I seem to be on a crossword puzzle roll lately. I created a Berlin Wall crossword puzzle for my good friend to use with her German 2 students. It's German to German but uses relatively simple language, so it should be accessible to strong German 2 students or German 3 students who have studied a bit about the Wall.
Today was the second day of class for my first two groups of students. (We're on block schedule.) On today's agenda was setting up students' notebooks and signing up to access the online textbook.
I was expecting to get lots of messages saying that students were having trouble connecting or the access code didn't work. Nope. Not one of those.
I did have 2 students try to join the wrong section, but 2 out of 63 is not bad. (Not everyone has signed up yet, so there's still time...)
What I did start getting was some variation on the theme of "Help! My German textbook is in German!"
Well, yes it is. This is pretty standard for textbooks from German publishers, as their books are designed to be used in many different countries, not all of which are English-speaking. I'm not opposed to a textbook by an American or British publisher, but there just aren't many to choose from out there.
I've blogged previously about our struggles to find a good textbook. We adopted this book in the spring, and it's the third textbook I've used at Bloomington North. I think it's the best one we've had yet, but of course it isn't perfect.
It's a fairly long video - 23 minutes - for German 1 in the target language at the beginning of the year, but so much of it is understandable from the videos that I feel like they can handle it. I also have a strong German 1 class this year, and I really want to challenge the students who are doing well.
Ralph visits schools in 10 other countries and spends a day with a student in school in each one. There are so many great topics you could focus on, but I was mainly trying to get my strong students to try watching a show in the target language and realize how much they are able to understand. I created a short worksheet to go along with the video, mainly just to hold the students accountable for watching all of it:
I plan to use this same video as enrichment for German 2 at the end of their Kleidung unit, focusing on the uniforms worn by many of the children. I'll post it to my blog once I make it!
I introduced weather vocabulary to my German 2 students this week. In the second lesson of the unit I introduced students to circumlocution with a group brainstorming activity: each table group got 3 or 4 small cards with a German vocabulary word on one side of each card. Their job was to brainstorm as many German clues to that word that would help a classmate guess that word. Some words were easy - for "trocken," students quickly came up with "das Gegenteil von nass." Others required more work - for "der Herbst," students came up with "eine Jahreszeit" and "kühl," but to differentiate between fall and spring, they added "September, Oktober, und November." Eventually, all of the groups has some kind of clue for each word. Then, one person from each group gathered all the cards and rotated to the next table. He or she then quizzed the students at the next table, using the clues the students had generated. I like this activity because it really pushes students to use the vocabulary they have and it feels like a game. If we have time, I usually have the students rotate to more tables, though on this day we didn't get to that. At the end of the activity, I collected the cards and used the students' definitions to make a Kahoot for them to play next class: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/6055f543-72c4-4ee6-a8f2-0e362bc44ed1
I tried playing Löffel (Spoons) for the first time this week with my German 2 students, and it was a big hit. Every student was actively involved, and I had several requests to play again. That definitely counts as a win!
Only a few students were familiar with the card game Spoons, so it took a few rounds and explanations until everyone was clear on how to play, but after that they were off, practicing German vocabulary, and having fun.
I had made sets of 4 cards for each vocabulary word. For example, there might be the German noun, the gender (der/die/das), a picture, and a sentence describing the word in German. Students tried to get all 4 cards for one vocabulary word in their hand. Our current topic is technology vocabulary, and you can access my cards here.
We had prepped for the game by working with the cards the previous class, just trying to sort them into sets of 4 so that they would have some familiarity with them before trying to collect them in a game situation. I think this helped a lot, especially since this was their first time playing Löffel.
The student without a spoon at the end of a round wrote a letter in the word "Löffel" on his or her desk with a dry erase marker. The goal was to be the person with the fewest letters at the end of the game.
You'll need to dedicate a good chunk of time to playing, especially the first time. Probably because it was new to students, we spent 25-30 minutes playing and none of the players collected all of the letters in Löffel. Still, I think it was time well spent because it really got everyone engaged with German to German vocabulary from the unit. Not bad for the last month of school!
My colleague Frau Nessi and I are incredibly proud of our German 2 classes! This is the first group that she and I have both worked with using our new textbook series since German 1, and their progress is impressive!
We're already approaching the last quarter of the year, which means we're looking ahead to next year when they will be in Deutsch 3. Our goal is for German 3 to be almost exclusively in German, with the exception of some explanations of more complicated grammar concepts.
I try to make a natural, organic progression over the course of my German instruction to more and more German and less and less English. I have some of the most commonly used expressions on the wall in my room and expect students to use and understand them from early on in German 1.
I then progress from giving new instructions in English to giving them in German followed by English and then German without the English.
To get our current German 2 students ready for German 3 and using German (almost) exclusively, I'm introducing circumlocution and German-German vocabulary in small, non-threatening ways now.
Our current topic is Auto und Rad fahren (Car and bike riding). We read a short article in German from our textbook about bike paths in Germany. Students answered comprehension questions about it in German, which they've been doing since German 1, but I added in another question:
(What is a one-way street?) Most students wanted to translate it into English, but I pushed them to think about how to explain it in German using other words. We talked about how they might explain it in English to a small child without using the word one-way. Eventually most students were able to get to something along the lines of "Alle Autos fahren in nur eine Richtung. (All cars drive in only one direction.) Success!
On the last day of school before Spring Break, we played Kahoot with their current vocabulary. Students may not have noticed but there wasn't any English in the Kahoot.
It started out with identifying pictures:
Then it got a little tougher with Where is this vehicle going? and 4 possible complete sentence answers.
And What does one do here?
Finally, they were ready for questions without pictures:
They did very well, especially considering that it was the day before Spring Break. We also watched a video from Easy German, which I love because it is in German with German and English subtitles: (But I recommend you preview all videos completely before showing them in class as there is occasionally some mild profanity which may or may not be tolerated at your school.)
We'll continue on after break with German-German vocabulary crossword puzzles and word association games for vocabulary.
My German 2 classes presented weather reports for cities in German-speaking countries this week. It was the first time I've done this assignment, and it went really well!
First, students showed us where their city is on a map:
Then, they told us about the weather forecast for the next four days. In my example, I modeled speaking freely without writing out everything I would say:
Many of my students were able to do that as well:
Others felt more comfortable with more of their presentation written out:
I gave them a fair amount of freedom on that. If they had things written out, it needed to be done correctly. If they spoke freely, I was more lenient on grammar mistakes.
I designed a recording page for students to complete as they listened to their peers' presentations. I've found that having some kind of activity like this really encourages students to listen more closely to each other.
I try to use German as much as possible in all of my classes so that by the time students are in the advanced levels we are using the target language almost all the time (3rd year - still need to explain some of the more difficult grammar in English) and exclusively (4th year).
One difficulty I notice students having is understanding instructions that are written in German. It's a challenge because I don't want students to miss a question on a quiz or test because they didn't understand the instructions but knew the material. On the other hand, I've noticed that if I write the instructions in both German and English, they don't bother to read the German instructions at all. Then, when I take away the English, they are lost.
What to do?
Recently when browsing on one of my go-to websites for German materials and ideas, ISL Collective, I came upon these great pictures of directions and their meanings.
The author, Martha from Austria, has very kindly shared them for free. (You have to join ISL collective to download materials, but it is free.) I plan to make posters from them for my room next year.
School has been out a week now, which means I'm enjoying the relaxed pace of summer and the chance to think ahead to next year. Often this means working on new ideas and plans in the morning while enjoying a mug of tea and still wearing my pajamas. I will be teaching 5/6 time again next school year. I will have two sections of German 1, two sections of German 2, and one section of German 4. I didn't teach any German 2 last year, and I missed it, so I'm very happy to get to teach it again. The exciting news for our German program is that we have fifteen students enrolled in German 4, which is enough to have a separate section and not need to combine it with German 3. Last year was the first year since I have been at BHSN that we offered German 4 at all, but there were only 5 students, so I had to be combined with German 3. Since we had new textbooks for all levels and the topics in the third year book were new to the German 4 students, it worked fine to combine the groups and differentiate as needed to challenge the German 4 students. But now that we have enough students, we can offer a true German 4 class. The textbook we'll be using is Denk Mal! from Vista.
One of the things I really want to emphasize in German 4 is target language usage. In the 3/4 class this past year, I spoke German to students most of the time but still used English to explain new grammar concepts. I probably didn't push students to use German as much as I should have.
In German 4, there won't be any new grammar topics - just review, so I want to use German exclusively. If I want students to use German all the time, too, I need my grading system to reflect that. In German 1 and 2, grades are weighted at 75% for assessment (quizzes, tests, and projects) and 25% for assignments and participation. I've decided that in German 4, grades will be 50% for assessment, 25% for assignments, and 25% for target language participation.
A little while ago, I found a Weekly Rubric for Target Language Use from Spanishmama.com which she created using materials from Joshua Cabral at World Language Classroom.
I started with that and modified the format and rubric until I had what I think will work well for my classroom.
We have three 6 week grading periods per semester, so I made a place to record weekly scores for the semester.
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