Sunday, August 23, 2020

It's β is not ß season


I think you have to have a healthy level of year to year amnesia to be a teacher.  Otherwise, no one would do it more than one year.  Case in point:

β is not ß season

There's always a phase about a week or two into the school year where my German 1 students struggle with typing German special characters, most especially ß.  

I give them a menu of options to chose from:  

But an ess-tset does look a lot like a Greek beta, so more than a few students type that instead of ß, and their answer is marked wrong even though it looks right.

It's especially intense this year since I have 3 full classes of German 1, which makes about 90 students.  

It's also harder to get the word out during remote learning.  In a classroom, once I notice it happening, I make multiple loud announcements, and this catches about 95% of the students.  

There really isn't an equivalent to a loud classroom announcement in remote learning.  I've put an announcement on our LMS, and I'm going through assignments to try to catch the students making this mistake.  And of course I'm replying to emails and Canvas messages asking "Why is my answer wrong?"  It definitely felt like that was all I did on Friday.

Sigh.  This too shall pass.

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