The Hunger Games English Camp - Lesson Ideas for Teaching English in Korea

If you're an English Teacher here in Korea you will have (hopefully) heard or know about the English camps you are required to teach your students during the winter & summer holidays. According to your school schedule and hoe many schools you teach at you may have 1 or 2 camps (or even more) camps. We are all supposed to teach 20 hours of camp during the vacation (you may have more/less) but 20 hour is the standard. I usually break this up into 1 week of camp with 4 hours a day. My classes have always been in the morning. 

In my first year at my current middle school I developed a Hunger Games English camp (thanks to this  wonderful thread and the original creator 'Marbar' on Waygook!). I have successfully done this camp 3 times now with different students. They all LOVE it! I teach at an all girls school, but the lessons would suit mixed students too. I have taught this to First & Second Grade Middle School students, and then have just slightly adapted the lessons for the higher/lower level grades.

The camp is based on the first book, with lessons and fun activities surrounding a poster they will complete by the end if the camp, leading up to the final day where the students present their poster and watch the full screening of the first Hunger Games movie.

I want to share these lessons with you in the hopes that they might help you in your camp planning. I will post a Google download link to the camp below where you will be able to download the plan, lessons I created (and be able to edit them to suit your school) as well as the workbook I created for the students to fill in as we went along (I basically just inserted the powerpoint slides and made blanks for them to write down notes etc). Here is a link to download the plan, the printables, the ice breaker for the first day, the actual power point slides and the workbook:

I don't break my schedule up into hours/lessons (although this is how the plan works) but I rather teach until I can see the students need a break and then stop to give them some time to relax. I have found on some days we only stop for a short bathroom break as the students get really into the lessons and have a lot of fun. You will have to judge the timing based on how your students respond.

I always start off my camp with an ice breaker activity, and then divide my students up into their teams. I did this following the reaping ceremony in the Hunger Games whereby my students reach into a hat and pull out their team. They stay in that team for the entire camp and the activities are based upon that team. I also use their team names to keep score of points for prizes/snacks throughout the camp. (pictured aboveO. 

I wanted my students to produce a poster by the end of the camp, and so on the first day I had my students divide their poster page into 5 sections (4 sections and a centre circle for their team name/logo). I have the section 'Homework' on the camp plan above (that is more for admin purposes as some schools will want to see you at least plan to give the students homework) but I have never given them actual homework to do. There has always been time in the lessons to finish all the work.

Here are the finished posters:

One of the activities my students loved the most was designing the costumes for the Opening Cemerony. I went to my nearest Daiso and bought a whole bunch of random supplies (bubble wrap, tinsel, gloves, ribbon, string, cleaning cloths and sponges etc) an then gave the students free reign to do what they liked. This is what they came up with:

I hope you found this camp idea useful. If you use this idea or have any other great ideas for English camp themes I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Happy camp planning!