Urteilstag und gern Haben - 28.1

Guten Tag,

Today was the day the class received their Zeugnisse. Enclosed were both the 'subjective' grades, wherein I gave my assessment of the students' overall skill levels as well as behavior, and the 'objective' semester average, wherein the grades for each assignment collected were listed out along with the average for the first half of the year.
The subjective part went as follows: (1-6, 1 being the best score)

• Betragen (conduct)
• Fleiss (effort)
• Schulbesuch (attendance)
• Grammatik (grammar skills)
• Lesen (reading ability)
• Hörverständnis (listening comprehension)
• Rechtschreiben (writing ability)

I'm available to answer any questions about the grades given should you have any. Please send the Zeugnisse back next week, signed. 

We did another Hörverständnis exercise today with the semi-romantic song, "Ohne Dich" by Rammstein. This segued into a further lesson on the accusative case, whereupon we reviewed previously established points and elaborated further with the introduction of accusative pronouns, namely "mich" and "dich."

From there, we played a game, a variant of the classic "Hast Du Mein Obst" called "Ich habe dich gern."

Kids said to each other, "Ich habe dich gern. Hast du mich gern?" and were answered with, "NEIN!" the object being to make one another laugh. Whoever laughed in this exchange (the one professing they like the other, or the one doing the rejecting) was out. 

FYI--I did my best to emphasize the use of "gern haben" in the casual, 'liking' sense to keep it appropriate.

Also covered was communicating not just liking, but 'favorites' as well, including using Liebling--- and "am liebsten haben." 

After the midday break, we reviewed the previously-covered modal verbs ('möchten', dürfen) and added können to the mix. We played "Was Kann Ich?" which was essentially charades with the added bonus of the kids having to guess in complete sentences, e.g. "Er kann schwimmen!" if a boy was up in front miming he was swimming, etc. 

We ended the day with a communication exercise; the kids filled out questionnaires listing their favorite things in several categories (lieblingstier, lieblingssport, usw.) and had to ask other students what they liked as well. Those who found matches then communicated this to the group at the end, e.g. "Ich habe Snickers gern. Snickers ist mein Lieblingscandy. Soandso hat es auch gern!" 

The homework is as follows: 

Arbeitsbuch

P.71

#13-15

~Mit Vergnügen

Wieder Da! 21.1.12

Did anyone else notice that today's date is a palindrome?

I've finally returned to teaching after 5 weeks off, this length break having been due to both the Christmas/New Year's holidays as well as a business trip to France that occupied far more time than I would have liked (but that's what happens when you get bought by a French company).

The report I received from the substitute, Hr. Bauer, was excellent, and I was simply overjoyed!

Today's lesson found us starting off with a listening-comprehension exercise, the song being "Nichts Bringt Mich Runter" by Ich&Ich. I highly recommend the group, by the way.

From there, we delved into a subject that will be repeated throughout the rest of the year: the accusative case and the corresponding declensions of definite articles, indefinite articles and the 1st-person pronoun (mich). This was followed by a rousing game of "Wer Hat Den Schlüssel?"

Today also saw another point of this year's Landeskunde theme over the DDR and Reunification: "Selbstidentifizierung der DDR gegenüber den Westen." The children were divided into two groups and given selections from a young adult book, Die Flaschenpost, about a pair of 12-year-olds from opposite sides of the Berlin Wall who end up being accidental penpals when one of them throws a message-in-a-bottle (Flaschenpost) into the Spree River, hoping it'd go off to faraway lands.

The two groups answered questions about the reading selections and summarized their selections for the other group. It went marginally well--I think the passages may have been too difficult, but it was worth a try. We will if the selections for next weekend go over better.

And now, the homework.

Hausaufgabe:

• DDR Brieffreunde
• Act as though you have a penpal in the old DDR. They can be named whatever you like. Write them a letter asking questions about what their life is like, anything you want to know about. 
• Total of 10 sentences.