Hello Waygook community!

I'm planning my first-ever (7-day) summer camp for 31 middle schoolers and will be having a dance theme. Currently in need of some inspiration and would love to hear of any suggestions, ideas, and best practices for those who have either done a dance-themed camp or incorporated dance activities in their camps/lessons before.

Also, if you know of any helpful resources or links to sample lesson and/or activities related to this theme, please reach out. I'd appreciate the support! (:

Jackson 5? My 6th graders love Enjoy yourself and blame it on the bougie. I had them watch the videos a couple of times and then mimic the choreogaphy. Then they had to make their own dance moves. I had them in groups of 5. They could use props, so some used brooms as guitars for example. they also had to learn the lyrics and translate as much as they could into korean.

I wish I had a 360 to play dance games with kids. That would be cool. I know that regular American music videos don't feature much dancing but there's lots of choreography dance videos on YT. I've played a couple Kyle Hanagami videos for my students after class and those surprisingly keep their attention. Also weird dance videos like OK Go - Here It Goes Again is also something different.

Also good for you having that many middle schoolers sign up for camp. I'm baffled how there's 400 students at my school and my CT says only 5 of the kids signed up. Considering I got 12 (out of 100 kids) at the last school I was at I suspect a lack of recruitment.

If someone does do an "Idol Group" camp/activity, one way to incorporate some fun English is to have them make band names using acronyms. I've taught a lesson for this to middle schoolers, and intro'd it with some real group names (students have to guess what they stand for - i.e. BAP = Best Absolute Perfect, and MBLAQ = Music Boys Live in Absolute Quality, lol what?).

Then for fun they can make acronyms for their own names, or other things (some classes have made some great acronyms out of my name!).

I have done an idol group camp before (the kids made their own music videos lip syncing to English songs) but I didn't think about adding a dance element - that's a great idea.

One thing I did to incorporate more English-speaking into this camp (all middle school girls) was that their idol groups had to have a debut press conference. So they thought up idol-type interview questions (What is your debut concept?  Do you live in a dorm? Who's the messiest member? etc). During their group's turn, each group member had to answer at least two questions. The rest of the class acted as the press and had to ask at least two questions each. They got pretty into it^^

really good!