Oktoberfest 2018 - A Mixed Review

My German 2 classes have been studying Oktoberfest the past few weeks.  It fits in wonderfully with our first two units about Feste and Kleidung and out first Landeskunde region of Bayern.

So, after the success of our Apfelstreuselkuchen baking, I decided to schedule a tutorial to celebrate Oktoberfest on October 5.  

My review of how it went is certainly influenced by the fact that it was the Friday before our 4 day October break, and everyone (including me) was tired and ready for a break.  

Added to that, our building was short 9 subs, so I was called in at the last minute to sub during my prep period.  For an introvert like me who desperately needs to sit alone in a quiet room and not talk to anyone for a while after celebrating Oktoberfest with 41 students, this was rough.  

It seems unfair that when we're short on subs the day before a vacation, the teachers who are in the building trying to do some teaching with wound-up students are required to do even more than normal.  This doesn't happen in other schools in my district, so in my opinion, this is a leadership/administrative issue, and I'll leave it at that.

So, keeping in mind the circumstances, here's the review.

The good:

• 41 students signed up for the tutorial.  I got to meet some of the German students who are in my colleague's classes.

• 3 of my students who are in band came up with the idea all on their own to play for our Fest, got permission to take their instruments out of the band room, and played for their appreciative peers.

• I brought in frozen pretzels that needed to be baked in the oven for about 10 minutes, and 3 hard-working students took over that job and completed it like pros.

The bad:

• Of the 41 students who came, only 1 (who was also in the band) brought food in addition to me.  I am really big on doing things with my students, not for them, and this felt like I was doing most of the work.

• Students weren't especially good about making sure everyone got served before going back for seconds.  They acted more like hangry teenagers and less like the thoughful young people I know they are capable of being.

• We were rushed for time, so I wasn't able to have students wash their own dishes.  That meant most of the cleanup was left to me, but I had to cover another class.  I did eventually get to it and actually enjoyed being alone with the dishes (an introvert's oasis!), but this is again not really ideal for helping to develop thoughtful, appreciative young adults.

The future:  

I'm not sure about doing something like this again.  Parts were fun and students enjoyed it, but it was too tiring for me on a very tiring day.  Maybe we'll do it during class time so that I have more control about who is there and there is a limit on numbers.  We'll see.  Right now I need a long weekend with my family, crochet, Call the Midwife, and rest.

Friday Fun: Speed Dating, 4 in a Row, and Quizizz

We're really into the semester now, and both German 1 and 2 have some big quizzes and tests coming up, so Friday was dedicated to fun ways to get students reviewing and practicing.

German 2 tried Past Participles Speed Dating for the first time  

and played 4 in a Row

Both activities got thumbs up from students and got them actively practicing past participles, kennen, and wissen.

German 1 has their next unit test coming up, and we played Quizizz to review:

All in all, it was a good Friday.

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Backe, backe Kuchen

I love to bake!  And I really enjoy doing it with my students when we have the chance.

This year one of my sections of German 2 is Block 3 with C lunch, which means that class is from 11:35 - 12:55 with lunch at 12:55.  Which means that we are all hungry during class.  Which means that we talk about food a lot!

I promised this class that sometime soon I would schedule a baking tutorial so that we could bake in tutorial and eat in class. (Tutorial is our intervention/enrichment period, which meets right before Block 3 for 40 minutes.)  Naturally, they were all in.  

Of course we had to sing "Backe, back Kuchen" for the students who hadn't learned it last year.

Most of the students who participated were from the section of German 2 which meets right after tutorial and before lunch, but it was open to everyone, and some German 1 students and students from other sections attended.  

Since the cake wouldn't be done until after tutorial, I promised students who weren't in my Block 3 class that we would save them a piece of Kuchen that they could pick up before Block 4.

We used a very simple recipe for Apple Streusel Cake, which I found online: https://platedcravings.com/wprm_print/4265 

I divided the students into three groups: one for the dough (it was Throwback Thursday for Homecoming week)

one for the apple filling

and one for the crumble topping. 

And they really took it from there - I didn't have to do much more!  

I even had two very enthusiastic dish washers!  

The cake was done baking during Block 3 and cool enough to eat by the end of class.  Delicious!

It was a definite success, and not especially stressful or tiring for me - also a plus.  

Students asked to do this every week.  I don't think I'll be able to pull that off, but we definitely will do it again!

Clothing, Nouns and Cases

German 2 finished up their first unit, Feste Feiern, and took their test on Wednesday.  Results were fantastic - 88% average across my three classes.  I'm proud of their hard work!

Now we're on to Kleidung (clothing).  Students started the day on Friday with coloring.  

Life is good when you get to color in German class on a Friday.  One of my students told me, "I love you, Frau Swank!"  I warned her that she might not love me as much by the end of class...  

Some of my students wanted to color for the whole class, but I was not going to pass up an opportunity like this to talk about article and adjective endings!

We looked at the sentences in detail, observing how the article and adjective endings changed in the accusative case depending on the gender and number of the clothing item.  

Then, students had the information they needed to describe one item of clothing they were wearing, such as

If they struggled, they just needed to look at the sentences below.  I love it!

Now it was time to flip over to the back and really review cases with my favorite example:

First we analyzed the English sentence, 

and reviewed how to figure out what's what in a sentence.  I emphasized that there aren't shortcuts - they have to understand the sentence and do the thinking.  (My student didn't love me quite as much at this point.)

We reviewed our articles charts

and finally wrote the sentence in German.

That was the end of our notes, and it was time to practice.  I've noticed that students are more willing to try difficult things with dry erase markers instead of pencil and paper, so I created 4 practice sentences that fit in page protectors for table group practice.

I heard some great conversations among students using words like direct object, indirect object, accusative case, and dative case.  It made my German teacher heart sing!

For some groups, those 4 sentences were enough of a challenge, and I didn't want to overwhelm them.  Other groups wanted to try level 2:

and even level 3:

This structure really let me differentiate and individualize.  (It is also wonderful that none of my German 2 classes has more than 24 students this year, so I can work with groups more individually without other groups getting off track and on to their cell phones!)

Students finished up with work time for their assignment:

with one of these two pictures on the back:

Here are my files:

     Nouns and Cases Review Notizen

     Cases Review for Dry Erase Pockets

     Nouns and Cases Review Worksheet 

Past Participle Practice with Leo sagt

A huge part of German 2 is learning the past tense.  The Perfekt, or conversational past, is formed using a helping verb and past participle.  Many verbs have a regular past participle which is formed following a rule.  

But of course there are exceptions.  And the tough truth is that students have to memorize the past participles of irregular verbs.  It's not always exciting, but it is essential for future success.

To try to make it a little more fun, we've played 4 in a Row and done past participles speed dating in the past.  This year, I tried a new game, Leo sagt (Leo says).

Like so many other good ideas I get, it comes from the #MtBoS (Math Teacher Blogosphere).  Sarah Carter at Math = Love has blogged about playing Slope Dude Says with her algebra students.  It's Simon says, but for math and about slope.  

Translated to German class, it becomes Leo sagt.  Leo is our beloved German online dictionary dict.leo.org.  It is our go-to source for looking up all things German, including plural forms of nouns and past participles of verbs.  Here's how it works:

Leo (me) says a verb, and students move their arms to indicate what category of past participle the verb has.

And, of course, if Leo doesn't say it, we don't do it.  

The first class I tried it in was very enthusiastic, which helped since I tend to be a bit nervous when trying new/silly things, and it went great in all 3 classes!  We did a few practice rounds and then the competition began.  If a student got it wrong, s/he sat down.  They were very good about being honest and policing themselves.  Eventually we got down to one person left, who received a German flag temporary tattoo as a prize.  

Definitely a winner.  Now we just have to see how the Perfekt quiz goes next week...

Less Paper, Faster Feedback - Online Assignments with Canvas

When I first started teaching German at Bloomington North 6 year ago (wow - time flies!), all of my assignments for my students were paper worksheets that I made myself.  We weren't 1 to 1 yet with hp laptops, and our textbook was awful and the worksheets that came with it even worse.

Homework assignments are 25% of students' grades, and I graded the worksheets on completion.  At the beginning of class, I walked around the room and spot-checked the assignment while students were doing their bell work.  If they had attempted the entire assignment, they got 10 of 10.  Otherwise it was a 0 out of 10.  

After bell work, we went over the assignment in class, and students corrected their own work.  Students who hadn't finished the assignment filled it in as we went over it and received 5 out of 10 when they had done so.  

It was a pretty good system - students got a review of what we did 2 days ago (Ach, block scheduling, I am not a fan of you for language learning!), students who hadn't done the work were motivated to at least fill in the worksheet as we went over it, and I got a quick snapshot of students' understanding.  Sometimes, though, going over the homework was a bit boring for students who had mastered it easily.  And it takes time in class to go over the assignment.

Fast forward to today: Our district is starting its 4th year with 1 to 1 laptops for the high schools, we've adopted a better (though not perfect) textbook, and I have several more years of experience under my belt.  

I'm slowly changing over most of my worksheets to online assignments, which are automatically graded by our LMS, Canvas.  (Our new textbook has online assignments too, but our book is designed to be used in college or high school, so the level of the assignments is quite high.  I've tried them in German 1 and 2 but find that students get frustrated pretty quickly.  I do use them in German 4, with students who are more mature and headed for college the following year.)

Students get immediate feedback and can re-do the assignment as many times as they need to.  I set Canvas to keep their highest score.  They can even re-do assignments later when reviewing for a test or the final. I choose not to have Canvas give students the correct answers because I want them to think about and figure out their own mistakes.  They don't really like this, but I think it is good for them.

Like any teaching strategy, there are pluses and minuses.  One of my students lamented, "I miss paper!"  Sometimes I do too.  And for assignments that are really challenging or more open-ended and not easily graded by a computer, I do still use paper worksheets.

I like that students get immediate feedback and that we don't need to spend as much class time going over assignments.  But I don't get that quick sense of how they are doing as automatically - I have to take the time to click on the assignment in Canvas and look over the analysis.  But when I do, I can get an item by item analysis of what they are understanding and what is still unclear.  Data, lots of data!

On the downside, assignments are more anonymous.  When I walk around and check worksheets, I can have a brief conversation with a student whose work isn't done.  Is it a one-time thing due to a late sporting event or play rehearsal the night before or is it becoming a pattern?  I lose this with the online assignments.

Canvas is a computer, so it counts students' answers wrong if they misspell a word or forget punctuation.  My students really don't like this, but I like that it forces them to pay attention to details.

All in all, I think it's working well so far for my students and me.  

I make my Canvas assignments publicly available, so if your school uses Canvas, you should be able to see them in Commons.

On an unrelated but fun note - my German teaching colleague at South high school celebrated her 50th birthday this month.  I made her a crochet jellyfish in German flag colors as a gift:

Here she is, showing it off in front of her classrooom:

Off and Running

(Me and my amazing colleague from Bloomington HS South.  

My younger son will be in her class this year!) 

Phew!  The first 2 weeks of school are in the books.  Here are the highlights:

• Name Tents were a definite thumbs up.  They have allowed me to change student groups daily until I find an arrangement I'm happy with.  Plus, it's easier to adapt to the nearly daily (sometimes hourly!) changes of student schedules.  I do need to adjust the folding lines a little bit so that they fold flat more easily.  And I want to change the back of the German 2 tents to include haben and sein and "Wie waren deine Ferien?" rather than "Wie geht's?"  Next year...

• German 1 has learned the alphabet, definite, and indefinite articles.  I did definite and indefinite articles in one day rather than two, and it seemed to be fine:

  
 

• My homeroom loves oatmeal.  It started when they kept asking to go to the vending machines for snacks.  We talked about how hard it is to make it until the last lunch period at 12:55 when you eat breakfast at 6:00.  I mentioned that I kept instant oatmeal in the department office and offered them some.  I had one person take me up on the offer the first day, and several on Friday.  The only requirement is that they wash their own dishes, which they have happily done.  Peaches and cream is most popular.  I think bonding over oatmeal works better for me than the more traditional ice breakers.

• The $100 I spent last year buying my own document camera, Ziggi, was money well spent.  No more running around the first week, begging anyone who will listen to connect my desktop computer to AirServer.  It would be great if schools provided resources we need to do our best teaching, but since mine doesn't, I'm glad I could get it myself.

• German 2 is a delight!  They are off to a great start, reviewing nouns, plurals, and present tense verbs while learning vocabulary about celebrations and festivals.  We've started the conversational past and watched Tiba's Geburtstag.

• I started off on day one with the bathroom flowchart.  That one item may single-handedly save my sanity this year (ok, that and A LOT of yoga and running).

I hope your year has gotten off to a good start, too!  Remember: