27. April - Mauerfall

Guten Tag und Guten Appetit,


Today, a historic event occurred: the Wall came down. I do not mean that there was a Pink Floyd concert--had there been one, I'd have been absent today--but rather, that the "Berlin Wall" we made as a class a few weeks ago was rent asunder with great wrath.
I shall start from the beginning.

To open class, the instructions were for everyone to write at least 5 random words (Deutsch!) in the following categories: Jobs, Names, Vehicles, Careers, Numbers, Animals, Foods, Hobbys. They were not told why to do this. Also, they were to write down, randomly, any questions on any topic at all that they could think of, (e.g. "Wo ist mein Schuh?" "Wie steht die Uhr?" "Wer ist Hans?" usw.)
Shortly afterward, we did our final listening comprehension of the year, "Dein Herz" by L'Ame Immortelle, an extremely silly love song so very over the top that translating it lead to endless giggles. This is one of my personal favorites.
Finally, the reason for the initial exercise was finally revealed: they were to use them in a role play. The students were divided into pairs: 2 were the Parents/Grandparents, and 2 were the kids. They were playing families that had been divided by the Berlin Wall for 40 years, and who were finally getting to see each other for the very first time after travel restrictions had been lifted on 9.Nov.1989.
The parents/grandparents (and sometimes crazy aunts/uncles when we had an odd number) were to ask their kids/grandkids the following questions which I wrote on the board:

1. Was macht ihr zum Beruf? (answer: list a 'job' word)
2. Wie viel Kinder habt ihr? (answer: list a number word)
3. Wie heißen sie? (Names)
4. Habt ihr Haustiere? Wie heißen sie? (Animals, Names)
5. Was sind eure Lieblingsspeisen? (Food)
6. Was sind eure Hobbys? (Hobbys)
7. Wie heißen eure Kinder? (names)
8. Was fährt ihr? 

And finally, in response to all this, the 'kids' had to turn around and ask their long-last parents the random questions they had previously written down. This lead to such exchanges:

Parent: "Was macht ihr zum Beruf? Und was fährt ihr?"

Kid1: "Ich bin Zahnartz. Ich habe kein Auto."

Kid2: "Ich bin Drachenflieger. Ich fahre tausende Katzen."

P: "Wie viel Kinder habt ihr?"

K1: "1294."

K2: "3."

P: "Wie heißen sie?"

K1: *Deep breath, starts saying names....*

K2: "Hans, Gretel, Hans Jr."

My favorite exchange:

P: "Habt ihr Fragen für mich, liebe Kinder?"

K1: "Wo ist mein Schuh?"

K2: "Wo ist die Toilette!?"

P: "Ich gehe nach Haus." 

I suppose you could call that, "Family Reunion Mad-Libs." 

Afterward, we all tore down the wall, yelling "FREIHEIT!" 

After the break, we went over the content of the test for 2 weeks from now, and I took any questions they may have over the material:

• Modal verbs (use, meaning, conjugation)
• Regular verbs (conjugation and place in a sentence)
• Time (12 hr, 24 hr)
• Food vocab
• Family vocab
• Articles (der, die, das, in accusative and nominative)
• Possessives (mein(e), dein(e), sein(e), euer/eure, ihr(e))

Most kids had questions over how to tell time, so we reviewed this and then played "Herr Fuchs" outside until Singprobe. 

I recommend they begin studying this week, or at least looking over past notes and homework, so that the final week's studying isn't such a burden. Next week will be our review day, meaning we shall play Jeopardy.

Mit Vergnügen~