29.September - Stasi sind überall

Guten Abend, liebe Eltern!


Today we celebrated German American Friendship Day, beginning today's class with a trivia game lead by Fr. Lussem. Candy was on the line, so naturally the kids did their best to win, though in the end, only one could come out the other side a champion.

We reviewed Haben and Sein both with making up non-sequiturs/sentences and acting them out--my favorite thing to do--and doing a crossword.

Today also was our first time this school year to engage in a listening comprehension exercise. The song of the day was 99 Luftballons by Nena. As will be done intermittently throughout the year, basically we listened to the song, then followed along with lyric sheets that had words omitted. The objective was to fill in the missing words (provided also in a wordbank) based on what was heard. Whenever this is done, and this is important, the kids are supposed to keep the sheets afterward. Every so often, we will have a quiz over the vocabulary from these exercises.

This song exercise also served as a nice and convenient transition point to our historical/geographical theme for the year: The GDR. We discussed the tension of the Cold War that this song is about, and then gave an overview of Germany's division, life under Soviet rule and finally re-unification. Throughout the year, we will have different historical units going into detail over different elements of life in the GDR, so today was basically the intro session.

And now.... the homework.

Answer the following 5 questions with complete sentences. Please choose either English or German. It will be worth double points if answered in complete, German sentences.

1. How was Germany divided up by the allies after WW2 (what country controlled each part)?
2. What were the two Germanies called, and when was each officially founded?
3. Why was the Wall built? When was it built?
4. Who were the Stasi and what did they do?
5. When did the Wall come down?

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22.September - Deutsch können wir, Englisch leider nicht

Guten Tag, Sonnenschein! Die Erde grüßt dich und küsst dich!

Today we began what looks to be the beginnings of a new tradition in the 5.Klasse, namely introducing a daily 'ice breaker' exercise. We always did these before, but they tended to vary pretty wildly from morning to morning. Now, I'm hoping to standardize them a bit more.
What we're starting to do is use comics written in German with questions listed below them in English, which the kids then answer based on what the comic says, what's going on, usw. It went rather well today, so I hope to continue doing it.

We reviewed the material from last week:

• Greetings for different times of day
• Introducing oneself
• Numbers 1-1000

As part of this review, we played a memory game where they had to match up cards in pairs, listing both the written-out numbers and the actual digits. 

After the break, we introduced the two 'cornerstone' verbs, Haben and Sein. This was followed up by one of the most unique sessions of board races I've seen so far in the last 5 years. Typically, they spelled the German spot on! But they kept on misspelling the English words. Would you believe the word that needed to be re-written the most, out of ALL the German we did, was 'Sandwich'? 

And now, the homework:

Workbook

P. 8

Exercises 8,9

and

Conjugate out Haben and Sein in the present tense.

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15. September 2012, Erster Schultag!!!!

Grüzi alle,

Welcome to another year of the weekend German school! I am your host and guide through this, another academic year, and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you and you children. 

To give you a little bit of background on myself, in case you didn't read the blurb, this is my 5th year teaching at the German school, and I like to think that I'm getting better with age. My bachelor's degree is in German and Philosophy, and during the week I do a professional variation on the same thing I do here, teaching people, only my 'day job' is actually teaching corporate reps how to use software. 


My intention for the year is for us to learn as much as possible in as fun a manner as possible. 
In order to facilitate this, I ask just a few things of you:

1. Please make sure your child always brings pencils, a notebook, scratch paper and their books (both course and work) to class
2. Please remind them to bring their homework. I do not accept late work. If a child is absent, then I expect them to bring the homework for each class period missed with them the day of their return. Alongside the skill assessments in each semester's report cards, I do also give objective grades based on these assignments. 
3. Please give minimal help with the homework. If they are struggling with understanding what to do, then by all means please assist, but please, under no circumstances give them the answers or help them write anything.
4. Whenever you or the student have questions about material covered in class or assigned for homework, please contact me.

Today was an introductory and review session, focused primarily on getting to know one another and acquainting ourselves with the classroom procedures. My general method of teaching is "Learn then Play," as in we go over some concept, then play a game based on it. These games often times start out rather easy when a concept is still new, and then grow increasingly complex once we are exploring concepts further or are reviewing them. This is why we've consistently been the loudest classroom--not a day goes by without playing. 

We began with a survey wherein the students wrote out such things as "Ich heisse...." "mein Lieblingsessen ist...." "mein Lieblingsschulfach ist...." and of course, "Ich will Deutsch weiterlernen, weil...." 

This lead into review of some basics:

• Greetings for different times of day (Guten Tag/Abend/Morgen, Gute Nacht) 
• Introducing oneself and asking someone's name
• Days of the week, months of the year

The game we played was what I've affectionately dubbed, "I need to name this game." We sat in a circle and had different motions associated with each greeting. Each child had to make the appropriate motion to match the greeting said to them by a neighbor, or they were out. 

Following up, we did another getting acquainted exercise, the People Search, where we asked each other questions about favorite things, preferences, until our forms were filled out, then presented who liked what of each category. 

To end the day, we played a classic game, "Hast Du Mein Obst?" the objective of which is to make your neighbor laugh by asking "Hast du mein obst?" in as amusing/disquieting a manner as you can while they try to answer "Nein, ich habe dein Obst nicht." 

And now, the moment of truth!

Hausaufgabe:

Arbeitsbuch

P. 6-7

Exercises 2-6

Please photocopy the pages or write down the answers on a separate sheet of paper. Do not just write in the book, because then they have to tear out the pages and mutilate the poor thing. 

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