areas of Tainan.
Ben took on “Western Games” and he showed the students how to play games like chess.
I got to do “Table Manners” which I took as manners in general. Besides just covering the rules of a traditional formal meal, I took one class to show the children how to greet someone at the airport and escort them. For the third class I gave some tips on conversation topics to fill the time with their guests.
Monday
The first day started with the opening ceremony. The students had to find their teams and get ready for the day.
There were some brief introductions of all the teachers.
We all gave a short hello and introduced ourselves to everyone.
Afterwards, we headed outside to watch a baseball game on the go. It appeared to be kids from the school having a practice.
After that we headed off to our home room.
I was put together with Team 6. This classroom would act as their home base and would be the classroom where all my classes would be held.
We headed off to our classroom and made ourselves comfortable. I got ready for my first class.
Our classrooms were the kindergarten classrooms of the school. Quite a treat because we could sit on the floor and go barefoot in the classroom.
It was straight into classes for the day from there.
Tuesday
Tuesday started off where Monday ended and it was a full morning of classes.
But in the afternoon we were in for a treat as it was game time. We got to go outside and play some baseball related games and activities.
Twister was a twist on the original game. Kids picked a word at random and then had to place their feet and hands on the card in succession. There were some moments where the letters were just completely out of reach, so we just went by ear and allowed a few cheats and changes as the game went on. We weren’t battling for a win, and all the kids thoroughly enjoyed it.
Just nearby where Kelly and I were taking care of twister was this crazy game of spin.
The kids were given a word to find. They then rolled the die, put their head on a baseball bat and then spun around the number of times shown on the die. Finally, they went to find the cone with the word they had been told beforehand.
There were some really hilarious situations where the kids were completely off balance. One girl veered wildly off the track and had to be caught by Jeremy.
Ben was in charge of the ball toss. I’m not sure of the overall aim, besides throwing the ball at the numbers. That’s all the fun to the ball toss anyway.
During the first week the fishing game was done with rods and magnets, but ended up with all the lines getting tangled and the magnets sticking together. So this time around, the kids raced to retrieve the word they were looking for from the pile.
There were two other stations for games. I believe they were playing baseball.
Wednesday
This day was all in the classroom. Three classes in the morning and two in the afternoon.
For my part the class was all about Meeting and Greeting guests at the airport.
You can see the presentation above. The aim was to give them an idea of what to say. I was pretty sure of their ability to actually say these things, but wanted to put it together in an ordered format for them.
Once the introduction was over I had the kids try to piece the conversation together. I condensed the whole things and cut it into paper strips. Once they were done I gave them the answers and they checked what they had done.
Finally, we wrapped it up with a game of musical chairs. They sat down when the music stopped and then the ones who didn’t get a seat got to practice a small part of the conversations we had just done.
Thursday
Another full day of teaching. This time we moved onto a new topic, “Making Chitchat”.
I figured that, again, the kids had a grasp on all the stuff they needed to be able to say and this was just a way to put it all together. There is a standard pattern to English learning here, so the content was nothing new, just had to put it in context.
We once again put together sentence strips. I thought this was a good idea, but in hindsight I could have chosen another activity for this part. However, it went quite quickly as the content was less than the last lessons.
Friday
This was a single lesson in the morning. The final lesson of “Making Chitchat” for me.
So after the first class we were granted a reprieve so that we could get some rest and the student teams could practice their small performances for the evening.
I went out with Gilkey for a walk around the neighborhood because walking around beats sitting around the office.
After an hour or two outside we headed back to enjoy a respite from the heat in the air-conditioned office.
The Closing Ceremony
The teams all got a chance to do a short speech plus performance for the teachers. We scored them on their performance and prizes were handed out to all the teams in the end, plus one extra prize for the winning team.
Finally, it was time to say goodbye. The kids came around and got us all to sign our names on the backs of their certificates they received for the week.
The week went by in a blur. I can’t believe how quickly it all went by. The students had a great time and it was very enjoyable for the teachers, too.
My hat off to the organizers who sorted out all of the little details so the week flowed so well.
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