Grüzi,
This weekend was important for our class for two reasons: first and foremost, this is the last class period we will have for the next two weeks as we are not meeting next weekend (26 November). I believe that has something to do with this "Thanksgiving" I keep hearing people talk about.
Secondly, we had the promised Vocabulary Quiz on Saturday over the first three Hörverständnis exercises (Juli - Ein Gruß, Rammstein - Rosenrot, Nena - 99 Luftballoons). This is the first of several such quizzes we will be having throughout the year.
We also moved forward in our cultural-historical study of the DDR by delving into the German socialist educational system from Kinderkrippe up through University, including along the way the quintessential ossi phenomenon that was the Young Pioneers. We sang "Unsere Heimat" and went through the history and cultural importance of the organization behind this retro-earworm. Seriously--I've had it in my head for the last week and a half now.
The lesson for the week included as well a review of the modal verb (functionally) möchten and the introduction both of the verb dürfen and of the use of helping verbs paired with modal verbs.
After learning about dürfen, we played "Darf Ich?" which was basically like "Mother May I?" minus the confusing part where I would have been referred to as "mother" by a bunch of other people's kids.
To finish up the day, before going off to Singprobe, we played a rousing game of "Ente Ente Truthahn." Much to my chagrin, the students found it far preferable to say "Ent" and "Crouton." I'll admit it actually was pretty funny, though.
The homework for the week (due on 3 December) is as follows:
Workbook
P. 47 Ex. 5, 6
P. 50 Ex. 2, 3
Please note also that they will be writing the first of our Sammelmappe essays the next class period, this one being 15 sentences (present tense) over their free-time hobbies. I would strongly recommend going over with your children how to describe in German what they like to do in their free time.
These will be written in class, graded on the spot and then expected to be turned back in, corrected, the next class period.
Mit Vergnügen!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
12. November, Sanktmartinstag Feier
Grüße,
Today we celebrated the feast of Saint Martin, also known as "Lantern and Goose Day!" To celebrate, we took a slightly different turn from the usual marching in the Saint Martin's Day parade around the school; instead of participating, we made geese puppets and followed along behind the parade, honking! The students' puppets were excellent--mine looked a bit like a "demented penguin with pinkeye," according to some.
We also covered the history behind Saint Martin's Day, including both the Calling of Martin and his establishment as Bishop of Tours.
As promised, today we also had a quiz over what we'd learned last week about telling time, namely the use of the 24-hour clock, quarter before/after and half before/after.
Next week, as mentioned in last week's entry, we will be having a quiz over the vocabulary (Wortschatz) of the last 3 Hörverständnis exercises.
Today we celebrated the feast of Saint Martin, also known as "Lantern and Goose Day!" To celebrate, we took a slightly different turn from the usual marching in the Saint Martin's Day parade around the school; instead of participating, we made geese puppets and followed along behind the parade, honking! The students' puppets were excellent--mine looked a bit like a "demented penguin with pinkeye," according to some.
We also covered the history behind Saint Martin's Day, including both the Calling of Martin and his establishment as Bishop of Tours.
As promised, today we also had a quiz over what we'd learned last week about telling time, namely the use of the 24-hour clock, quarter before/after and half before/after.
Next week, as mentioned in last week's entry, we will be having a quiz over the vocabulary (Wortschatz) of the last 3 Hörverständnis exercises.
- Rammstein - Mein Herz Brennt
- Nena - 99 Luftballoons
- Juli - Ein Gruß
If your child requires another copy of the exercise sheets in order to study the vocabulary, please feel free to ask.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for:
Hausaufgabe:
- Write a minimum of 10 sentences using words from the vocabulary lists.
For the sake of studying, I'd recommend writing sentences with all of the words, but I will only require a list of 10 for grading.
~Mit Vergnügen
Sunday, November 6, 2011
5. November - Guy Fawkes' Day
Happy Guy Fawkes' Day, everyone!
We celebrated this British holiday by not mentioning it or doing anything even remotely related to it. Instead, we focused on German things. Yay!
Our class opened up with another listening comprehension exercise (seeing a pattern?), upon which time I dropped the news that, in two weeks, we shall be having a quiz over our Hörverständnisse to date. This will include Wortschätze from the following:
The primary lesson today was over telling time. We covered the following:
This was accompanied by the classic game, "Herr/Frau Fuchs," otherwise known as "Mister Fox," wherein Hr/Frau Fuchs stands at one end of the field with the other children to his back, and the children ask "Hr. Fuchs, Hr. Fuchs, wie steht die Uhr?" He replies with a number (e.g. 10 Uhr!) and they take that many steps forward. When he replies, "Mahlzeit!" he turns around and chases the others until someone is caught and becomes the new Herr/Frau Fuchs. (It's pronounced "Foox")
Next we studied school vocabulary, namely school supplies (p. 40 in the textbook) and school subjects (p. 35). We then played the most surreal game of charades ever, having to pretend to be pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners, notebooks...
And now for the grand finale.
Homework:
We celebrated this British holiday by not mentioning it or doing anything even remotely related to it. Instead, we focused on German things. Yay!
Our class opened up with another listening comprehension exercise (seeing a pattern?), upon which time I dropped the news that, in two weeks, we shall be having a quiz over our Hörverständnisse to date. This will include Wortschätze from the following:
- Juli - Ein Gruß
- Nena - 99 Luftballoons
- Rammstein - Mein Herz Brennt
The primary lesson today was over telling time. We covered the following:
- Everyday 12-hour time telling using the format #Uhr# (e.g. 11Uhr22 or 11.22)
- The use of 'quarter of' (viertel vor) and 'quarter after' (viertel nach)
- The use of 'half until' (halb vor) and 'half after' (halb nach)
- 24-hour time. AM being 0-12, PM being 13-23.
This was accompanied by the classic game, "Herr/Frau Fuchs," otherwise known as "Mister Fox," wherein Hr/Frau Fuchs stands at one end of the field with the other children to his back, and the children ask "Hr. Fuchs, Hr. Fuchs, wie steht die Uhr?" He replies with a number (e.g. 10 Uhr!) and they take that many steps forward. When he replies, "Mahlzeit!" he turns around and chases the others until someone is caught and becomes the new Herr/Frau Fuchs. (It's pronounced "Foox")
Next we studied school vocabulary, namely school supplies (p. 40 in the textbook) and school subjects (p. 35). We then played the most surreal game of charades ever, having to pretend to be pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners, notebooks...
And now for the grand finale.
Homework:
- Page 46, 1-3 (Arbeitsbuch)
- Study for the Time Quiz (especially quarter before/after, 24-hour time)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
29 Oktober - 2011, Halloween Feier!
Guten Abend jeden!
I apologize for the tardiness of this update--we had quite the Halloween party in the Walker Household with my wife having made more baked goods than I have ever thought possible, so preparing for, and then cleaning up after, that event took up most of the weekend.
As for Schule...
Saturday saw us beginning the school day with a 10-sentence Aufsatz, "Das Schaurigste Ding," or "Wovor ich Angst habe," wherein the students described one thing that scares them. Typical examples included haunted houses, older brothers and, in one case, Herr Walker. Apparently I rise from the grave at night to eat children. News to me!
We also added on to our continuing unit over indefinite articles, going back over the possessives mein/meine and dein/deine, and learning ein/eine, kein/keine.
This introduced another staple of the 5.Klasse's gaming repertoire, "Bart Kein Bart." In this game, one does a series of motions that go along with the phrases "Bart," "Kein Bart," "Mein Bart," "Dein Bart" and make a neighbor repeat them, the goal being to make a pattern someone else can't repeat, going on until you're the last one standing!
Also covered were different ways of expressing like, dislike and desire
I apologize for the tardiness of this update--we had quite the Halloween party in the Walker Household with my wife having made more baked goods than I have ever thought possible, so preparing for, and then cleaning up after, that event took up most of the weekend.
As for Schule...
Saturday saw us beginning the school day with a 10-sentence Aufsatz, "Das Schaurigste Ding," or "Wovor ich Angst habe," wherein the students described one thing that scares them. Typical examples included haunted houses, older brothers and, in one case, Herr Walker. Apparently I rise from the grave at night to eat children. News to me!
We also added on to our continuing unit over indefinite articles, going back over the possessives mein/meine and dein/deine, and learning ein/eine, kein/keine.
This introduced another staple of the 5.Klasse's gaming repertoire, "Bart Kein Bart." In this game, one does a series of motions that go along with the phrases "Bart," "Kein Bart," "Mein Bart," "Dein Bart" and make a neighbor repeat them, the goal being to make a pattern someone else can't repeat, going on until you're the last one standing!
Also covered were different ways of expressing like, dislike and desire
- gern haben
- finden + adjective
- "möchten" (presented as its own verb although technically it isn't)
- mögen
Homework for this week
- Page 20, Exercises 4-5
- Page 22, Exercise 9
- Page 23, Exercises 1-3
Mit Vergnügen!
Saturday, October 22, 2011
22 Oktober - Freundschaft ist Magisch!
Grüße,
Today we proudly presented our family trees before the class, to start off with, and soon they shall be hung all over our new (old) classroom! Our class has moved again, this time back into the room I'd had for the last 3 years, so if you have trouble finding us, just look over by where all the other teachers are: I'm between Hr. Schäufele and Fr. Rill.
We did a review of possessive adjectives (mein/meine, dein/deine), regular verbs and also Haben and Sein, all to the tune of "Mein Herz Brennt" by Rammstein, the latest in our hörverständnis exercises. There will soon be a quiz over all the vocabulary we've learned from these various songs, by the way, so watch out for that in the near future!
Our primary activity of the day, after having learned interrogatives (was, wer, wo, wie, woher, wohin), was to make up our own imaginary friends. We described them and then drew pictures of them before presenting what we made to the rest of the class.
Finally, we learned a bit of negation, namely the uses for and meaning of nicht, nichts and nie/niemals.
For the last few minutes of class, the students were hilfsbereit enough to help me hang up all the new posters over DDR-era Berlin that were just generously provided for us! I let the kids choose how they wanted to arranged things, so this new classroom feels a bit more gemütlich now that we all had a chance to pitch in and make it pretty.
The moment you've all been waiting for...
The homework for this week is as follows:
Arbeitsbuch
Page 12, Exercise 11
Page 15, Exercise 1, 3
Page 19, Exercise 3
These will involve the set of verbs listed on page 28 of the textbook (also in their notes from today).
Mit Vergnügen!
Today we proudly presented our family trees before the class, to start off with, and soon they shall be hung all over our new (old) classroom! Our class has moved again, this time back into the room I'd had for the last 3 years, so if you have trouble finding us, just look over by where all the other teachers are: I'm between Hr. Schäufele and Fr. Rill.
We did a review of possessive adjectives (mein/meine, dein/deine), regular verbs and also Haben and Sein, all to the tune of "Mein Herz Brennt" by Rammstein, the latest in our hörverständnis exercises. There will soon be a quiz over all the vocabulary we've learned from these various songs, by the way, so watch out for that in the near future!
Our primary activity of the day, after having learned interrogatives (was, wer, wo, wie, woher, wohin), was to make up our own imaginary friends. We described them and then drew pictures of them before presenting what we made to the rest of the class.
Finally, we learned a bit of negation, namely the uses for and meaning of nicht, nichts and nie/niemals.
For the last few minutes of class, the students were hilfsbereit enough to help me hang up all the new posters over DDR-era Berlin that were just generously provided for us! I let the kids choose how they wanted to arranged things, so this new classroom feels a bit more gemütlich now that we all had a chance to pitch in and make it pretty.
The moment you've all been waiting for...
The homework for this week is as follows:
Arbeitsbuch
Page 12, Exercise 11
Page 15, Exercise 1, 3
Page 19, Exercise 3
These will involve the set of verbs listed on page 28 of the textbook (also in their notes from today).
Mit Vergnügen!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
15. Oktober - Wer hat das Obst?
Grüße an jeden,
Today was a very special day, for on this day we got to go to German School!
Class began with the kids' presentation of their Speisekarte, which I must say were excellently done. Their were a good deal of creative restaurant names in there, and I could only wish that German food were actually as cheap as they made it out to be.
Going along with this, I quickly ran over the different kinds of restaurants found in Germany, includingGasthäuser/Gaststuben, Cafés, Kneipen. This lead to an introduction of the idea of Gemütlichkeit, the emphasis on "coziness" found in Gasthäuser, e.g. dark lighting, lots of wood furnishing, pastoral scenes and paraphernalia on the walls, dinners that last for hours where you sit around just for the sake of relaxing and taking in the atmosphere.
A new game was tried today as well, which I have tentatively named Konjugieren-Springen-Werfen-Chaos-Spiel (or "The hop-scotch throwy thing"). Basically, the kids drew a card with a subject (e.g. ich, du...) and a conjugated regular verb. They had to say the subject and verb out loud, then jump onto the hopscotch course (made of verb endings: e, t, st, en) and end up on the right ending for that verb conjugation, then throw a tennis ball into a bucket. IF all of that was done successfully, their team gained a point. We had teams Apfelsaft and Orangensaft.
The primary topic of learning today was family vocabulary, as found on page 19 of the Kursbuch. This lead also into an introduction of various personal adjectives: klein, groß, klug, doof, dumm, nett, schön, hübsch, ärgerlich, sympatisch (some of those were requested on the spot as opposed to being in my original list. I will let you guess which ones).
This was followed up with the first of many possessive adjectives we will be learning this year: mein/meine, dein/deine.
A little extra knowledge was gained today when I noticed that the kids weren't always understanding what I meant when trying to get them to stop talking. Thus we were introduced to the terms "Halt den Maul/den Mund," "halt die Klappe." I mentioned these as being ways of telling someone to be quiet to varying degrees of politeness, the least polite one being "halt die Klappe." I'd like to mention at this point that these phrases were introduced to me as being mostly acceptable for public usage. If this is a mistaken understanding and these phrases are ruder than I knew, please do feel free to correct me as I would not want to teach something inappropriate by mistake!
Class wrapped up with a rousing reprise of "Hast du mein Obst?" outside.
The homework for this week:
Stammbäume
-Make your own family tree using the vocabulary found on page 19.
-Include the names of the family members, their relation to you (auf Deutsch, e.g. "meine Mutter, mein Vater...)
-Include pictures. These may be hand-drawn, photographs, or even pictures of celebrities/cartoons/fictional characters from magazines or online...
Bonus (+5 on the first quiz)
-Write 5 sentences describing different family members. Use the verb "sein" and the adjectives learned today.
-Mit Vergnügen
Today was a very special day, for on this day we got to go to German School!
Class began with the kids' presentation of their Speisekarte, which I must say were excellently done. Their were a good deal of creative restaurant names in there, and I could only wish that German food were actually as cheap as they made it out to be.
Going along with this, I quickly ran over the different kinds of restaurants found in Germany, includingGasthäuser/Gaststuben, Cafés, Kneipen. This lead to an introduction of the idea of Gemütlichkeit, the emphasis on "coziness" found in Gasthäuser, e.g. dark lighting, lots of wood furnishing, pastoral scenes and paraphernalia on the walls, dinners that last for hours where you sit around just for the sake of relaxing and taking in the atmosphere.
A new game was tried today as well, which I have tentatively named Konjugieren-Springen-Werfen-Chaos-Spiel (or "The hop-scotch throwy thing"). Basically, the kids drew a card with a subject (e.g. ich, du...) and a conjugated regular verb. They had to say the subject and verb out loud, then jump onto the hopscotch course (made of verb endings: e, t, st, en) and end up on the right ending for that verb conjugation, then throw a tennis ball into a bucket. IF all of that was done successfully, their team gained a point. We had teams Apfelsaft and Orangensaft.
The primary topic of learning today was family vocabulary, as found on page 19 of the Kursbuch. This lead also into an introduction of various personal adjectives: klein, groß, klug, doof, dumm, nett, schön, hübsch, ärgerlich, sympatisch (some of those were requested on the spot as opposed to being in my original list. I will let you guess which ones).
This was followed up with the first of many possessive adjectives we will be learning this year: mein/meine, dein/deine.
A little extra knowledge was gained today when I noticed that the kids weren't always understanding what I meant when trying to get them to stop talking. Thus we were introduced to the terms "Halt den Maul/den Mund," "halt die Klappe." I mentioned these as being ways of telling someone to be quiet to varying degrees of politeness, the least polite one being "halt die Klappe." I'd like to mention at this point that these phrases were introduced to me as being mostly acceptable for public usage. If this is a mistaken understanding and these phrases are ruder than I knew, please do feel free to correct me as I would not want to teach something inappropriate by mistake!
Class wrapped up with a rousing reprise of "Hast du mein Obst?" outside.
The homework for this week:
Stammbäume
-Make your own family tree using the vocabulary found on page 19.
-Include the names of the family members, their relation to you (auf Deutsch, e.g. "meine Mutter, mein Vater...)
-Include pictures. These may be hand-drawn, photographs, or even pictures of celebrities/cartoons/fictional characters from magazines or online...
Bonus (+5 on the first quiz)
-Write 5 sentences describing different family members. Use the verb "sein" and the adjectives learned today.
-Mit Vergnügen
Saturday, October 8, 2011
8. Oktober - mitten im Herbst
Grüße an die Füße,
Today was a day of surprise, suspense, and Speise! Well, mostly of Speise. A significant chunk of our time was devoted to learning food vocabulary, namely the below-listed:
das Cola (soda)
die Limonade (lemonade or generic for soft drink)
der Apfelsaft (apple juice)
der Orangensaft (orange juice)
das Wasser (water)
die Milch (milk)
der Kaffee (coffee)
der Tee (tea)
der Hamburger
die Pizza
das Brot (bread)
das Ei (egg)
der Käse (cheese)
die Wurst (sausage)
die Brezel/Bretzel (pretzel)
die Suppe (soup)
die Pommes Frites (fries)
das Obst (fruit)
das Gemüse (veggies)
der Kuchen (cake)
With these words, we played another memory game, which seemed to go over well, and also introduced a new game that has been a staple of my class for a while now: "Hast du mein Obst?!" wherein the children ask each other "HAST DU MEIN OBST?!" and must answer "ICH HABE DEIN OBST NICHT!" the goal being to make one another laugh.
I was an easy target this time, somehow, as apparently this year's group of kids outclasses all my previous ones in their ability to make me laugh!
We also went over regular verbs (introduced with a rousing round of bingo) and learned the below-listed conjugation rules which will be re-introduced and emphasized frequently throughout the year.
Today was a day of surprise, suspense, and Speise! Well, mostly of Speise. A significant chunk of our time was devoted to learning food vocabulary, namely the below-listed:
das Cola (soda)
die Limonade (lemonade or generic for soft drink)
der Apfelsaft (apple juice)
der Orangensaft (orange juice)
das Wasser (water)
die Milch (milk)
der Kaffee (coffee)
der Tee (tea)
der Hamburger
die Pizza
das Brot (bread)
das Ei (egg)
der Käse (cheese)
die Wurst (sausage)
die Brezel/Bretzel (pretzel)
die Suppe (soup)
die Pommes Frites (fries)
das Obst (fruit)
das Gemüse (veggies)
der Kuchen (cake)
With these words, we played another memory game, which seemed to go over well, and also introduced a new game that has been a staple of my class for a while now: "Hast du mein Obst?!" wherein the children ask each other "HAST DU MEIN OBST?!" and must answer "ICH HABE DEIN OBST NICHT!" the goal being to make one another laugh.
I was an easy target this time, somehow, as apparently this year's group of kids outclasses all my previous ones in their ability to make me laugh!
We also went over regular verbs (introduced with a rousing round of bingo) and learned the below-listed conjugation rules which will be re-introduced and emphasized frequently throughout the year.
- Every verb has a stem that does not change in the present tense (e.g. MACHen, SPIELen TRINKen...)
- Each subject adds a different ending to the stem of a verb, the same ending each time:
- Ich: stem + e ("MACHe")
- Du: stem + st ("MACHst")
- er/sie/es: stem + t ("MACHt")
- Ihr: stem + t ("MACHt")
- Wir: stem + en ("MACHen")
- Sie/sie: stem + en ("MACHen")
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for....
Hausaufgabe:
Speisekarten
- Make a menu for your own imaginary restaurant
- Invent a restaurant name, be original!
- List out the food and drinks with both the names (including articles) and pictures
- Include prices (in euros) for each menu item
- Make it pretty! Be creative!
- Pictures can be hand-drawn, cut out of magazines, photographs or digital pictures.
~Mit Vergnügen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)