Today was our first day of
thematic activities and we dove straight into our topic of democracies,
countries, and languages. We began the day with an activity titled “The
Tree of Knowledge”. Students will begin each day by writing a question or a
hope for the day on a leaf that they place on the ‘tree’ in our
classroom. At the end of each day, they will replace their leaf with a
blossom representing the development of their learning. We spent time at the
end of the day reflecting on our questions and the answers we came to over the
lessons. We will do this every day so that by the end of camp our tree
will be in full bloom with our learning.
We also began another camp
routine this morning by learning about our ‘secret friends’. Each student
had their portrait drawn yesterday on envelopes that were hung around the room
to serve as a mailbox during the camp so that their ‘secret friends’ can leave
them notes and compliments and we will reveal our friends on the last day of
camp.
We then began our serious work
of exploring democracy. We started with an introduction to the tenets of
democracy such as the rule of law, protected rights, and individual
representation, which led us into a matching game with countries and
their flags, where we separated them into countries that have a true democracy
according to our newfound rules.
Following that, we had a rousing game of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire! The questions were all about the four countries represented at our camp. We learned about geography, populations, national anthems and much more.
To build on the wealth of
language knowledge present in our group, students then taught each other how to
say typical phrases in each language. They learned phrases such as good
morning, thank you and good luck! Then they designed a symbol to represent our
group and our time at camp.
We had a visitor from the American Embassy
ASSIST program, Živilė Lazauskienė, who talked with us about her experience as
a study abroad student and her current role in the program. She shared about her time with a host family
in Toledo, Ohio and her travels in the USA.
She also taught the students about the opportunities offered by ASSIST
and the benefits of study abroad as well as the ways that getting to know a new
culture can have an impact on the world.
Živilė used her time abroad to go on to study at university in the UK
and now works on NASDAQ in Lithuania. It
was a great talk and we are grateful to Živilė for sharing her time with us.
We continued
with an activity that allowed the students to experience traditional stories
from each culture. After matching the parts of each story, they then
chose one to act out and staged entertaining skits. The winning skit was about
the creation of the Polish Crest.
We finished our evening with a
dance where each group taught the others a traditional dance from their
country. The students had a great time learning new dance steps and
hearing new songs. We practiced dances like Oira, Ceceliuke, and Grandskveran
from Lithuania; Cotton-eyed Joe from the USA; Chasapiko and Enteka from Greece;
and Belgijka, and Polonaise from Poland. It was a busy,
thought-provoking, and enjoyable day!
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