1.Okt - Comparing

The class began like any other class, with German words. It also continued and eventually ended that way.

To be more specific, we began with "Meine Woche," and then had the quiz over favorites as had been promised.

Our listening comprehension was suitably silly to regain our energy after the quiz, namely "Der Käse Song" from my favorite Austrian, Michael Buchinger on YouTube. Those old timers in the audience will quickly realize it's a parody of a song from 1990. I'll leave it at that to let it be an age test for you.

Our lesson was beginning a unit on comparatives and superlatives, today being our initial foray into "Comparatives." We talked about how to form comparative adjectives,which I have broken down into a few general steps (bearing in mind there are plenty of irregulars out there):

For "More"

• Take a normal adjective and add an -er to the end
• If the adjective has one vowel (like "stark" or "groß") then add an umlaut
• use "als" to mean "than" in a comparative phrase

Ich bin groß becomes Ich bin größer als  (I'm big... I'm bigger than...) 

For "Less"

• nicht so {adjective} wie

Ich bin groß... Ich bin nicht so groß wie... (I'm big... I'm not as big as...) 

For examples, each student was semi-randomly assigned a celebrity to whom they would compare themselves in six ways. My favorites were "Ich bin nicht so reich wie Taylor Swift" and "Ich bin nicht so blau wie Snuggles."

To eat up our energy before lunch, we also had a game of DANGER ADJECTIVES which is a name I made up on the spot but think is pretty good. Basically we'd toss the sparkly koosh ball at one another in a circle while calling out a descriptor of that person.
Example: "Größer!" (small person throws ball at taller person)

After the break, we attempted a revamp of something I've tried in previous years that, well, has never gone quite as planned. I lowered the ante a bit, so instead of composing raps they simply had to make haikus. This went far better and won them sufficient bragging rights such that we marched into the 8th grade classroom and said "Wir sind besser!" in unison. It turned out the class wasn't there at the time, but at least we had the fun of confusing Frau Carlander. 

For next week, please bring a wi-fi capable device.