5.Mai - Jeopardy

Guten Abend,

Especially to those of you celebrating 5.Mai this evening. As you may have heard from the kids, I am starting to get somewhat sick right now; I'm not certain yet what I have, but hopefully I will manage to tough it out through these last few weeks of the year. Should anything change in this regard, I will be certain to let you know.

Today was rather straightforward; we reviewed the curriculum-to-date via the ever-classic medium of Jeopardy. Our teams this time were "Die Pizzahunden" versus "Käsepommes." The former ended up winning by a margin of about 4000 points (roughly 30% of the available points).

The test next week shall be over the following:

• Regular verb conjugation
• Haben and Sein
• Modal verbs (meaning, usage and conjugation)
• Time (24hr and 12hr)
• Seasons, Months
• Clothing, family and food vocabulary
• The accusative case
• Possessive adjectives
• Direct and Indirect Articles

The test shall be quite similar in format to the test administered at the end of the first semester, as well as the pop quiz given about a month ago, should they wish to study these as opposed to their notes. 

Please also note that books are now due; please return them either this upcoming week (12.Mai) or the next (19.Mai). Zeugnisse will also be distributed in the near future with the final grades and assessment scores.

Mit Vergnügen~

28.April - Aufsatztag

Guten... Morgen?

While technically it is Sunday, I am going to act as though it were in fact still Saturday.

Today's class period found itself spent mostly on writing our essays over the topic, "Ein Tag im Weltraum" or "A Day in Space." For at least 15 sentences, each student went over the following:
If they were able to spend a day in outerspace...

• How can they get to space?
• What should they do to prepare?
• Who may go with them? 
• What do they want to do in space?
• What do they find in space?

The intention was to use regular verbs, Haben and Sein and modal verbs to form a coherent body of prose. For those that did not finish, or were not in attendance, completing the essay shall be homework.

Along with the essay itself, each student is expected to provide a colored illustration of their day in space. 

Next week shall be the review day; we will be playing Jeopardy as usual. The week afterward (12. May) shall be the test date.

Mit Vergnügen!

21.April - Letztes Stück der Normalität

Guten Abend,

This class period marked our final "normal" class of the school year. As mentioned last week, the upcoming classes shall be as follows:
28.4 - Aufsatz (essay) Tag
5.5 - Review Day
12.5 - Test Day
19.5 - Watch-the-graduation-ceremony-and-then eat-hotdogs day.

Today, we began with a quick introduction to the verbs and vocabulary associated with morning routines (page 91 in the textbook) and wrote out and presented descriptions of our typical mornings.

We also finished up our unit on modal verbs by introducing "müssen" to the mix, bringing our list to the following: können, dürfen, sollen, wollen, möchten, müssen.


Before breaking for lunch followed by Singprobe, we had a raucous round of board races with the two teams, "Erdbeerhunden" and "Schokoladenkatzen" going head to head with translation questions. In the end, Schokoladenkatzen came out victorious.


Now then, the homework is as follows:

Arbeitsbuch
S. 103, example 15

Prepare ideas for next week's essay: "One day in outerspace" (Ein Tag im Weltraum), wherein the students shall describe what they would do if they had a day to explore space. Please note this is to be written in the simple present tense, not the subjunctive.

Mit Vergnügen!

Der Annatanz - 14.April

Guten Abend,

The rest of the school year is scheduled as follows:
21.4 - normal class period
28.4 - Aufsatztag (be present to write our final long-essay in class)
5.5 - Wiederholungstag (be present for the test review)
12.5 - Prüfungstag (test day)
19.5 - Final Day



Today started out like any other class day:
We began with a partner activity, wherein the students made argument dialogues about what to do when terribly, terribly bored on a weekend. This lead to such gems as "Basketball? Ich hasse Basketball! Das ist doof!" "Dein Gesicht is doof!" and the like.

This was followed up by a review of the possessive adjectives learned to date:
mein(e) - mine
dein(e) - yours

To which we have now added:
euer/eure - yours (plural)
ihr(e) - hers
sein(e) - his

We then played "Hast du mein Obst?" for the first time in quite a while to refresh our memory on possessive adjectives, and that's when the madness was born. One student's turn in the game (the goal of which being to make one's neighbor laugh) ended up being an unusually elaborate dance during which she sang the standard line of "Hast du mein Obst?" for a good 30 seconds at least. This caught on and quickly became a meme.

At the end of the day, after we did a reading comprehension exercise over a Deutsche Welle article (www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6441611,00.html) and shortly before doing Singprobe, we did a little parade.
With the two boys playing improvised drums (banging on notebooks and a basketball) and the girls dancing and singing, we performed the song and dance routine, now affectionately dubbed "Der Annatanz" up and down our section of the hallway for about a minute before running back inside.


And now, the homework:

Workbook
P. 83, Exercise 8
P. 85, Exercise 12

Frühlingspause - bis 7. April

Guten Tag,

For the next two weekends, we will not be meeting for class. I know, I'm sad about it too, but what can you do? I'll have to find something else to do with my next few Saturdays.

This past Saturday we spent the majority of the class period doing two things:

• The quiz over the vocabulary from our Hörverständnis exercises
• Making our own fashion catalogues

Thanks to those of you who sent your kids to school with magazines and the like. This was a big success, and I look forward to grading and giving back the results. If your child was not present in class to do the fashion catalogue assignment, or did not finish in class, then this will be homework.
The assignment was as follows:

Make your own fashion catalogue

• Include both pictures (handdrawn, clip art, magazine clippings etc) and the words for each type of clothing, e.g. "Das Hemd, der Schuh"
• Include prices in Euros
• Name your fashion company as well

After the quiz and catalogue, we spent the remaining class time, which wasn't much, playing a new game: "Wo ist mein Schuh?" wherein one person's shoe was hidden somewhere in the classroom, and the student had to find where it was by asking the others a maximum of 3 questions, e.g. "Ist es IN etwas?" "Ist es in einem Schreibtisch?" and so on.

The homework to be turned in the next class period is as follows:

Page 79 (workbook)
Exercises 8-9
And
Fashion Catalogue (if not done in class or not finished)

I'll be seeing you in April.

17.März - St. Patricks Tag

Guten Morgen,

Today we began with one last Hörverständnis exercise before our quiz this upcoming week. We did the song "Tage wie dieser" by Juli.
The quiz next week will include vocabulary from the following songs:

• Rammstein - Ohne Dich, Ich Will
• Elis - Sie Erfasst Mein Herz
• Die Prinzen - Mein Fahrrad
• Juli - Tage wie dieser

I would recommend using flash cards.

We learned another modal verb today from the lyrics of the song: sollen (should). Our repertoire of modal verbs is nearly complete now: sollen, wollen, können, dürfen, möchten

To hone our conversational skills, we played a game of "20 Fragen." It went surprisingly well, and I was also pleasantly surprised at the creativity of the kids. One of the unguessable things was me, oddly enough, though I stumped the kids at my turn: no one ever expects your topic to be "Ohio." 

To celebrate the day, we played bingo with regular verb conjugation, and each bingo won a green donut. That is, until we started to run low on time, so alternative donut-earning acts included conjugating "können" all the way and wishing the birthday girl (Jillian) a happy birthday in German. 

Homework for the week:

Study for the upcoming quiz.

Mit Vergnügen

10 März: Der ewige Streit

Guten Abend,

Today, as part of our unit on arguments and dialogue, we as a class tackled one of the most important issues of our time: pirates vs. ninjas. After a short review of argument words (nicht, nichts, nie, niemals, niemand, doch) and a pop quiz over modal verbs, regular verbs and the accusative case, we divided into two groups. One half of the class argued that Pirates are better than Ninjas, and the other argued the reverse. After a half hour of discussion, the two groups presented their points.
Ninjas:

• They have nerf guns (?)
• They have free wi-fi (apparently)
• They are honorable
• The don't go around hunting for stupid treasure all day
• They are, and I quote, "faster than snipers."

Pirates:

• They're rich because of all that treasure they gather
• They are multicultural and speak many languages (french, spanish, english) whereas ninjas tend to be culturally-isolated
• Parrots
• They have more movies about them, and their movies are consistently better than ninja movies
• Johnny Depp

Conclusion: Ninjas won because pirates don't have internet access. 

The class ended with a quick review on time-telling (24-hr, 12-hr) and a game of "Herr Fuchs." 

Homework for the week is as follows:

Arbeitsbuch

P. 78, Exercises 4, 6

P. 82, Exercises 5, 6