Instituto Internacional: Inglés Americano para Jóvenes

Thank You

The Summer in the City teachers and students would like to say a huge THANK YOU to two special ladies who worked with us this month.

Cynthia Torres volunteered with us for the first three weeks of camp. Cynthia is a Spanish and English major at the University of Callifornia at Irvine.  She was a big help to everyone.

Ellen Comis was also with us this month as a visiting teacher. Ellen is an English Language Development Specialist from California. She taught our new class of kindergarten students for two weeks and showed the teachers and students a lot of new materials being used in schools in the United States.

Week 2: Summer in the City “Round and Round”

For the second week of the Summer in the City Camp, the theme was Round and Round. Classes worked on all kinds of activities about “round” things. Some groups looked at sports and soccer  (the week of the World Cup final). Yellow made their own soccer balls (“Buckyballs”) out of posterboard.

Friday assembly presentations. Can you find the Buckyball?

Orange, Red and Yellow groups worked on making mandalas with the colors of flags of the countries participating in the World Cup. They also learned new dances like the Chicken Dance and the Twist.

Doing The Twist

The Orange and Red groups were in charge of making healthy snacks. They made fruit kebabs that everyone enjoyed. The high school students had another visit from some American high school students and they practiced English and Spanish together. On Friday the camp went on a field trip to the Telefonica Museum, where the kids learned about the evolution of the phone through time.

Preparing healthy fruit kebabs

 On the way to the Telefónica Museum

Making phones at the Telefónica museum

The phones students made

Week Three’s theme is INVENTORS’ WORKSHOP.

Summer in the City gets off to a Rocking Start

On July 30th the Institute began the Summer in the City English Camp. The theme of the first week was Rock Stars, and the students worked on different activities related to the theme. They made guitar posters, watched rock-star themed movies and learned a few dances like the Bunny Hop and The Chicken Dance. On Friday to wrap up the week they made videos to the song “Happy” by Pharell at Madrid Río and Jardines de Sabatini.

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The Blue Group wrote a summary of the week:

OUR EXPERIENCE AT OUR FIRST WEEK AT DAY CAMP

Hello we want to talk about our experience of this first week at the day camp.

We arrived here on Monday and we went to the Paraninfo for an introduction speech, and later we met our new classmates of the blue class (14-17 years old), we also met our great teacher Jocelyne and we played some interesting games.

Next day we hosted some American students from different parts of USA at the Paraninfo, we asked them some questions about their lives, and we learned a lot of things about American culture, and the differences between the USA and our country. Then we divided in six groups and we did some great activities at the school garden with them. After the activities we had a picnic of typical Spanish food, like “tortilla de patata or empanada”. It was a great time to meet different people and made some new friends from another culture.

On Wednesday we joined the green group to receive a speech about going to an American High school, then we played some games and practiced dancing for the Friday music video, when we finished practicing we watched a musical film.

On Tuesday the  students in Green and Blue received a visit from students from an American high school. They played icebreaker exercises and the Spanish students taught the American students about Spanish foods. The American kids taught the Spanish kids a few new games.

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Here is what some of the students had to say about the visit:

On Tuesday we met American students and at first we played a game that let us know their culture. It is a little bit different than our culture (Their food, their hobbies, their school…). After we went to the garden and we learned things about each other and played some games. It was funny. After they tried some different Spanish food like Spanish omelette, cheese, empanada…

It was a good experience because we met American people and that is good because it’s fine to meet people and learn something about their culture like their food, their hobbies and what they are studying.

This week’s theme is ROUND AND ROUND. The teachers have another fun week of activities planned for this week and the rest of the month.