28.April - Aufsatztag

Guten... Morgen?

While technically it is Sunday, I am going to act as though it were in fact still Saturday.

Today's class period found itself spent mostly on writing our essays over the topic, "Ein Tag im Weltraum" or "A Day in Space." For at least 15 sentences, each student went over the following:
If they were able to spend a day in outerspace...

• How can they get to space?
• What should they do to prepare?
• Who may go with them? 
• What do they want to do in space?
• What do they find in space?

The intention was to use regular verbs, Haben and Sein and modal verbs to form a coherent body of prose. For those that did not finish, or were not in attendance, completing the essay shall be homework.

Along with the essay itself, each student is expected to provide a colored illustration of their day in space. 

Next week shall be the review day; we will be playing Jeopardy as usual. The week afterward (12. May) shall be the test date.

Mit Vergnügen!

21.April - Letztes Stück der Normalität

Guten Abend,

This class period marked our final "normal" class of the school year. As mentioned last week, the upcoming classes shall be as follows:
28.4 - Aufsatz (essay) Tag
5.5 - Review Day
12.5 - Test Day
19.5 - Watch-the-graduation-ceremony-and-then eat-hotdogs day.

Today, we began with a quick introduction to the verbs and vocabulary associated with morning routines (page 91 in the textbook) and wrote out and presented descriptions of our typical mornings.

We also finished up our unit on modal verbs by introducing "müssen" to the mix, bringing our list to the following: können, dürfen, sollen, wollen, möchten, müssen.


Before breaking for lunch followed by Singprobe, we had a raucous round of board races with the two teams, "Erdbeerhunden" and "Schokoladenkatzen" going head to head with translation questions. In the end, Schokoladenkatzen came out victorious.


Now then, the homework is as follows:

Arbeitsbuch
S. 103, example 15

Prepare ideas for next week's essay: "One day in outerspace" (Ein Tag im Weltraum), wherein the students shall describe what they would do if they had a day to explore space. Please note this is to be written in the simple present tense, not the subjunctive.

Mit Vergnügen!

Der Annatanz - 14.April

Guten Abend,

The rest of the school year is scheduled as follows:
21.4 - normal class period
28.4 - Aufsatztag (be present to write our final long-essay in class)
5.5 - Wiederholungstag (be present for the test review)
12.5 - Prüfungstag (test day)
19.5 - Final Day



Today started out like any other class day:
We began with a partner activity, wherein the students made argument dialogues about what to do when terribly, terribly bored on a weekend. This lead to such gems as "Basketball? Ich hasse Basketball! Das ist doof!" "Dein Gesicht is doof!" and the like.

This was followed up by a review of the possessive adjectives learned to date:
mein(e) - mine
dein(e) - yours

To which we have now added:
euer/eure - yours (plural)
ihr(e) - hers
sein(e) - his

We then played "Hast du mein Obst?" for the first time in quite a while to refresh our memory on possessive adjectives, and that's when the madness was born. One student's turn in the game (the goal of which being to make one's neighbor laugh) ended up being an unusually elaborate dance during which she sang the standard line of "Hast du mein Obst?" for a good 30 seconds at least. This caught on and quickly became a meme.

At the end of the day, after we did a reading comprehension exercise over a Deutsche Welle article (www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6441611,00.html) and shortly before doing Singprobe, we did a little parade.
With the two boys playing improvised drums (banging on notebooks and a basketball) and the girls dancing and singing, we performed the song and dance routine, now affectionately dubbed "Der Annatanz" up and down our section of the hallway for about a minute before running back inside.


And now, the homework:

Workbook
P. 83, Exercise 8
P. 85, Exercise 12