Integrating Language Learning and Earth-saving Values

(With my campaign to Save the Earth, I decided to have this theme in my blog this month. Please join me for this cause as we are now experiencing a lot of signs of climate change or global warming like the recent flood in Manila which never happened in four decades.)

This poster shows the campaign of young kids on the use of fabric bag instead of plastics.
It was made by Red Team at a recent English Camp at KMUTT.

I got invited last week to be one of the lecturers in an English Camp for young kids aged 5-12 years old. It was held in my university campus and was sponsored by the Continuing Education Center as it's term break for all Thai students in all levels this month. Although I'm used to teaching college or university students, I eventually said yes because I liked the theme of the camp, "Save the Earth". It's so wonderful to see the kids not only learning English but also expressing their ideas on how to save the Earth. In the series of activities we prepared, we had to fit in with their level so that we would achieve the desired results in integrating language learning and Earth-saving values.

The first poster (above) is an example of the kids' outcome after we organized them into teams. We let them enjoy  English by cooperative learning as the group age was so diverse. It was good to group them in different ages to give support to the younger ones with lesser knowledge, skills and experiences. After we let them speak, play word and matching games, sing songs, and answer worksheets, we let them make a poster by team. Then we let each of them explain in English about their poster. I was so amazed with their ideas! Young as they are, they showed so much concern in saving the Earth. As shown in the first poster above, they explained that fabric bag is better than plastics and that they must plant more trees instead of cutting them.  The one below is similar with the one above in its idea of planting more trees. But I was so surprised with their very radical opinion of closing factories. They answered that factories are the major contributors of carbon dioxide that causes global warming. "What would happen if we close the factories?", I asked them. They got stunned:) Of course, we understand what they mean.