21. Okt '17 - Haunted Bathrooms

Guten Tag,

Our day started out as usual with Meine Woche, which had an interesting story about a "haunted bathroom," that I'm sure your kids will share, as well as the saga of the mystery tuna.

Listening comprehension was "10 Tipps für faule Menschen" by Mirrellativegal. "Tipps damit ihr noch fauler werden könnt!" 

Our lesson was over the Superlative, continuing off the Comparative that we had been covering over the last few weeks.

We discussed how superlative statements are, in essence, "the most something of all," e.g. "the biggest," "the strongest," "the prettiest," "the smallest."

Much like with comparatives, an adjective with only one main vowel is given an umlaut (ö, ä, ü).
For superlatives, also add an -ste at the end unless the adjective ends in s, z or ß
So we have, for instance:
größte (groß with an ¨, -te at the end since it already has an ß)
stärkste (stark with an ¨, and -ste at the end)
kleinste (klein with an -ste at the end)

A superlative noun (e.g. "The Prettiest," "The Strongest") is just the superlative adjective with the appropriate article and ending.
Der Beste (the best of all)
Der Kleinste (the smallest of all)

Alternatively, to say something is the most ____, use the phrase am ____sten.
"Ich bin am kleinsten" (I'm the smallest)
"Du bist am doofsten" (you're the dumbest)

Lastly, superlatives can simply be used like any other adjective, stuck in front of a word.
"Ich bin der schönste Pony in der Park" (I am the prettiest pony in the park)
"Sie ist die reichste Prinzessin in dem Land" (she is the richest princess in the land)

We did two activities with this, both of which went far more smoothly and quickly than I had anticipated. We held a class election for who was the Klügste, Schönste, Sportlischste, and the class was surprisingly in complete agreement on that. So yeah. That lasted about 5 minutes. Then we did a comparative-superlative rap, complete with beatboxing and some mild dance moves, whereupon we barged into the 8th grade room and rapped at them about how much cooler of a class we are than them. This was the first class ever to actually successfully RAP so that was nice. 

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14.Okt '17 - Deutsches Sprachraum Part 1

Today began like any other day, with lots and lots of rain. It's rainy. 
This lent a dramatic effect to pretty much everything I said, so it was rather welcome.
"Guten Morgen, Klasse!" *Thunder crash*
It was amazing. 

We did "Meine Woche" as always, which mostly consisted of my complaining about how long it takes to rake leaves, and then used a seasonal classic, "Kein Vampir bleibt mehr hier" from My Little Pony for our listening exercise. This is apparently so memorable of a song that the 8th grade class next door, hearing what we were doing, begged Frau Bodigor to play it as well. 

After a review of the comparatives, we went into a group research assignment. In partners, students compared two German speaking countries.

This took the rest of class.

For those not present, the assignment was as follows:

Pick any two from this list of countries to compare. Look up information about your chosen two countries to answer the questions below:

Deutschland

Österreich

die Schweiz

Belgien

Liechtenstein

Luxemburg

Slowakei

Brasilien

1. Was sind die 2 Länder, die ihr vergleicht?
2.  Ist Deutsch die Hauptsprache oder eine Amtssprache?  
3. Welche andere Sprachen sprechen Leute in diesen Länder?
4. Welches Land ist größer? (Land)
5. Welches Land hat mehr Deutschsprecher?
6. Welches Land ist reicher? (GDP, GNP, average income)
7. In welchem Land sind Leute klüger? (Education level, average IQ)
8. Welches Land hat besseres Essen? Warum? (opinion)
9. Was ist etwas interessant über jedes Land? (opinion)
10.   Welches Land ist dein Lieblingsland und warum? (opinion)

The homework is to choose a German song (with video), podcast, or video for us to use at the beginning of class time. It should be between 2 and 5 minutes, school-appropriate, and you must explain auf Deutsch why you chose this one. Give me at least 3 reasons why. 

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7. Oktober '17 - Comparatively Good

Guten Abend,

Today's class began as it usually does, with words.

To be more specific, we began with "Meine Woche," wherein I regaled the students with tales of this past weekend that I spent in Cape Cod for a wedding, and all the loveliness that entailed despite the fact that it rained the entire time and the ceremony was on the beach. 

Our listening comprehension was a perennial classic,  "Der Käse Song" from my favorite Austrian YouTuber, Michael Buchinger. The 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. Hint: "that's where it is!" 

Our lesson was beginning a unit on comparatives and superlatives, today being a deeper dive into "Comparatives" after Frau Bodigor (re)introduced the topic last week. While this topic is "new" to the school year, I know that everyone in the class has indeed learned about this in previous school years, a conclusion which was further reinforced by the relative ease with which they picked up the lesson and ran with it, so really this unit is more of a review and reinforcing of prior knowledge before we move on to more complicated things. 

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/iconic character to whom they would compare themselves in six ways. My favorites were "Ich bin nicht so reich wie Taylor Swift" and "Ich habe bessere Haare als Elvis."

After the break, we had arguments. Students broke up into pairs, chose a category in which they would declare their favorite thing (e.g. a food, music, a movie, a tv show, etc.) and then argue out loud about which one was better and why. This became oddly poetic and semi-surreal at times, especially with the two girls who chose category "Waffen" and argued about the virtues of "Words" versus "the bow and arrow." I feel like I should've written that down.

Next week, we begin the foray into our historical-cultural unit for the year. Please bring a wi-fi capable device that would make for easy reading and research, such as a tablet. 

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