Innovative summer camp churns out child-authors
Speaking at the closing ceremony for the summer academic enrichment camp held at the Red Cross headquarters on July 31, 2015, Programme Coordinator Valerie Charles-Welsh said that the whole concept was that the children should move away from the classroom atmosphere and are focused on three areas: problem-solving, creative writing and reading and comprehension.
“The idea was to create a setting that children do feel different in but at the same time they can relax and learn. So they were grouped, each group had names and was labelled ‘Authors at Work’,” she said.
“The children felt enlightened just by the discussion, the laughter and everything that took place at the camp. The focus, however, shifted a bit when parents decided to take everything to the next level.”
Charles-Welsh said that after they sent home portfolios of about three days’ work, “it happened.” She said parents came by to say how they liked what was being offered. “The phone calls were overwhelming,” she said.
She explained that the younger children were given The Gingerbread Man and the older ones The Ugly Duckling. Every day they were in a professional working environment where they sat in groups and discussed the setting of the stories, the problems and conflicts and how these were to be resolved.
She said that as a result, every one of the children had a rich author’s experience. “We brainstormed, we shared, we drafted, we edited and then we rewrote what was edited,” she said.
“There was so much done in a short time. It was a holistic approach. They did reading, they did reasoning, they did writing, they did paraphrasing, they did some rethinking and children use a lot of language, a lot of similes…and when you read them you’re like wow,” Charles-Welsh said.
The project received the support of the Rotary Club Sunrise of Road Town and LIME. Charles-Welsh also thanked the BVI Red Cross for the use of its building for the ceremony.
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