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...