In the summer, parents often send their children to learn languages - to England, Italy, Cyprus … We asked the psychologist Yulia Desyatnikova about what you can learn in such a camp, besides new words.
“We at London Gates did not initially plan to do children’s camps. But one day, someone’s cute dad asked where it would be better to send the child in the summer. I evaded the answer a couple of times (“Our students are usually sent to England to a language camp”), but when dad repeated the question for the hundredth time, when I arrived in England, I got into the car and went to figure it out.
And I found out that there are different formats. It happens that children are sent to live with a family for a couple of months, and it is believed that this should lead to a sharp jump in knowledge of the language. The jump is happening: the child perfectly memorizes words like forks, spoons, cheesecakes, movie titles … A teacher in a regular school can teach this in a week.
Another format is when children live in a hostel, they have study hours in the morning, then sports games, and then free time. Here I was somewhat surprised: how can children have free time in the camp?
Then I came across a format where children are «adapted to the environment.» My friend’s son, with a group of ten-year-old boys like him, was let out on Oxford Street to go shopping. And he got lost there. I will not describe how we searched for him from Moscow! In general, I returned from England in complete amazement and told that handsome dad that there was no need to send children there. The parents were upset. And then we decided to do something for our students.
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Chamber, but active
We were not ready either for the Moscow region or for England. One of our mothers offered to set up a camp on a farm in Latvia. Yulia spent her childhood in the Baltics, and left pleasant memories. And then we just got really lucky. We ended up on a farm where an elderly couple lives. Everyone liked each other, they were ready to follow our crazy ideas. The first time the camp took out 20 of our students, the second time — 100, the third — 150, and this year we are going to take out 220 people. There are three farms, they are located nearby. Our hosts built a barn for us, in which they set up a stage and an auditorium.
chamber format. Approximately 25 children, five instructors and a doctor live in one house. We write a new program every year. We do not have study hours, just every day is dedicated to a separate topic — archeology, space, physics or theater. There are also sports and games. And all this is in English.
Our main age is 9-16 years old, and we don’t have the concept of «squad». There are 25 people, of which groups are formed for the day. The groups are shuffled the next day. We give children a diverse experience of communication with each other, including combining different characters and temperaments. Children come to us from Paris, from London, from Tel Aviv. And everyone loves it.
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Think about life
It is important which of the adults will interact with the children at the camp. It is not so important what this person will do — to engage in dancing or geography with the child. The main thing is that it should spark interest, offer a certain way of existence in our world: a way to process information, interact with people, think about life!
We tell parents that we study English at the camp with their children. Of course, there is progress in the language, but in fact, a lot of interesting events are happening in parallel.
We want every day to be intellectual and physical activity, manual creativity and creativity in the broadest sense of the word. For example, on Space Day, we will definitely understand how a rocket accelerates — this is an intellectual component, but not a lecture, but an interactive one. Then we can build a rocket out of cardboard and launch it, then we can run around the planet we landed on and end up doing a presentation about life on the planet we visited.
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step outside
We had a “day of equal opportunities”, when children tried on themselves the ways of existence of people with disabilities: someone was blindfolded or covered with earplugs, someone was in a wheelchair. We spent the day trying to understand what happens to a person with a disability. Or, for example, last year was a day of charity. We thought about this topic, argued, discussed, children created charitable foundations. Tried to figure out to whom and how to donate: to the elderly, cats and dogs, children, or to save the ocean? There is no single answer, but asking questions, “waking up” the topic is very important.
The format, when a teacher works with children for ten hours in a row, is practically impossible in school life. And the range of experiences that can be conveyed to a child during this time is of a completely different scale and depth. For example, if a child stays at least half a day as a «minority», he will have an experience for a lifetime. Therefore, we are constantly thinking about what new experience we can live in the camp.
It is also important that the child does not experience new experiences alone. Therefore, every evening we get together, sing songs with a guitar in English. Then we light a candle and speak at home (the only time we speak Russian). About how the day went, what happened and why. And this moment of understanding life, when children learn to talk, to give an emotional response, is the most important part of our camp.”