Accusative Case

Last week was a big week for German 1 - they learned their second verb, haben (to have), and their second case, accusative, which is used for direct objects.  Definitely an occasion for a foldable!

First, we conjugated the verb haben.  Then, we took a trip down memory lane to elementary school when students learned parts of speech.  Almost everyone remembered that the topic of a sentence is called the subject and the action in the sentence is the verb.  Yes!  Students were more uncertain on what to call the thing that receives the action of the verb, but the term direct object did ring a bell for some of them.

This information went into the foldable:

Next up was recording the definite articles (words for the) for masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural in both the nominative and accusative cases.  Color with purpose!

Finally, we wrote some example sentences.  

We did a second foldable for indefinite articles (a/an) the next day, following the same format.

It went very well!  This is our first year for this textbook, and it introduces the accusative case much earlier than our previous textbook, and even though it's a bit challenging, I think it's good.  It give students a lot more time to get used to the idea of cases and to become comfortable with the accusative case before introducing the dative case.

What I would change:  The foldable is a little small.  I did this on purpose so that I could fit 4 to a page and save a bit of paper, but I think it might be better to just increase the size and have 2 per page.  Next year...

Want a copy of the foldable?  Click here.