29 Oktober - 2011, Halloween Feier!

Guten Abend jeden!

I apologize for the tardiness of this update--we had quite the Halloween party in the Walker Household with my wife having made more baked goods than I have ever thought possible, so preparing for, and then cleaning up after, that event took up most of the weekend.

As for Schule...

Saturday saw us beginning the school day with a 10-sentence Aufsatz, "Das Schaurigste Ding," or "Wovor ich Angst habe," wherein the students described one thing that scares them. Typical examples included haunted houses, older brothers and, in one case, Herr Walker. Apparently I rise from the grave at night to eat children. News to me!

We also added on to our continuing unit over indefinite articles, going back over the possessives mein/meine and dein/deine, and learning ein/eine, kein/keine.
This introduced another staple of the 5.Klasse's gaming repertoire, "Bart Kein Bart." In this game, one does a series of motions that go along with the phrases "Bart," "Kein Bart," "Mein Bart," "Dein Bart" and make a neighbor repeat them, the goal being to make a pattern someone else can't repeat, going on until you're the last one standing!

Also covered were different ways of expressing like, dislike and desire

• gern haben
• finden + adjective
• "möchten" (presented as its own verb although technically it isn't)
• mögen

Homework for this week

• Page 20, Exercises 4-5
• Page 22, Exercise 9
• Page 23, Exercises 1-3

Mit Vergnügen!

22 Oktober - Freundschaft ist Magisch!

Grüße,


Today we proudly presented our family trees before the class, to start off with, and soon they shall be hung all over our new (old) classroom! Our class has moved again, this time back into the room I'd had for the last 3 years, so if you have trouble finding us, just look over by where all the other teachers are: I'm between Hr. Schäufele and Fr. Rill.

We did a review of possessive adjectives (mein/meine, dein/deine), regular verbs and also Haben and Sein, all to the tune of "Mein Herz Brennt" by Rammstein, the latest in our hörverständnis exercises. There will soon be a quiz over all the vocabulary we've learned from these various songs, by the way, so watch out for that in the near future!

Our primary activity of the day, after having learned interrogatives (was, wer, wo, wie, woher, wohin), was to make up our own imaginary friends. We described them and then drew pictures of them before presenting what we made to the rest of the class.

Finally, we learned a bit of negation, namely the uses for and meaning of nicht, nichts and nie/niemals.

For the last few minutes of class, the students were hilfsbereit enough to help me hang up all the new posters over DDR-era Berlin that were just generously provided for us! I let the kids choose how they wanted to arranged things, so this new classroom feels a bit more gemütlich now that we all had a chance to pitch in and make it pretty.


The moment you've all been waiting for...

The homework for this week is as follows:

Arbeitsbuch
Page 12, Exercise 11
Page 15, Exercise 1, 3
Page 19, Exercise 3

These will involve the set of verbs listed on page 28 of the textbook (also in their notes from today).

Mit Vergnügen!

15. Oktober - Wer hat das Obst?

Grüße an jeden,


Today was a very special day, for on this day we got to go to German School!

Class began with the kids' presentation of their Speisekarte, which I must say were excellently done. Their were a good deal of creative restaurant names in there, and I could only wish that German food were actually as cheap as they made it out to be.
Going along with this, I quickly ran over the different kinds of restaurants found in Germany, includingGasthäuser/Gaststuben, Cafés, Kneipen. This lead to an introduction of the idea of Gemütlichkeit, the emphasis on "coziness" found in Gasthäuser, e.g. dark lighting, lots of wood furnishing, pastoral scenes and paraphernalia on the walls, dinners that last for hours where you sit around just for the sake of relaxing and taking in the atmosphere.

A new game was tried today as well, which I have tentatively named Konjugieren-Springen-Werfen-Chaos-Spiel (or "The hop-scotch throwy thing"). Basically, the kids drew a card with a subject (e.g. ich, du...) and a conjugated regular verb. They had to say the subject and verb out loud, then jump onto the hopscotch course (made of verb endings: e, t, st, en) and end up on the right ending for that verb conjugation, then throw a tennis ball into a bucket. IF all of that was done successfully, their team gained a point. We had teams Apfelsaft and Orangensaft.

The primary topic of learning today was family vocabulary, as found on page 19 of the Kursbuch. This lead also into an introduction of various personal adjectives: klein, groß, klug, doof, dumm, nett, schön, hübsch, ärgerlich, sympatisch (some of those were requested on the spot as opposed to being in my original list. I will let you guess which ones).
This was followed up with the first of many possessive adjectives we will be learning this year: mein/meine, dein/deine.

A little extra knowledge was gained today when I noticed that the kids weren't always understanding what I meant when trying to get them to stop talking. Thus we were introduced to the terms "Halt den Maul/den Mund," "halt die Klappe." I mentioned these as being ways of telling someone to be quiet to varying degrees of politeness, the least polite one being "halt die Klappe." I'd like to mention at this point that these phrases were introduced to me as being mostly acceptable for public usage. If this is a mistaken understanding and these phrases are ruder than I knew, please do feel free to correct me as I would not want to teach something inappropriate by mistake!


Class wrapped up with a rousing reprise of "Hast du mein Obst?" outside.


The homework for this week:


Stammbäume
-Make your own family tree using the vocabulary found on page 19.
-Include the names of the family members, their relation to you (auf Deutsch, e.g. "meine Mutter, mein Vater...)
-Include pictures. These may be hand-drawn, photographs, or even pictures of celebrities/cartoons/fictional characters from magazines or online...

Bonus (+5 on the first quiz)
-Write 5 sentences describing different family members. Use the verb "sein" and the adjectives learned today.


 -Mit Vergnügen

8. Oktober - mitten im Herbst

Grüße an die Füße,


Today was a day of surprise, suspense, and Speise! Well, mostly of Speise. A significant chunk of our time was devoted to learning food vocabulary, namely the below-listed:
das Cola (soda)
die Limonade (lemonade or generic for soft drink)
der Apfelsaft (apple juice)
der Orangensaft (orange juice)
das Wasser (water)
die Milch (milk)
der Kaffee (coffee)
der Tee (tea)
der Hamburger
die Pizza
das Brot (bread)
das Ei (egg)
der Käse (cheese)
die Wurst (sausage)
die Brezel/Bretzel (pretzel)
die Suppe (soup)
die Pommes Frites (fries)
das Obst (fruit)
das Gemüse (veggies)
der Kuchen (cake)

With these words, we played another memory game, which seemed to go over well, and also introduced a new game that has been a staple of my class for a while now: "Hast du mein Obst?!" wherein the children ask each other "HAST DU MEIN OBST?!" and must answer "ICH HABE DEIN OBST NICHT!" the goal being to make one another laugh.
I was an easy target this time, somehow, as apparently this year's group of kids outclasses all my previous ones in their ability to make me laugh!

We also went over regular verbs (introduced with a rousing round of bingo) and learned the below-listed conjugation rules which will be re-introduced and emphasized frequently throughout the year.

1. Every verb has a stem that does not change in the present tense (e.g. MACHen, SPIELen TRINKen...) 
2. Each subject adds a different ending to the stem of a verb, the same ending each time:

• Ich: stem + e ("MACHe")
• Du: stem + st ("MACHst")
• er/sie/es: stem + t ("MACHt")
• Ihr: stem + t ("MACHt")
• Wir: stem + en ("MACHen")
• Sie/sie: stem + en ("MACHen")

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for....

Hausaufgabe:

Speisekarten

• Make a menu for your own imaginary restaurant
• Invent a restaurant name, be original!
• List out the food and drinks with both the names (including articles) and pictures
• Include prices (in euros) for each menu item
• Make it pretty! Be creative!
• Pictures can be hand-drawn, cut out of magazines, photographs or digital pictures. 

~Mit Vergnügen

1.Oktober - Feier des Wiedervereinigungstages

Grüße an die Füße,


Today marked our annual celebration of German American Friendship Day as well as the Reunification Day for united Germany. Accordingly, we took a step forward in our coverage of the history and culture of the former East German regime as centralized in East Berlin.

Class time began with a piece of German history in itself, the 80's classic "99 Luftballons" by Nena. We went over the Furcht that was a fact of life for decades after the end of World War 2, when the Nervenkrieg was in full swing and the USA and USSR began their epic nuclear staring contest from opposing sides of the Atlantic. This served as our segue into what will be this month's history lesson: a re-introduction to the formation of the twin Germanys in post-war Europe, and a single, important detail about life in the DDR, namely the role played by the Stasi.

We went over the overall modus operandi of the Staatssicherheitpolizei in the DDR, highlighting the scope of their operations with a few facts and figures: by 1989, there were 91,000 paid employees in the Stasi operating with a network of approximately 300,000 civilian informants (out of a population of 16 million).

My goal is for us to have a total of 7 history lessons over the course of the school year to cover different aspects of life in the DDR. I think we're off to a nice start!

In regard to grammar, we went back over the meaning and uses of Haben and Sein, reviewed numbers 1-1000 (board races!) as well as the three definite articles (nominative): der, die, das.

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for...

As the students should now consider themselves exhorted to do their workbook homework on a separate sheet of paper (or to have it photocopied), the one and only time I will accept late work will be this upcoming weekend. Last week's homework (Page 8, Exercises 8 and 9) will be accepted next week alongside this week's homework:

  Nachforschungsarbeit

·       Answer 5 Questions (English) over the Division and Reunification of Germany

                                               i.     Complete sentences for each answer.

                                             ii.     Bonus points if attempted in German.

1.    What areas of Germany were controlled by each of the allies after World War 2?

2.    What were the two halves of divided Germany called, and when was each half „founded?“

3.    Why did the Soviets build a wall in Berlin? When did they build it?

4.    What were the „Stasi“ and what did they do?

5.    When did the wall come down?

 ~Mit Vergnügen