We're at the Robot Disco...

Obviously the point of the week, all partying and banter aside, was to learn how to teach kids (and specifically Italian kids) English. It wasn't just the past participles and the subjunctive! Oh no! We were also taught how to bring a spot of fun into the classroom with songs, games and drama.

Much of the focus was on the final show extravaganza. As one of the methods we had to employ was practical teaching, in a highly ironic situation we had to do some practical learning and come up with a show of our own.

Oh Mamma...

In theory this was fine. I was in a group with some lovely English girls. And a not-so-lovely American girl. She is New Yoik through-and-through and potentially the most irritating person I have ever had to create an end-of-camp show with.

Once we had decided on a show, however, everything seemed to be a lot easier. The trouble is it took us two full days to do that, meaning that time at the business end of making a show was reduced. Massively. Each group had to come up with their show as if they only had a certain level of English - our level was such that we could only operate in the present tense using very simple language. This was a concept my American friend did not comprehend who kept throwing past, future, and even the conditional at our modest script.

It was all time travel related - there were plenty of pirates and robots and Miss America was, of course, the protagonist. Once I'd explained the point of the exercise and the relative grammatical level of the children we were pretending to be, we managed to get something together; it was, however, arguably the worst of the lot - its only redeeming quality was the song, penned by my own fair hand in approximately 8 seconds (which, similarly, is how long it lasts):

"We're at the robot disco
We like to disco, disco."


I can practically hear EMI banging on my door right now. I still do get it in my head from time to time and with it comes the urge to dress up in a cardboard box and dance like Peter Crouch...

As for Miss United States, well she got lumped with Jack and Jill (the oddballs from a previous post) and I felt that the world's balance was temporarily restored...