16. November '13 - "Besser schöner reicher schneller!"

"Your face is disruptive!"
My favorite quote from today. It's followed closely by,

"Ich bin nicht so haarig wie Sven."
Also true. No one is as hairy as Sven.

Today we covered comparatives, so we opened class by comparing ourselves with one another in an of course professional, academic, and orderly fashion. In groups of 3, each group compared themselves with the other group in up to 5 ways with adjectives provided on the board, e.g. klug, schön, haarig, groß, klein, etc. Apparently there was disagreement as to which group was haariger, as both group were convinced it was the others. We thankfully avoided debating this as things could've otherwise gotten truly hairy.
We went over basic comparisons: "so (or genauso) _____ wie" (just as ____ as), "nicht so _____ wie" (not as ____ as) and "____er als" (something-er than, e.g. "taller than")
Then in pairs, we compared people in the class with celebrities, with my having assigned the celebrity and the pairs choosing a person. Students were compared to Elvis Presley, Selena Gomez, Barack Obama, and I tried to assign my favorite actors, but none of them had any idea who Hugh Jackman is, and only one of them knew Clark Gable (guess who).

And then there was lunch and the Ruhepause for those who brought homework. Please write homework answers on separate sheets of paper instead of in the book--it makes life easier for all involved.

Between the Pause and the singing, we went over dative declination of the pronouns "ich" "du" and "ihr," so "mir" "dir" and "euch." This was followed up with the most common phrases that use dative pronouns, which are used VERY commonly in everyday conversation:

• "Wie geht's dir?"
• "Mir ist kalt/heiß"
• "Es tut mir leid"
• "Es tut (mir) weh!" 

We had a lot of unexpected fun with those last two phrases. 

Then we played, "Ich und Sven," where we sat in a circle, threw Sven at each other, and whoever caught Sven had to both make a comparative statement aloud about themselves and Sven (hence the quotation up top) AND repeat the statement made by the person before them before tossing Sven onward.

And then there was singing. So very much singing. We're only 6 weeks away from Christmas, folks.

And then the day came to a close. 

Homework:

Workbook (yes, I remembered we had those)

P. 16, #4 (a-c)

P. 20, #6

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