Ecoventure 2010 -- walk the green talk

Given that the time we spend there would be fairly short, 7 days, we should seek to maximize the help we can render to the students. We are fortunate that a team has gone before us, and are able to provide us with insights into our teaching environment. Taking a leaf from the experience and recommendation from the team that went before us, the emphasis should be on spoken English as there’s where the students are the weakest. Having no native speakers of English at Gia Bac, it is only understandable that level of spoken English is very poor. This brings us to the key focus of us teaching them English. After speaking with our advisor, Truc, we have narrowed down the objective to:

To facilitate teaching, we’ll be using some competitive games as listed below:

Pictionary/Actionary - The classic game of getting one of the students to draw and another group to guess what is drawn. We will add a little twist to the game by getting the students to read the word out loud as well as

Adjective-Name Game (Ice Breaker) - Students would be presented with a list of adjectives (In English & Viet) which they can assign to themselves, and they will introduce their names with the adjectives (i.e. say the adjective followed by their names in English). The adjectives will be prepared on stickers. This can be used as an ice breaker game for them to introduce themselves and also to build up their spoken abilities. Some additional ideas can be built on this game [?]

Spelling Bee - This can be done as a daily activity to help recap the vocabulary covered for the day, we will also get them to say the word out loud or construct a simple sentence with it.

Simple Tabletop Conversation - Each day, we will get a few students to sit down and . We will probably have to demonstrate to them what to say, and how to say it. This will help encourage them to speak in English as well as build up their confidence and proficiency in spoken English. This can be done on a daily basis and build up to a mini-competition at the end of the 8 days.

Sentence Construction Games - Mix and match cards with different words on them. The words are in sets containing various components of a sentence e.g. verbs, nouns, adverbs..etc.. This can be made into a game to see which team can match the sentence fastest.

Sing Along! - We can also teach by getting them to sing simple English songs. The idea is to make learning fun, and also to build up their confidence for speaking English. This will be especially helpful if we have someone who can sing well and play the guitar =P. Alternatively, we can play the songs using our laptops.

For the Cultural Performance the key theme that we will be sharing is multiculturalism in Singapore, and if time permits, maybe some of the quirky behavioral aberrations of Singaporeans :P

We’ll be breaking down Singapore Culture into the 3 main races: Chinese, Malay and Indian. Each of this will be sub divided into 3 categories: Festivals, clothing and food. Performance will be delivered using a synergy of life performance with props while interacting with projected imagery. Videos would also be used to deliver the information on the various festivals celebrated by each of the respective race.

At the end, to end it all off, we’ll have all the models/actors symbolizing 3 races “come together” and interact, to highlight social cohesion and mutual tolerance in a multicultural Singapore.