16. Feb '19 - Princess Combat

Guten Tag!

Our day began with what is our new normal, a mixture of listening comprehension and translation/reading skills. We listened to and then translated "Mein Herz Brennt" by Rammstein. This went decently well, and we managed to complete the entire thing in about 40 minutes.

We then had the last two "Meine Woche" presentations.

Our unit on the past tense is now done, and starting next week we will begin learning about the future tense.

After lunch, we played our "Eisenzeit Krieg" wargame, but this time we added a level of complexity. After a few rounds with romans and germans, we switched it up and played the Pony Princesses of Equestria against each other. This was a substantially more complex version of the game with more rules, and it seemed to be a smash hit.

Enjoy the long weekend!

Mit Vergnügen

9.Februar '19 - Familie bis ins Mark

Guten Tag!

Today we did something different. Firstly, we opened with a Meine Woche from a student, and we will do so for a few more students next week as well.

Then, since it seems we need some help with our reading comprehension, we did a challenge. Instead of simply listening to a song and seeing what we could glean from it, I gave them the lyrics beforehand in entirety, this being to the song "Familie Bis ins Mark" from the german dub of My Little Pony. Each student was assigned a stanza to translate.
First, I gave them some translation strategies, such as:

1. Underline and mark all the nouns (always capitalized) to look up more easily
2. Locate all the verbs, figure out their infinitive, and look those up. 
3. Figure out the tense of the sentence to help with its meaning (is there a haben, sein, or werden in the front? etc). 

This ending up taking quite a while and doubled as a lesson on how to use a dictionary, which apparently was a new skill to learn. 

Afterward, we discussed our findings and listened to the actual song. 

The rest of our time we ended our previous unit on the past tense, and our lesson on Iron Age warfare, writing essay/stories over the adventures of either an ancient germanic warrior or a roman legionnaire. Those who did not finish this must do so before next weekend. 

Mit Vergnügen

2.Februar '19 - Tests and Melting

Guten Tag!

Now that we have all finally thawed out, and the world is one big melting mushy mess, we managed to meet again for school without the danger of ice and freezing to death.

We spent some time with student-lead presentations of "Meine Woche" to begin with, which went rather well, better than in some years past. Then after the usual hilarity, we flew right into a practice test.

We spent most of the day doing the level 1 listening/viewing and reading practice exams from the AATG. This was simply a benchmark and to get everyone acquainted with what to expect. We will take the level 1 again "for real" in March.

Scores ranged from the 40's to 70% on listening/viewing, and 30's to 60% on reading. From what I've been told, as discouraging as that may sound, for 6th and 7th grade that is actually fairly average.

We will continue to work on these skills.

Mit Vergnügen.