Kreuzworträtsel / Crossword Puzzles

I liked to use crossword puzzles in my classes as a way to sneak in some vocabulary drill in a way that was slightly more enjoyable to students.  It also has the perk of being self-correcting, so no need to spend a lot of time grading/going over it.  Win-win!

The tool I have always used is the Criss-Cross Puzzlemaker from Discovery Education.  It's not fancy, but it gets the job done.

I take the puzzle that is generated by Puzzlemaker and paste it into a PowerPoint template so that I can save it and use a format that is similar to other paper assignments.  This certainly isn't necessary, but I think it's a nice touch.

I recently made a puzzle to be used as a review for the beginning of the year for incoming German 2 students.  It reviews typical German 1 vocabulary, such as school, numbers, colors, family, and food.  I made two versions.  One is easier and has the clues as the English definitions.  Students fill in the German word.  The other version is more difficult.  The clues are in (very simple) German, and the answers are German as well.  I feel like this is attainable for strong German 2 students and might even be challenging to German 3 students who are working on using the target language only.  Both versions are included in the same file, which is available here: Willkommen Deutsch 2 Kreuzworträtsel.  Here is the list of words for a key and for easy modification to tailor the puzzle to your own students without needing the retype the whole list: Willkommen Deutsch 2 Kreuzworträtsel word list.

Eins, Zwei, Drei Tier Video

This weekend I found a great video from Die Sendung mit der Maus to use as enrichment with my German 1 students for this unit:  

https://www.wdrmaus.de/filme/lachgeschichten/eins_zwei_drei_tier.php5 

Students have been working with adjectives and adverbs in opposite pairs as well as Haustiere recently, so it's a great fit.

You can turn on subtitles in German (UT), so students can see what they're hearing.  

I've created a short worksheet to go with it so that students can view the video independently while I am helping students who need reteaching.

 

Here's the file if you'd like to try it with your students: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JtvQJ6yr-t8oAoAUfgvXmGfeTdvPLqZ8

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 

12 Typical German Dishes

Whew, once you get out of the routine on regular blogging, it's hard to get back in!  My first year teaching full time had me wiped out in March and April, but now with just 11 days of school left, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and have regained some energy.

Easy German recently posted this video of 12 Typical German Dishes, which I really like for our German 1 food unit.  

I've created an assignment on Canvas from the video where students label picture of the dishes after watching the video:

Then, they sort them by category:

This could either be an assignment for the whole class or possibly an enrichment activity for students who have mastered a topic to work on while their peers complete additional practice.

I'll be teaching 3 sections of German 1 and 3 sections of German 2 next year, which is the same as this year, so I'm hoping to add in some things like enrichment and remediation differentiation.  

Wetter Kahoot for Deutsch 2

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 

Familie Video from Hallo Deutschschule

When we return from break on Monday, German 1 will begin the topic of Familie.  It's a fun topic that students generally do well on - it's concrete and easy to relate to and the vocabulary isn't difficult.

There are quite a few good videos online that work well for this unit.  A simple one that I found is from Hallo Deutschschule, a German language course in Switzerland.  

I've added comprehension questions through Edpuzzle to make an assignment for my students:

https://edpuzzle.com/media/5a4b9a89b3b18640e3b5000f 

Three Words: Making Good Progress

Both my German 1 and German 2 classes are making good progress this week, and I felt like I was able to keep on top of things and stay organized pretty well, too.

German 1 has been working on school vocabulary using some Learning Apps:



and has learned the numbers from 0  to 1,000,000,000:

Then, on Friday, I introduced haben and the accusative case:

We've also been keeping up with current events like the start of Oktoberfest and the upcoming German elections.

German 2 has been working with clothing vocabulary, colors, and adjective endings.  The highlight of this had to be describing what my McDonald's Happy Meal toy Minion was wearing and then discovering that his hat pops off, so we can use the verbs ausziehen and anziehen:

On Tuesday, students conjugated the verbs from our current unit.  Then, each table group wrote a sentence in the present tense using one of the verbs.  As a class, we then changed the sentences into the Perfekt.  I liked this practice structure and think I will use it in the future.  My students are starting to get more confident with the Perfekt - yay!

On Thursday, I introduced that Perfekt for verbs that take sein as a helping verb.  It went well, and students had a good initial understanding.  Their assignment was a worksheet which has verbs which take both haben and sein as helping verbs, and that pushed them to think again about how we know which verbs take which helping verb.  

Links to files:

     German 1 Numbers 0 to 1,000,000,000

     German 1 Haben and Accusative Case 

     German 2 Perfekt with sein

     German 2 Perfekt with haben and sein Worksheet

Assessments on Canvas

I've been enjoying a relaxed summer schedule to work on things for next year at a comfortable pace.  

One of the things I'm working on is moving our assessments from paper to our learning management system, Canvas.  I was hesitant to test on Canvas when we first started using it two years ago because it was all so new and there was so much for both me and the students to learn.  

This past year we gave our semester exams on Canvas successfully, and I've been using it more for assignments as well, so I think I'm ready to put regular quizzes and tests on Canvas as well.  

It takes some time to input the quizzes, but then the grading is quick and there's no paper to deal with.  I only have German 1 and 2 next year, so it seems like a good time to switch those classes over.

Here's what a vocabulary quiz will look like:

Nouns have two boxes, one for the article and one for the noun, so that students can get partial credit if they miss the article.  Verbs have just one box.  These questions are graded automatically by the computer.  Other questions are teacher graded: 

I am requiring that students type ß and umlauts correctly.  It's something that we practice in class, and I include the special characters in the instructions for students to copy and paste if they have difficulty with the character codes.  On the first quiz of the year, students still receive full credit even without the umlaut but get a reminder that they need to use umlauts correctly on all future assessments.

All of the vocabulary questions are in question banks, so students' questions will not be in the same order as their neighbors, and it makes generating a parallel quiz for a retake a snap.  

Löffel

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!

I had read about using Spoons as a review game at Teaching to Inspire, which gives a really good overview and things to consider when designing your own game.

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!

Vocabulary Practice Tutorial for German 1/2

I had my first vocabulary practice tutorial for German 1 and 2 this week.  

One of the most important things I'm trying to convey to my German 1 and 2 students is that sitting and looking at your vocabulary list is not the most effective way to study vocabulary.  They need to be actively engaged with the words - writing them, saying them, spelling them, etc.  

Quizlet is one of my favorite high-tech tools for vocabulary practice.  I especially like the Speller and Learn modes.

This tutorial, though, focused on low-tech (and hopefully fun!) ways to practice vocabulary.  Several of the ideas come from observing Word Work in elementary school classrooms.  (Thank you, Rogers and Binford Elementary Schools!)

This tutorial featured Hangman, using my vintage hangman game boards, purchased at Goodwill for $1:

Hidden Letters (Probe), which is similar to Hangman and also was a $1 Goodwill find:

Letter tiles (pink dots for umlauts):

And letter stamps:

I didn't have anyone choose to do letter tiles, but students seemed to enjoy the other stations.  

Here are my instruction files for Hangman and Hidden Letters if you'd like to give them a try.

Farben und Kleidung

I am such a morning person!  I'm so much more creative in the morning than any other time of the day.  

On Saturday afternoon I was trying to do some planning and creating for my next unit in German 2 - Kleidung Clothing.  Since I didn't teach German 2 last year, it's been two years since I last taught this topic.  We have a new textbook now, so I was looking through what I already have and seeing what fits in with our book and what I need.  I got stuff done, but it was a slow slog.

Then, I woke up early this morning, made myself a cup of tea, and the ideas started flowing.  

I introduced colors last year in German 1, but students were never tested on them, and I have a feeling they need a bit of a review.  I used the above picture in German 1, but I like it and think it will make a good review.  Who doesn't like coloring on a Monday morning?

Several months ago I found a great free worksheet at GrundschulAtelier for beginning clothing vocabulary and colors:

http://www.grundschulatelier.de/kostenlose-arbeitsblaetter/DaF-Arbeitsblatt-Kleidung.pdf

I modified it a bit to work for my students and came up with this:

Since I just introduced clothing vocabulary for the first time on Thursday, I think this will work well to get students using and learning both colors and clothing in class Monday.  

Farben Colors Vocabulary Page

Kleidung Clothing Vocabulary Page

Target Language Instructions

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.  

Here's the link to the Arbeitstechniken worksheets and flashcards.