Chicken Is Burnt!

I've just got back from my first "English Camp".. These are arranged in the school holidays in Thailand to give Thai kids a kind of total immersion language experience..

From my limited experience teaching Thai kids they are INCREDIBLY shy.. so the idea of these camps is to help make English fun and accessible and give a purpose to communication through games and activities..

As part of our preparation for the camp we were given a sheet with suggested English songs.. this included such classics as "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Old McDonald Had a Farm"..

There was however one song which immediately stood out..

The song is called "Chicken Is Burnt" and the somewhat disturbing lyrics are below;

Chicken is burnt, chicken is burnt

It will be stabbed, it will be stabbed,

Stab to the left, stab to the right

Very hot, very hot, very hot

I assumed this must have been some kind of unfortunate translation but when I mentioned the song to my flatmate he immediately started singing in thai whilst performing a bizarre dance routine.. so it appears that Thai children actually do cheerfully sing a song about burning and stabbing chickens!!

The English camp itself was quite an experience.. I had a lot of fun, even though it was pretty tiring.. my role was more to be an MC and a clown than a teacher.. trying to be silly enough and make a big enough fool of myself that the children would relax and speak a bit of English.

The children were organised into six groups of 13, and I was the leader of the "Flying Elephants".. we had our very own song and flag.. and my team actually WON the overall prize.. (obviously they must have had a good teacher!)

We played lots of games with blindfolds, pin the "head, legs, mouth, nose hat AND tail" on the donkey, food making and tasting (I made the slightly naughty girl in my group eat a raw chilli). One of the highlights was the game "make up your friend" students had to apply lipstick, powder and blusher to a partner while blindfolded.. the look on the boys faces when they realised what was going to happen was enough to make the whole camp worthwhile..

I'd say the camp was a big success.. on the coach on the way there the children all sat in a subdued silence, terrified that the scary farang teachers might ask them a question.. on the return leg Jeremy and I had to fend off a mob of kids wanting to ask us questions, give us food and teach us Thai..

I'd definitely recommend working on one of these camps to people who are new to TEFL teaching. It's a great chance to try out lots of games and see how kids react to them.

That's it from me.. need to sleep now.

Did I mention we were up at 6.30am on the second day doing dance aerobics??