English Camp Activities

Step 1: Organizing the Camp Using Team Posters & Slogans

One of the best ways to organize an English camp is to put the students into teams. Once you’ve divided the students into different teams, you can assign them a color or a theme. Give the students a time limit and have them create a poster for their team.

Have them come up with a team name and a mascot which they have to put on their poster. After that, you can have the students come up with a slogan, commercial, or short song and dance to introduce their team to the rest of the camp. When the time limit is up and the groups are finished creating their posters, you can have each group introduce themselves.

As a fun bonus, you can have the students wear bracelets or headbands that reflect their team color.

Then for the rest of the camp, you can award points to different teams for participating in the camp. At the end of the camp you can give a simple prize to the winning team.

Step 2: Plan A Fun Activity!

1) Human Scrabble

Preparation & Materials: Cards or paper, and pens. Create “scrabble letter cards.”

Instructions: Once divided into groups, everyone gets a card with a letter. Instructor yells SCRABBLE! and the kids try to form a word using their cards. The more of the letters you can use the better. Groups can score points by having the longest or most complex word.

2) Sentence Race

Preparation & Materials: Chalk/ Writing utensils. List of words to be used. Water balloons (optional).

Instructions: Make sure there is a space for students to write on, either a whiteboard or a ground for chalk. Call out one or two words at a time. Example: Duck & Cowboy!

Each team has to race to try and come up with a grammatically correct sentence using those two words.Whichever team can correctly write their sentence and then raise their hand and first, will win a point for their team. Each team must be able to read their sentence out loud.

Example sentence: I know a cowboy who likes duck.

There’s a couple ways you can adapt this game. You can put students in lines, and have them come up two at a time to compete, or just have students stay with their whole team during the activity.

3) Crazy Verb Relay

Preparation & Materials: Containers for paper slips. Open space.

Instructions: Set up an area where students can race against each other. Designate a clear finish line. Have the students write down simple action verbs (run, hop, skip, fly, crab-walk). Then have them write down adverbs (slowly, lazily, quickly, angrily, sadly). Put the adverbs in one hat, and the actions in another.

Two students will come up at a time. The teacher will pull out a paper from each hat. The students must race each other to the finish line, but they can only move using the verb and adverb that was pulled out of the hat.

4) Keep it up Game

Preparation & Materials: Have questions prepared, and a ball to pass around. Your questions can relate to something you’ve covered recently in school, or the theme of the camp.

Instructions: Everyone stands in a circle. The teacher will toss the ball into the air. Students must keep the ball in the air in any way they can. If the ball hits the ground, the student responsible must answer a question with a complete correct sentence in order to stay in the game. If they answer incorrectly, they are out. The object of the game is to be one of the last three students standing.

5) Scavenger Hunt

Preparation & Materials: Scavenger Hunt Worksheet. Students must have cameras/cell phone cameras.

Instructions: Create a worksheet that has a list of items on it that students must find. Students must take a selfie with each of the items on the scavenger list. Try to keep the items on the list open-ended, as this will require more critical thinking and will get the students to delve deeper into the language.

Here are some examples: 

1. Take a picture with something round.

2. Take a picture with someone whose name begins with ‘J.’

3. Take a picture of something you can eat.

Whichever team can finish the list first, or whichever team can get the most items, will be the winning team. Be sure to have the students explain each picture to you when they come back, as this will increase the communication practice.

6) Question Jenga

Preparation & Materials: Jenga Game with questions written on each block.

Instructions: This game is best done in a small group. Perhaps 5-6 students. Students play the game of Jenga. Each time they pull a block out of the tower, the block will have a question written on it. The student then must ask another student the question written on the block. If the student answers the question correctly, then they get a point for their team. The questions can be as simple as, “What color shirt are you wearing?” 

7) Flashcard Circle Duel

Preparation & Materials: Topically related flashcard set. Open Space.

Instructions: Students will sit in a circle. In the middle of the circle is a pile of flashcards. Two students will play at a time. The two students will stand up and face each other on opposite sides of the circle.

The teacher will call out one of the flashcard terms. The students must run all the way around the circle, and then go through the flashcards to find the correct word. Once they find the right word they must say it correctly, or use it in a sentence for a point for their team.

When the students understand how the game is played, then you can add some new challenges to bring some excitement to the game!

8) Elbow to Elbow

Preparation & Materials: Open Space. Students need to be in pairs.

Instructions: After students get into pairs, the teacher will call out different body parts. Students must match their body parts to those of their partners. As you add new body parts, the students have to make sure that their body parts stay touching. The game gets more difficult as you call out more appendages.

Ex: Wrist to wrist! Elbow to Elbow! Knee to Knee! Hip to Hip!

This is a pretty fun big group game. If you want to add a competitive element you can eliminate pairs who lose their balance or aren’t able to match the commands.

A Few Last Tips for a Successful English Camp

• Be sure to provide a couple of water breaks, especially if the weather is hot and there are a lot of physical games outside.
• Have a couple of back-up games ready to go. Sometimes games and activities fail. These will ensure you have a fail-safe plan.
• Be ready to adapt your activities on the spot. Sometimes the instructions might be too complicated, or we might have to adjust the activity to fit the needs of the group. Expect this, and try to preemptively think of ways you might adapt the activity.
• You might not get through everything that you schedule. And that’s fine, don’t try to rush through activities just to get through everything on the schedule. If there are things left over in the schedule, then that just means you were over-prepared!
• Explain things slowly and clearly, and use lots of personal examples.
• Breaking students into small teams, and using a point system is a good way to keep the motivation high and the camp fun.
• Remember to have fun! 
• https://www.xploreasia.org/eight-awesome-english-camp-activities-master-advice/?fbclid=IwAR3gKH88etJLPWH6IbmzszNzPzSLOCA0_6Q8PuKSD0Ko37g__nDaE63tfQY
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