Today was scary, absolutely terrifying. It was also the day when we unofficially celebrated Halloween.
The spooky day was begun with a spooky listening comprehension exercise courtesy of Rammstein's Rosenrot. I will remind again that there will before long be a quiz over the vocabulary-to-date from these listening comprehension exercises, so please make sure your child keeps these somewhere they can be retrieved when need arises.
We then stretched our spooky brain muscles with a scary essay, "Das Schaurigste Ding," wherein each child described in at least 10 sentences what to them seemed to be the scariest thing of all. Answers ranged from such staples as zombies and more zombies to invisible cats, fry cooks and 'blood and eyes'. Not disembodied or haunted blood and eyes, but just plain blood and eyes, apparently. At least one kid will not grow up to be a surgeon or taxidermist, it seems.
Expounding upon the previously learned my (mein(e)) and your (dein(e)) possessive adjectives, we went over kein(e) as well, which lead us into the beard game. "Bart, Kein Bart" is basically a mimicking game--each child would say a collection of phrases (Bart, Kein Bart, Mein Bart, Dein Bart) and do motions associated with them, and another child would have to mimic them exactly or else be cast forth from the game.
To exorcise our wiggles after lunch, we played "Vampir," a variant on "Stasi Mann" from earlier in the year. In a nutshell, each round the König(in)vampir would claim another victim, who would join the secret vampire army. Each round, the vampires grew in number. If the child who was the Polizist did not correctly guess who the König(in)vampir was in time, he would be overrun by vampires and lose the game. Out of 5 games, the Polizist only survived twice.
And then suddenly, there was a parade. We went ahead and joined this, marching around the school in costume. In case you were at all curious, my outfit was that of a Stasi Agent, for they can look like anyone.
Ending the day, candy was distributed, but only if the children used the terms they were taught for expressing desire (gern haben) and requesting (möchten, bitte). They were then allowed to trade candy amongst themselves as well, but only if they continued using the proper phrasing.
Now, the homework:
Workbook
P.20, Exercises 4,5
P.22, Exercise 9
P.23, Exercises 1-3
Mit Vergnügen!
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
20.Oktober - neue Freunde auf dem Mond
Today we learned that the best places to make new friends are where you'd least expect it, such as on the moon or during the middle of a zombie attack.
The day began with another handout from the Sandra and Woo comic. This then lead into a quick review of the conjugation of regular verbs as well as "sein," and then we did a listening comprehension exercise with Mein Herz Brennt from Rammstein. Please do remind your children to keep all listening comprehension exercises as we will, before long, have a quiz over their vocabulary selections.
Now for the bit that will make the introductory statement make sense. Divided up into partners, the students made interrogative dialogues with one another. They played the roles of people who ran into each other in whatever situation they could imagine, and then they would ask each other questions they thought would be relevant to get to know each other in these situations. For some reason, it seems the most relevant questions to ask a new friend during a zombie attack are such as, "Was trinkst du?" or "So... wie findest du diese Zombies?"
One partner pair that may or may not have just been me talking at myself played a pair of astronauts unexpectedly running into each other on the moon.
For the rest of the afternoon after lunch, after going further into interrogative words (wo, wie, wer, was, warum, wohin, woher) we played "Stasimann," a game where one person in the class was a stasi agent or informant, and every round, someone was taken off to prison for unlawful conduct. The class was then allowed to ask one question of me, the narrator, to figure out who the Stasi was. Some questions were gamebreakers, e.g. "Ist es ein Mädchen?" when we only had two boys in the class, whereas others weren't particularly helpful, e.g. "Was ist die Farbe seines Schuhes?" (every kid but one had black shoes).
And now, for the homework:
Workbook
The day began with another handout from the Sandra and Woo comic. This then lead into a quick review of the conjugation of regular verbs as well as "sein," and then we did a listening comprehension exercise with Mein Herz Brennt from Rammstein. Please do remind your children to keep all listening comprehension exercises as we will, before long, have a quiz over their vocabulary selections.
Now for the bit that will make the introductory statement make sense. Divided up into partners, the students made interrogative dialogues with one another. They played the roles of people who ran into each other in whatever situation they could imagine, and then they would ask each other questions they thought would be relevant to get to know each other in these situations. For some reason, it seems the most relevant questions to ask a new friend during a zombie attack are such as, "Was trinkst du?" or "So... wie findest du diese Zombies?"
One partner pair that may or may not have just been me talking at myself played a pair of astronauts unexpectedly running into each other on the moon.
For the rest of the afternoon after lunch, after going further into interrogative words (wo, wie, wer, was, warum, wohin, woher) we played "Stasimann," a game where one person in the class was a stasi agent or informant, and every round, someone was taken off to prison for unlawful conduct. The class was then allowed to ask one question of me, the narrator, to figure out who the Stasi was. Some questions were gamebreakers, e.g. "Ist es ein Mädchen?" when we only had two boys in the class, whereas others weren't particularly helpful, e.g. "Was ist die Farbe seines Schuhes?" (every kid but one had black shoes).
And now, for the homework:
Workbook
S.12, Übung 11, S.15, Übung 1, 3, S. 19, Übung 3
Mit Vergnügen~
Saturday, October 13, 2012
13.Oktober - EXTREME Hopscotch
Your first reaction to the title of this blog entry might be that I'm exaggerating or just typing in random words for the sake of getting your attention. Fortunately for the both of us, neither is the case. This is an actual game.
The day began with the children presenting the Speisekarte they made for homework--as always, they were absolutely darling! I'm did wonder why almost every single one of them made pretzels the most expensive thing on the menu, though. Were they just incredible pretzels?
This was followed up by jumping into our next vocabulary unit: Familie! The necessary terms are on page 19 of the kursbuch, and in addition we learned a few complementary words:
Die Geschwister - siblings
Das Haustier - pet
Das Lebensmittelgeschäft - grocery store (it just came up over the course of the day)
Adding to this was a short unit over personal descriptive adjectives, such words to describe oneself and others as klug, groß, klein, gemein, nett, usw. We then divided up into pairs and described an imaginary friend using 'sein' and the adjectives list. The vast majority of them were small, nice and in possession of far more limbs than would be considered normal. One of them was a rainbow pinata-shaped creature that eats children.
After lunch, the game that is the namesake of this entry was played: EXTREME Hopscotch (tm)
Essentially, it goes like this: a hopscotch course is laid on the floor, each space being a pronoun (ich, du, er, sie, es, Sie, ihr, wir...). On the other end of the course, about 6 feet away, were four buckets, each labeled with a verb ending (e, t, st, en). For each student's turn, I would say a conjugated verb, e.g. "Ich spiele." They would then run the course, stopping at the appropriate pronoun, and then throw a tennis ball into the appropriate basket (so in this example, hop through the course to 'ich,' then throw a ball into 'e.')
For double or triple points, they could repeat what I had said and then say what it meant. The game-winning score was "Du spielst."
With that, we ended the day.
Now for the homework!
Stammbäume (family trees):
Make a family tree.
The day began with the children presenting the Speisekarte they made for homework--as always, they were absolutely darling! I'm did wonder why almost every single one of them made pretzels the most expensive thing on the menu, though. Were they just incredible pretzels?
This was followed up by jumping into our next vocabulary unit: Familie! The necessary terms are on page 19 of the kursbuch, and in addition we learned a few complementary words:
Die Geschwister - siblings
Das Haustier - pet
Das Lebensmittelgeschäft - grocery store (it just came up over the course of the day)
Adding to this was a short unit over personal descriptive adjectives, such words to describe oneself and others as klug, groß, klein, gemein, nett, usw. We then divided up into pairs and described an imaginary friend using 'sein' and the adjectives list. The vast majority of them were small, nice and in possession of far more limbs than would be considered normal. One of them was a rainbow pinata-shaped creature that eats children.
After lunch, the game that is the namesake of this entry was played: EXTREME Hopscotch (tm)
Essentially, it goes like this: a hopscotch course is laid on the floor, each space being a pronoun (ich, du, er, sie, es, Sie, ihr, wir...). On the other end of the course, about 6 feet away, were four buckets, each labeled with a verb ending (e, t, st, en). For each student's turn, I would say a conjugated verb, e.g. "Ich spiele." They would then run the course, stopping at the appropriate pronoun, and then throw a tennis ball into the appropriate basket (so in this example, hop through the course to 'ich,' then throw a ball into 'e.')
For double or triple points, they could repeat what I had said and then say what it meant. The game-winning score was "Du spielst."
With that, we ended the day.
Now for the homework!
Stammbäume (family trees):
Make a family tree.
- Include pictures (photos, clip art, celebrity pics from magazines, hand drawn, usw..)
- Include names and family relations (e.g. "Onkel Jim")
- Use at least all the terms on page 19 of the book, but feel free to go further
- For 10 bonus points, write 5 sentences describing family members
- Make it pretty (lines and stick figures on notebook paper will not be accepted!)
Mit Vergnügen!
Sunday, October 7, 2012
6.Oktober - Essen macht alles besser
Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein!
Saturday saw us once again opening the day with a comic worksheet, and once again I was pleasantly surprised at how well the kids understood what was going on and their ability to describe a dialogue that was entirely in German.
We reviewed haben and sein, and then segued into something we will be touching upon throughout the year, namely regular verb conjugation. The way I've traditionally presented this is by introducing guidelines for how regular verbs are handled:
Saturday saw us once again opening the day with a comic worksheet, and once again I was pleasantly surprised at how well the kids understood what was going on and their ability to describe a dialogue that was entirely in German.
We reviewed haben and sein, and then segued into something we will be touching upon throughout the year, namely regular verb conjugation. The way I've traditionally presented this is by introducing guidelines for how regular verbs are handled:
- The stem of a regular verb remains the same
- The endings for the conjugations are easily predictable and hang on the pronoun choice
Ich: stem + e
Du: stem +st
er/sie/es: stem + t
Wir: stem + en
ihr: stem + t
Sie/sie: stem + en
The reasoning I've tried to hammer home behind this is that, through memorization of these guidelines, the students should be able to make an educated guess as to how to conjugate a regular verb they've never so much as seen before.
Following this, we went over food vocabulary and played a memory game to go with them. These we will cover again, and they will be included on our first quiz in coming weeks.
And now.... the homework.
Speisekarten (menus)
- Create a menu for your own, made-up restaurant.
- Name the restaurant whatever you'd like
- List out the foods and drinks (including articles) in German
- Include pictures (either drawn, clipart, pics from online, magazines...)
- Include prices (no need to attempt to accurately guess the market price)
- MAKE IT PRETTY!!!!!! These will be displayed in the classroom for posterity for coming years to see.
Mit Vergnügen
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