Snow Day(s)!

Up until this past week, it's been a mild winter.  My kids were complaining that we hadn't had any snow days and only one 2 hour delay, and it was beginning to feel like a long haul until spring break in mid-March.

That all changed Monday.  It started snowing Sunday night, and by Monday morning enough had accumulated for us to have our first snow day of the year.  It kept snowing much of the day, and I had two very happy kids at my house.

Our school district includes both the city of Bloomington and most of the surrounding county, so even when the roads are clear in town, school is often cancelled because the rural bus routes aren't in good shape.  So, on Tuesday we had our second snow day.  

Then, it snowed several more inches Tuesday night, and schools were closed again on Wednesday.  

We didn't get any more snow after that, but temperatures and wind chills dropped very low, resulting in our fourth snow day today.  

Temperatures are supposed to be very low again tonight, and we already have a 2 hour delay for tomorrow, but it looks like we might finally get back to school on Friday.

Präteritum

My German 2 students started learning the Präteritum (Narrative Past / Simple Past / Imperfekt) this unit.  They've been working with the Perfekt / Conversational Past since the beginning of the first semester, and it's time to add in the other past tense.

We started out by comparing the Präteritum with the Perfekt.  German is different from many other languages in that there isn't really a difference in meaning between these two forms of the past tense; the difference is the context in which they are used.  Perfekt is used in conversation, while Präteritum is used primarily in writing.

Next, I taught students to form the narrative past stem for regular verbs by adding "te" to the verb stem.  To that, they should add an ending so that the verb agrees with the subject of the sentence.  This is a little bit different than the way the Präteritum is taught in the textbook and online sources I consulted.  They teach separate Präteritum endings for regular and irregular verbs.  I think it's easier for students to learn one set of endings that can be applied to both groups of verbs.  Once they know these endings, forming the narrative past for irregular verbs is simple.

I don't require students to memorize the narrative past and past participle for irregular verbs until German 3, but students in German 2 have to know how to recognize and use them correctly when provided them.

On Friday students used the verb dice to practice conjugating both regular and irregular verbs in the present and Präteritum.  Some of my students did especially colorful work

The Pfingsten Paradox

My second year students started a new unit last week on Feste and Feiertage (Festivals and Holidays).  With Mardi Gras / Fat Tuesday / Faschingsdienstag coming up February 17, it's a good time to visit this topic.  Plus, we need something cheerful to focus on when it's the middle of winter, we haven't had any snow days, and Spring Break is still too far away to think about.

It's also a good opportunity to revisit vocabulary for seasons, months, and dates / ordinal numbers, which we covered in 1st year but could use a review.  Our vocabulary list includes several of the major holidays celebrated in German-speaking countries.  After introducing those, students added them to a calendar in their notes:

Pfingsten (Pentecost) is one of the holidays we discussed, and I was surprised to find that in three sections of German 2, no one knew what Pentecost was.  I had a few students refer to Pentecostal Christianity or Pentecostals, but other than a vague idea of it being a religious holiday, they were stumped.  

To some extent it makes sense, because unlike Christmas or Easter, Pentecost does not really have a secular component to it in the United States.  It's ironic, though, because in Germany, which has far lower religious participation than the United States, Pentecost Monday is a public holiday.  School students have at least a long weekend, and some have two weeks of vacation.  The majority of my students would identify as Christian, but they were completely unfamiliar with Pentecost.  It's interesting to me that the United States is much more religious than Germany, even though we have a strict separation of church and state.  Germany has freedom of religion but not the same separation of church and state - many religious holidays are also public holidays, and religion is a public school subject.  Yet Germany as a whole is a much more secular country than the U.S.  The Pfingsten Paradox.

Verb würfeln

My German 2 students have a unit test coming up.  They've been working hard this year on learning irregular verbs and the conversational past tense (Perfekt).  Most of their tests, including this next one, have a section asking them to conjugate verbs in both the present and past tense.  During the class before the test we reviewed and practiced in groups using my pronoun dice.  

I got my first pattern for pronoun dice from the Hueber.de Deutsch als Fremdsprache website.  They have free patterns for several different dice for use in the German classroom.  Here's what the pronoun die pattern looks like:

I printed them out on cardstock last year, and they've held up quite well.  The tabs on the pattern don't align perfectly, so you have to adjust a bit, and I added in "Sie" (formal) to the yellow "sie" side of the die by hand.

But since in my pre-German teaching life I volunteered as a 3rd grade challenge math teacher, I knew of a great website for printing out patterns for all kinds of 3D geometic shapes, including cubes.  One day when I had a lot of time on my hands, I played around in Photoshop and created my own pronoun die pattern.  

We started with the present tense.  I put the instructions for the activity up on the screen, along with a list of the 6 verbs we've been working on this unit.  

Taking turns among their table groups of 4 people, each student rolled both dice.  The pronoun die determined the subject, and the number die told them which verb to conjugate.  I was able to circulate around the room, listening to pronunciation and correcting mistakes.  After we did present tense for a while, I had the students switch to past tense.  

This was tougher because they had to use a helping verb and a past participle, but most students got the hang of it.  

Next unit, we'll be adding the narrative past (Präteritum) in to the mix!

National German Exam for High School Students

I gave the first part of the National German Exam for High School Students to some of my students today.  The NGE is a test sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of German which has been given to second, third, and fourth year high school German students across the United States for the past 55 years.  Doing well on the exam is one of the criteria used in selecting students for a four week summer study-trip to Germany.

This was the first time I gave the NGE, and it was the first time it has been given at my school, as far as I know.  I'm very proud of my students who chose to take the test.

The NGE holds a special place in my heart because I took it when I was a high school student.  I did well enough on the test in my third year of German that I got to spend four weeks in Germany during the summer of 1990.  It was after the Berlin wall fell in November 1989 but before East and West Germany reunified in October 1990.  I lived with a host family in Nürnberg for 3 weeks and then traveled through East Germany to Berlin for a week.  It was an incredible experience and definitely played a major role in my decision to return to Germany for a year as an exchange student, major in German in college, and become a German teacher.  

I was the first member of my family to travel abroad.  Since then, my parents have traveled to several different countries and hosted college exchange students from Hungary and Poland.  I have been back to Germany multiple times and maintain close ties to my host family from my year as an exchange student.  I studied Russian in college, too, and spent a semester studying in Russia.  The National German Exam started me on the path to all of this.  Maybe someday one of my students will also get a chance to go to Germany because of the NGE... 

Handyverbot

My first two years of teaching were from 1999 to 2001.  Back in the days before the iPad or the iPhone.  I didn't even own a cell phone.

 When I returned to high school teaching in 2013, one of the biggest changes I had to get used to was students and their phones.  My school does not have a school-wide rule about cell phone use.  Students are allowed to use their phones during passing periods and lunch, and then individual teachers set the policy for their own classes.  My rule is no cell phone use from the beginning bell until 5 minutes before the ending bell.  

I have this sign posted in several prominent locations in the room.  After the bell rings, I greet my students with "Guten Tag, Klasse!" followed by "Tschüss, Handys!"  (Handy is the German word for cell phone.)  After we bid farewell to our phones, they are to remain silent and out of sight for the next 80 minutes.  Then, during the last 5 minutes of class, when we are cleaning up and writing down assignments, I announce "Hallo Handy," and students may use their phones if they wish.  If a student has a phone out during class, I collect it in a basket on my desk, which is called the Handy Haus.  The phone stays there until the bell rings for the end of class.  

Cell phones are without a doubt the number one classroom management annoyance I deal with on a daily basis.  Usually the students are good about keeping their phones in their bags the first week or two of school, but then one or two start to appear under a desk or inside a sweatshirt pocket.  If I don't get out the Handy Haus, pretty soon most of the class is using a device all period long.  It's tempting to throw up my hands and give in to the onslaught of digital devices, but I think the Handy Battle is one that is worth fighting.

One of the things I want my students to learn (in addition to German!) is wise use of technology.  We need to teach young people when an appropriate time to text is and when is not - they don't automatically know this when an iPhone is placed in their hands.  If I think it's rude for them to use a cell phone while I'm teaching (which I do), then I need to explain this and follow through with classroom policies that support this. Research tells us that multitasking is inefficient - when we try to do several things at once, we actually don't do any of them very well.    I have certainly observed that students don't learn German well when they are distracted by their phones.  Ideally, I would like my students to have enough self-control that I don't need a Handy Haus, but realistically I know many of them haven't developed that level of self-discipline yet.  But it's something I think they can learn, with practice. And since they will soon be (or already are) driving cars, it's vitally important that they do learn it. In the meantime, I want to give my students every opportunity possible for success in German, so I'll continue to keep my Handy Haus nearby. 

New Classroom Decorations

Here are the crochet snowflakes I made over winter break, hanging in my classroom.