Listening Feature in Quizizz

I'm a fan of Kahoot, Quizizz, and Quizlet Live.  All three games provide a fun way to practice material, and each has its own strengths and classroom situations when it works best.

I really like the way Quizizz allows students to work at their own pace.  It also shows the answer choices on students' own screens, which can be very helpful if the answers are long or quite similar to each other.  I have also had classes which are not mature enough to handle the whole-class competitive aspects of Kahoot (or choosing an appropriate name), and Quizizz offers a good alternative.

As I was looking at my collection of Quizizz this week, I found a Quizizz made by another teacher for the German alphabet:

 https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/57c3570c9debbafb240a341f 

It asks students about the German names for the letters of the alphabet: 

My students usually really need practice in hearing and recognizing a letter of the alphabet.

As I was looking at this Quizizz, I found that you can upload 10 second MP3 files or record yourself very easily to give an audio clue.  Perfect!

I found a great website, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-german-alphabet-1444644, which has individual MP3 files for the letter of the alphabet which you can download.  

I'm going to record myself spelling words as well for my students to practice, and there are lots more possibilities for listening practice on Quizizz with this function.  I hope you find it useful as well!

A New Look for the New Year

For the past 6 years I've had desks in my classroom arranged in table groups of 4, like this:

It's worked quite well for me, though there were always a few spots where students had their backs partially to the front board.  This year when I came back after summer break, the desks were in rows after being taken out and put back in for floor waxing.  So, I decided to try out a new arrangement.

The idea is to have everyone arranged in more of a U-shape, facing the center of the room.  I did this during my first two years of teaching in my math classes, but I haven't used it since.

I've made a few modifications since the above picture was taken.  The desks are now in pairs of 2 within the U-shapes, so students have a convenient partner for quick speaking exercises.  There is one group of 3 tables for my classes which have an odd number of students.  Here's what I think I've settled on:

I'm using Name Tents again this year to learn students' names and mix them up with different partners at the beginning of the year, so that has made it easy to tweak things a bit as I go.  

So far, I am quite happy with it.  Students took their first quiz this week, and I didn't move desks for that.  I reminded them to focus on their own work, and the questions are in a different order for each student, so I don't think there was much of a problem with wandering eyes.  So far, so good!

Liechtenstein in the news

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-liechtenstein-anniversary/beer-with-the-prince-liechtenstein-marks-300th-anniversary-idUSKCN1V51S5

Liechtenstein made the news in the U.S. this week as it celebrated its 300th anniversary on Thursday.  

We're discussing holidays in German 2 and introducing German speaking countries in German 1, so we'll definitely be talking about Liechtenstein next week in both of my classes.  

This Reuters article gives a nice overview of the country and has a photo slide show of the celebrations.

I couldn't help noticing the tent behind the prince which says "Ein Land, ein Bier."

Deutsche Welle has this video in English about Liechtenstein and its 300th anniversary:

and this one from a few years ago:

Typisch Deutsch Video Activity

Was ist Typisch Deutsch?

School started this week on Wednesday.  I'm always glad when we start with a short week because the first week is tiring for everyone.  It went very well!

One of the activities I did with my German 2 classes was to watch the German in Me video from Easy German.  

It was a nice way to engage the students in the target language without overwhelming them since there are German and English subtitles.

As we watched, students were asked to select one key German word for each typically German characteristic and to make some notes in English about what it meant:

We did one example together as a class:

We didn't have enough time to get through the whole video in either of my two German 2 classes, but we did get to several typisch Deutsch characteristics, and I think students were getting the hang of it.  Definitely something to do again.  I may turn this activity into an enrichment assignment for students who score 90% or better on the first test.