27.Oktober - der schaurigste Schultag!!!!

Today was scary, absolutely terrifying. It was also the day when we unofficially celebrated Halloween.

The spooky day was begun with a spooky listening comprehension exercise courtesy of Rammstein's Rosenrot. I will remind again that there will before long be a quiz over the vocabulary-to-date from these listening comprehension exercises, so please make sure your child keeps these somewhere they can be retrieved when need arises.

We then stretched our spooky brain muscles with a scary essay, "Das Schaurigste Ding," wherein each child described in at least 10 sentences what to them seemed to be the scariest thing of all. Answers ranged from such staples as zombies and more zombies to invisible cats, fry cooks and 'blood and eyes'. Not disembodied or haunted blood and eyes, but just plain blood and eyes, apparently. At least one kid will not grow up to be a surgeon or taxidermist, it seems.

Expounding upon the previously learned my (mein(e)) and your (dein(e)) possessive adjectives, we went over kein(e) as well, which lead us into the beard game. "Bart, Kein Bart" is basically a mimicking game--each child would say a collection of phrases (Bart, Kein Bart, Mein Bart, Dein Bart) and do motions associated with them, and another child would have to mimic them exactly or else be cast forth from the game.

To exorcise our wiggles after lunch, we played "Vampir," a variant on "Stasi Mann" from earlier in the year. In a nutshell, each round the König(in)vampir would claim another victim, who would join the secret vampire army. Each round, the vampires grew in number. If the child who was the Polizist did not correctly guess who the König(in)vampir was in time, he would be overrun by vampires and lose the game. Out of 5 games, the Polizist only survived twice.

And then suddenly, there was a parade. We went ahead and joined this, marching around the school in costume. In case you were at all curious, my outfit was that of a Stasi Agent, for they can look like anyone.

Ending the day, candy was distributed, but only if the children used the terms they were taught for expressing desire (gern haben) and requesting (möchten, bitte). They were then allowed to trade candy amongst themselves as well, but only if they continued using the proper phrasing.

Now, the homework:

Workbook
P.20, Exercises 4,5
P.22, Exercise 9
P.23, Exercises 1-3


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20.Oktober - neue Freunde auf dem Mond

Today we learned that the best places to make new friends are where you'd least expect it, such as on the moon or during the middle of a zombie attack.

The day began with another handout from the Sandra and Woo comic. This then lead into a quick review of the conjugation of regular verbs as well as "sein," and then we did a listening comprehension exercise with Mein Herz Brennt from Rammstein. Please do remind your children to keep all listening comprehension exercises as we will, before long, have a quiz over their vocabulary selections.

Now for the bit that will make the introductory statement make sense. Divided up into partners, the students made interrogative dialogues with one another. They played the roles of people who ran into each other in whatever situation they could imagine, and then they would ask each other questions they thought would be relevant to get to know each other in these situations. For some reason, it seems the most relevant questions to ask a new friend during a zombie attack are such as, "Was trinkst du?" or "So... wie findest du diese Zombies?"
One partner pair that may or may not have just been me talking at myself played a pair of astronauts unexpectedly running into each other on the moon.

For the rest of the afternoon after lunch, after going further into interrogative words (wo, wie, wer, was, warum, wohin, woher) we played "Stasimann," a game where one person in the class was a stasi agent or informant, and every round, someone was taken off to prison for unlawful conduct. The class was then allowed to ask one question of me, the narrator, to figure out who the Stasi was. Some questions were gamebreakers, e.g. "Ist es ein Mädchen?" when we only had two boys in the class, whereas others weren't particularly helpful, e.g. "Was ist die Farbe seines Schuhes?" (every kid but one had black shoes).

And now, for the homework:

Workbook

S.12, Übung 11, S.15, Übung 1, 3, S. 19, Übung 3

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13.Oktober - EXTREME Hopscotch

Your first reaction to the title of this blog entry might be that I'm exaggerating or just typing in random words for the sake of getting your attention. Fortunately for the both of us, neither is the case. This is an actual game.

The day began with the children presenting the Speisekarte they made for homework--as always, they were absolutely darling! I'm did wonder why almost every single one of them made pretzels the most expensive thing on the menu, though. Were they just incredible pretzels?

This was followed up by jumping into our next vocabulary unit: Familie! The necessary terms are on page 19 of the kursbuch, and in addition we learned a few complementary words:
Die Geschwister - siblings
Das Haustier - pet
Das Lebensmittelgeschäft - grocery store (it just came up over the course of the day)

Adding to this was a short unit over personal descriptive adjectives, such words to describe oneself and others as klug, groß, klein, gemein, nett, usw. We then divided up into pairs and described an imaginary friend using 'sein' and the adjectives list. The vast majority of them were small, nice and in possession of far more limbs than would be considered normal. One of them was a rainbow pinata-shaped creature that eats children.

After lunch, the game that is the namesake of this entry was played: EXTREME Hopscotch (tm)

Essentially, it goes like this: a hopscotch course is laid on the floor, each space being a pronoun (ich, du, er, sie, es, Sie, ihr, wir...). On the other end of the course, about 6 feet away, were four buckets, each labeled with a verb ending (e, t, st, en). For each student's turn, I would say a conjugated verb, e.g. "Ich spiele." They would then run the course, stopping at the appropriate pronoun, and then throw a tennis ball into the appropriate basket (so in this example, hop through the course to 'ich,' then throw a ball into 'e.')
For double or triple points, they could repeat what I had said and then say what it meant. The game-winning score was "Du spielst."

With that, we ended the day.

Now for the homework!

Stammbäume (family trees):
Make a family tree.

• Include pictures (photos, clip art, celebrity pics from magazines, hand drawn, usw..)
• Include names and family relations (e.g. "Onkel Jim")
• Use at least all the terms on page 19 of the book, but feel free to go further
• For 10 bonus points, write 5 sentences describing family members
• Make it pretty (lines and stick figures on notebook paper will not be accepted!)

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6.Oktober - Essen macht alles besser

Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein!


Saturday saw us once again opening the day with a comic worksheet, and once again I was pleasantly surprised at how well the kids understood what was going on and their ability to describe a dialogue that was entirely in German.

We reviewed haben and sein, and then segued into something we will be touching upon throughout the year, namely regular verb conjugation. The way I've traditionally presented this is by introducing guidelines for how regular verbs are handled:

• The stem of a regular verb remains the same
• The endings for the conjugations are easily predictable and hang on the pronoun choice

Ich: stem + e 

Du: stem +st

er/sie/es: stem + t

Wir: stem + en

ihr: stem + t

Sie/sie: stem + en

The reasoning I've tried to hammer home behind this is that, through memorization of these guidelines, the students should be able to make an educated guess as to how to conjugate a regular verb they've never so much as seen before. 

Following this, we went over food vocabulary and played a memory game to go with them. These we will cover again, and they will be included on our first quiz in coming weeks. 

And now.... the homework.

Speisekarten (menus)

• Create a menu for your own, made-up restaurant. 
• Name the restaurant whatever you'd like
• List out the foods and drinks (including articles) in German
• Include pictures (either drawn, clipart, pics from online, magazines...)
• Include prices (no need to attempt to accurately guess the market price)
• MAKE IT PRETTY!!!!!! These will be displayed in the classroom for posterity for coming years to see.

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29.September - Stasi sind überall

Guten Abend, liebe Eltern!


Today we celebrated German American Friendship Day, beginning today's class with a trivia game lead by Fr. Lussem. Candy was on the line, so naturally the kids did their best to win, though in the end, only one could come out the other side a champion.

We reviewed Haben and Sein both with making up non-sequiturs/sentences and acting them out--my favorite thing to do--and doing a crossword.

Today also was our first time this school year to engage in a listening comprehension exercise. The song of the day was 99 Luftballons by Nena. As will be done intermittently throughout the year, basically we listened to the song, then followed along with lyric sheets that had words omitted. The objective was to fill in the missing words (provided also in a wordbank) based on what was heard. Whenever this is done, and this is important, the kids are supposed to keep the sheets afterward. Every so often, we will have a quiz over the vocabulary from these exercises.

This song exercise also served as a nice and convenient transition point to our historical/geographical theme for the year: The GDR. We discussed the tension of the Cold War that this song is about, and then gave an overview of Germany's division, life under Soviet rule and finally re-unification. Throughout the year, we will have different historical units going into detail over different elements of life in the GDR, so today was basically the intro session.

And now.... the homework.

Answer the following 5 questions with complete sentences. Please choose either English or German. It will be worth double points if answered in complete, German sentences.

1. How was Germany divided up by the allies after WW2 (what country controlled each part)?
2. What were the two Germanies called, and when was each officially founded?
3. Why was the Wall built? When was it built?
4. Who were the Stasi and what did they do?
5. When did the Wall come down?

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22.September - Deutsch können wir, Englisch leider nicht

Guten Tag, Sonnenschein! Die Erde grüßt dich und küsst dich!

Today we began what looks to be the beginnings of a new tradition in the 5.Klasse, namely introducing a daily 'ice breaker' exercise. We always did these before, but they tended to vary pretty wildly from morning to morning. Now, I'm hoping to standardize them a bit more.
What we're starting to do is use comics written in German with questions listed below them in English, which the kids then answer based on what the comic says, what's going on, usw. It went rather well today, so I hope to continue doing it.

We reviewed the material from last week:

• Greetings for different times of day
• Introducing oneself
• Numbers 1-1000

As part of this review, we played a memory game where they had to match up cards in pairs, listing both the written-out numbers and the actual digits. 

After the break, we introduced the two 'cornerstone' verbs, Haben and Sein. This was followed up by one of the most unique sessions of board races I've seen so far in the last 5 years. Typically, they spelled the German spot on! But they kept on misspelling the English words. Would you believe the word that needed to be re-written the most, out of ALL the German we did, was 'Sandwich'? 

And now, the homework:

Workbook

P. 8

Exercises 8,9

and

Conjugate out Haben and Sein in the present tense.

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15. September 2012, Erster Schultag!!!!

Grüzi alle,

Welcome to another year of the weekend German school! I am your host and guide through this, another academic year, and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you and you children. 

To give you a little bit of background on myself, in case you didn't read the blurb, this is my 5th year teaching at the German school, and I like to think that I'm getting better with age. My bachelor's degree is in German and Philosophy, and during the week I do a professional variation on the same thing I do here, teaching people, only my 'day job' is actually teaching corporate reps how to use software. 


My intention for the year is for us to learn as much as possible in as fun a manner as possible. 
In order to facilitate this, I ask just a few things of you:

1. Please make sure your child always brings pencils, a notebook, scratch paper and their books (both course and work) to class
2. Please remind them to bring their homework. I do not accept late work. If a child is absent, then I expect them to bring the homework for each class period missed with them the day of their return. Alongside the skill assessments in each semester's report cards, I do also give objective grades based on these assignments. 
3. Please give minimal help with the homework. If they are struggling with understanding what to do, then by all means please assist, but please, under no circumstances give them the answers or help them write anything.
4. Whenever you or the student have questions about material covered in class or assigned for homework, please contact me.

Today was an introductory and review session, focused primarily on getting to know one another and acquainting ourselves with the classroom procedures. My general method of teaching is "Learn then Play," as in we go over some concept, then play a game based on it. These games often times start out rather easy when a concept is still new, and then grow increasingly complex once we are exploring concepts further or are reviewing them. This is why we've consistently been the loudest classroom--not a day goes by without playing. 

We began with a survey wherein the students wrote out such things as "Ich heisse...." "mein Lieblingsessen ist...." "mein Lieblingsschulfach ist...." and of course, "Ich will Deutsch weiterlernen, weil...." 

This lead into review of some basics:

• Greetings for different times of day (Guten Tag/Abend/Morgen, Gute Nacht) 
• Introducing oneself and asking someone's name
• Days of the week, months of the year

The game we played was what I've affectionately dubbed, "I need to name this game." We sat in a circle and had different motions associated with each greeting. Each child had to make the appropriate motion to match the greeting said to them by a neighbor, or they were out. 

Following up, we did another getting acquainted exercise, the People Search, where we asked each other questions about favorite things, preferences, until our forms were filled out, then presented who liked what of each category. 

To end the day, we played a classic game, "Hast Du Mein Obst?" the objective of which is to make your neighbor laugh by asking "Hast du mein obst?" in as amusing/disquieting a manner as you can while they try to answer "Nein, ich habe dein Obst nicht." 

And now, the moment of truth!

Hausaufgabe:

Arbeitsbuch

P. 6-7

Exercises 2-6

Please photocopy the pages or write down the answers on a separate sheet of paper. Do not just write in the book, because then they have to tear out the pages and mutilate the poor thing. 

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