Backe, backe Kuchen

I love baking, and I've blogged about baking with my students.

Last fall, I decided I was ready for a new adventure and started working as a pastry chef for a local Bloomington coffee shop.

Other than getting up early in the morning, it's completely different from teaching.  

I usually work with one other baker, and we prep doughs and bake from 6:30 AM - 2:00 PM.  My current favorite things to bake are brownies (the frosting is fantastic!), gingersnaps, and sugar cookies, but we also make scones, muffins, rice crispy bars, quick breads, and mini quiche.  It's a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and so far I really enjoy it!

People have asked me if I miss teaching, and I do miss the teaching part.  But I no longer spend my days trying to keep teenagers off TikTok, and I can go to the bathroom whenever I need to.  Overall, it's just much less stressful.  

People also ask if I'll go back to teaching.  Maybe.  I've written that I believe public schools are a mirror: they reflect the state of our communities back to us.  Our country right now has a lot of division and anger.  That's how it feels in schools, too.  So, for the moment, I'll keep baking.  

 

Possessive Pronouns with Easy German

Sometimes everything just comes together!  I've blogged about my love of Easy German videos and also how useful EDPuzzle can be for teachers.  

Put them together, add a good worksheet to go along with the video, and you've got a great lesson to teach possessive pronouns (my, your, his, her, etc) in German 1 or to review them in German 2 or 3.  Enjoy!

Here are the links:

Original Super Easy German Possessive Pronouns Video

My EDPuzzle Video Version

Possessive Pronouns Worksheet

Berliner Mauer Kreuzworträtsel

 

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.

Click on the link if you'd like a copy: Berliner Mauer Kreuzworträtsel

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.

Advice for Multilevel Classes

I was recently corresponding with a new German teacher in South Carolina (schöne Grüße, Frau Becker!), and she asked for advice about planning for a class with both German 2 and 3 students in it.  Multilevel classes are pretty common in upper level world languages, so I thought I'd put my reflections here in case they can help anyone else.

The combination of two levels is tough for teachers. Administrators don't seem to understand how much more work it is for the teacher and how the students are shortchanged. They just look at numbers. As I was told, just be grateful we're letting you do this level at all.  At my school it was a 3/4 split. (And one year I did a 4/5 split, though we only had German 5 that one year!)

When facing a multilevel class, first of all, be kind to yourself. This isn't easy and you won't be able to give the students the same learning experience as if they were separate classes. You are one person and can only do what you can do. 

The upper level students (I'll call them German 4 here for clarity since that was my experience) should be seniors and, at least theoretically, more mature, so focus on the German 3 students, and give the German 4 students more independent work. 

You may be able to have your German 4 students play the role of conversation partner or assistant teacher. Give them a note card with a speaking question that they ask of the German 3 students one on one or in small groups. 

This isn't what you'd do if you had separate sections, but it is using the language and does benefit them. If parents complain, explain that it isn't under your control and ask them to take their concerns to administration. Overall, focus your energy on German 3, where you likely have more students, and do what you can about German 4, but don't expect yourself to be two people.

Summer 2023 Update

 Here's what I've been up to lately:

• Two elbow surgeries, one case of COVID, and one sinus surgery in 2022.

• A trip to Germany in the summer of 2022 to visit our son at the end of his exchange year in Schwebheim, Bavaria.  This was our first major trip since 2019 - it was wonderful to travel again!

• A return to teaching during the 2022-23 school year as a part-time middle school math support teacher at St Charles Catholic School.  I worked every other day from 10:30-2:30, and the school is a 15 minute walk from our house.  It was a wonderful way to return to the classroom, and being there helped restore my love of teaching.

I still love (and miss!) German teaching and creating lessons for German, so I'll definitely keep my blog up for others to use.  I might even post lessons or ideas if I see something I just can't resist sharing.

Easy German Reise nach Dresden - Yule Blog

 

Easy German Reise nach Dresden Trip to Dresden

A tool I find really useful is Edpuzzle.  I've blogged about it before, and I really like it for cutting and adding questions to online videos.

This video is the first 3 minutes of a new Easy German video filmed in Dresden.  The whole video is pretty good but probably a bit long for students' attention spans.  There is also the word "Scheiße" and some consumption of alcoholic beverages (by adults) later in the video, so it may not be something you want to show in your classes, depending on your school's policies and the maturity of your students.

However, the first three minutes show some beautiful sights in Dresden and provide great opportunities to use weather, clothing, and travel vocabulary, which are all German 2 topics in the district where I most recently taught. 

I made a one page worksheet to go along with my video.  Click on this link if you'd like a copy.

Start / Stop / Continue in 2023 - Yule Blog Challenge

 

Start / Stop / Continue in 2023 

As a math support teacher, I do less of the initial instruction but work with students more individually or in small groups when they have questions.  I'm happy to report that they have lots of questions, and I love helping them.  

One thing, though, that I want to stop is telling them information that they have in their notes. Instead I need to start prompting them to reference those notes.  

It's so much easier and faster just to answer their question, but it benefits them more in the long run if I help them become more independent in their learning.  Particularly middle schoolers don't automatically think to look back at the notes they took in class if they get stuck while doing their homework.  It seems obvious to us as teachers, but it isn't a habit they've developed yet.  If I can make sure my students learn to do this in middle school, I've planted a seed for their success in high school.

A Favorite Resource of 2022 - Yule Blog Challenge

A Favorite Resource of 2022 - Easy German

Ok, I'm cheating a little here since Easy German has been a favorite resource of mine for some time, so it's not new to 2022.  I've blogged about it quite a bit.  But it continues to be great and keep getting better, so it continues to deserve mention.

Recently they posted a video about Relativsätze, relative clauses.  This is a topic my German 3 students often found confusing, and the video explains it very well.

I made some guided notes to go along with the video.

Click the link if you'd like a copy: Relativsätze Relative Clauses notes

 

My Favorite Lesson of 2022 - Yule Blog Challenge

 

My Favorite Lesson of 2022 - Slope Dude

One of the joys of returning to math teaching in 2022 after 8 years of teaching German is that I got to teach about slope, which means I got to introduce my students to Slope Dude.

I first learned about Slope Dude from Sarah Carter at Math=Love, and I've wanted to teach a lesson using him ever since.  This fall, I got my chance!

I was working with a small group of seven pre-algebra students who were being exposed to the concept of slope for the first time.  We started with the video

and played Slope Dude Says.  It did not disappoint!  My students got very into it, and the competition between the final two was intense.  

Then, we drew pictures of the four types of slope in our notes

and color coded our names based on the type of slope in each line segment. (I missed a few here!)

Finally, we progressed to finding the numerical slope of a line from a graph.  

It was a lot of fun, and my students definitely finished the day with a good conceptual understanding of slope.  I could hear them saying "puff, puff positive" and "nice negative" - music to my ears!

A Success Story from 2022 - Yule Blog Challenge

I read about the MTBoS Yule Blog Challenge on a blog I follow and thought this might be a good way to return to blogging.  The challenge is to blog 12 times during your winter break, and there are prompts to get you started.  I'm starting with

A Success Story from 2022

My success story from 2022 is a pretty big one for me personally - I returned to teaching.  

I took the 2021-22 school year off and wasn't sure if I would return to teaching afterward.  When I started looking at options for this school year, I knew that I was only interested in a part time position.  Unfortunately, the district where I worked for the past 10 years would only let me return full time.  

Then, friends put me in touch with the principal of St. Charles Borromeo School, a K-8 Catholic School which is a 15 minute walk from my house.  (Our younger son went to preschool there.) They were looking for a Spanish teacher and knew I had taught German and had taken some Spanish.  Sadly, I don't know enough Spanish to teach it, but when I said I was also licensed in math and really enjoy supporting struggling students, the idea of my position as math support teacher started to take shape.

I help the middle school math teacher with a 6th grade math class and a 7th grade pre-algebra class.  The middle school is on a block schedule, so I work every other day from 10:30-2:30. I mostly work with students individually or in small groups, and I love it!  It's a wonderful way to return to the classroom and return to math teaching without being overwhelmed.  I'm so happy to be back!

2022 Update

 Here's what I've been up to in 2022:

• Two elbow surgeries and one sinus surgery

• A trip to Germany to visit our son at the end of his exchange year in Schwebheim, Bavaria.  This was our first major trip since 2019 - it was wonderful to travel again!

• A return to teaching as a part-time middle school math support teacher at St Charles Catholic School.  I work every other day from 10:30-2:30, and the school is a 10 minute walk from our house.  It's a wonderful way to return to the classroom, and I'm so happy to be there.

I still love (and miss!) German teaching and creating lessons for German, so I'll definitely keep my blog up for others to use.  I might even post lessons or ideas if I see something I just can't resist sharing.

Update, short version

When I last blogged in 2020, I was teaching high school German online and in person simultaneously during the continuing pandemic.  

By the spring of 2021, it was clear to me that I needed to make a change, which sadly meant leaving the German program I had built up over the last 8 years.  The original plan was to teach middle school math during a more normal school year, but the Delta variant and life circumstances intervened, and I'm watching this year of pandemic teaching from the sidelines.

When I told people I was taking the year off, they asked what I was doing with all my free time.  I loved this Twitter post as an answer:

 

I've been loving having time to run, quilt, read, bake, sleep, and do crossword puzzles.  But some days it takes most of my energy to get out of bed and take a shower.

I've been taking a Russian class, something I haven't done since 1994.  I've forgotten a lot of the grammar, but a surprising amount of vocabulary is still in my long-term memory.

I've been going to lots of medical appointments.  It turns out that you can get severe tennis elbow from too much typing while hybrid teaching.  (Another reason I haven't blogged.) It also turns out that secondary trauma is a real thing, which isn't fixed by taking a few days off and some self-care.

I've been amazed by the understanding and compassion of people.  I've been heartbroken by the cruelty and selfishness of people.

I've been grieving the (non-COVID) death of my father and the COVID deaths of more than 5 million people worldwide.

I've been slowly healing, and most importantly, I've been realizing this:

I am a teacher.  Not by profession or job title, but by vocation, by calling.  I love taking difficult topics and making them fun and understandable to students.  This has always been me, and it isn't changed by where or if I'm working.  

I don't know what comes next in my teaching career.  If the pandemic has taught me anything, it's that the future is hard to predict.  But I know I'll continue to be a teacher.

German Joke for students learning "werden"

It's been a very long time since I last blogged, and much has changed since my last post.  

I was inspired to write again by a video from Easy German with cheesey jokes which might be useful to other German teachers, so I'll post about that and save updates for another day (maybe).

Warning to K-12 public school teachers: this video has two or three words that would be inappropriate in most schools, so be sure to preview it before watching with your students and/or show only clips.

In spite of a few bathroom language moments, this is a sweet video, especially since Janusz is Manuel's dad.  I could imagine asking students to memorize and present one of the jokes as a short speaking assignment or extra credit opportunity.  

My personal favorite is at 11:33 and uses the verb werden, which I've generally taught in 2nd year.  

It's a pretty easy joke to understand in terms of language level, and what I like about it most is the way it contains both uses of werden:

1. As a helping verb to form the future tense - Wir werden sehen.  We will see.
2. As its own verb meaning to become - Wir werden Seen.  We're becoming lakes.

Ist das nicht fabelhaft?  Thanks, Easy German team.  Ach, I love teaching German!  

Update: I've updated my guided notes to include the joke video

     

and made a Google Slides presentation for the lesson.

I'm happy to share - just leave me a comment, and I'll send you a copy!

Going Green

As of Monday, October 12, we're officially in Phase Green.  Thankfully, this was also the week of Fall Break, so we only had 3 days of school before a 4 day weekend.  

Case numbers and percent positivity remain low in Monroe County.  We're averaging 2 or 3 COVID cases in the high schools per week, but these seem to be acquired in the community and isolated quickly so that we haven't had noticeable in-school transmission.  

 

I had previously been nervous about having all of the in person students in the building at once, but so many students have switched to all online that the in person numbers are not too high.  My largest class has 17 in person students, which I can fit in my room while maintaining physical distancing.  My smallest class is 8 in person students.

Things don't look as good in the rest of Indiana or in much of the country, so I'm not sure how long we can maintain our Monroe County bubble.

Some positives about Phase Green:

• I now only have 2 groups of students to keep track of: in person and online, instead of 3 groups during Phase Yellow: in person A-K, in person L-Z, and online.  It's surprised me just how much easier this is!

• We've returned to our normal maroon/gold alternating block schedule.  During hybrid, we had a modified block schedule of maroon maroon gold gold alternating Fridays.  It took me about 5 years to get the hang of a regular block schedule, and this new twist nearly pushed me over the edge.  Students had two days of class in a row, followed by almost a week off, which is terrible for language learning.  Not to mention keeping track of who is where on which day.  I don't recommend it!

• It's more practical to teach a lesson in person now than it was on a hybrid schedule.  I've been using the flipped classroom model and pre-recording lesson videos, which works well for some students, but many don't have the self-discipline to watch the video carefully and take good notes.  On Wednesday I taught the lesson live for in person students.  That way I could make sure that they were following along and could check for understanding.  Most of them preferred this method, and it definitely gave me a better feel for their comprehension.

• This isn't specific to Phase Green, but I LOVE my contact-free bathroom signout!  It is even better than my bathroom pass flowchart.  I'm keeping this forever!

Overall, it's really a year of figuring things out as I go and doing what I can.  I'm super grateful to be half time because all of the changes/new procedures/worries are exhausting!  

A teacher in Mishawaka (northern Indiana) expressed it eloquently to her school board this week:

A Whole New World

 

We returned to in-person hybrid instruction this week after 4 weeks of all online learning to start the school year.

It was my first time teaching students in the school building since March 12, 2020.  It's definitely very different.

(sanitizing shoe mats)

After all of the planning, discussion, changing of plans, and worry, I have to say that the first week went pretty smoothly.

About 1/3 of our students have remained completely online, and the remaining students are split into two groups that alternate attendance days.  So, instead of 1600 students in the building every day, there are more like 600 on any given day.

This certainly made maintaining physical distance easier.  My classes have between 6 and 12 students in them, which allows everyone to be well spread out.  

We have block scheduling, so that plus the hybrid schedule meant that it took all 4 days of the week before I met all of my in person students.  It was like 4 first days of school!  Needless to say, everyone was exhausted by Friday.

But students have generally been cooperative about mask wearing and physical distancing in the classroom.  

It's difficult, though, to figure out how best to help a student from 6 feet away and how to continue to work with my online students when I have students in the classroom.  I'm using a flipped classroom model, which is not how I chose to teach BCE (before COVID era), but it seems to me the best option in the CE (COVID era).  Many things just aren't ideal right now.

The first few days just felt weird, but by Friday I did feel like I was starting to get a little more comfortable.  It's just a very different school world now, and I think it will be for some time to come.

Ready, set...

I went in to school on Friday to make sure my room is ready for a hybrid return to in person instruction on Tuesday.

I've got 16 desks, spaced 6 feet apart,

my required CDC posters,

spray cleaner and paper towels (instead of books) on the bookshelf,

and the schedule on the board so hopefully we know who is supposed to be where.

Contact-free Bathroom Signout

 

People who have been reading my blog for a while know that mid-class requests to use the bathroom are the bane of my teaching existence.  

I thought I had solved that issue once and for all with my bathroom flowchart.  COVID-19 now laughs in the face of my naivety.

In preparation for a return to in person classes after Labor Day, I spent yesterday afternoon pondering a way to keep track of student bathroom use for contact tracing while not using a pass or a paper signout sheet.  

The solution: a Google Doc Contact Free bathroom signout.  

From the Course Resources page on Canvas, students click on the Restroom Signout button,

which takes them to a Google Doc which they can all write on.

Students will sign themselves in and out and will be able to check if they need to wait because a classmate is in the restroom without my involvement.  Hallelujah! 

Because 2020.

Need one for your German class?  Contact-free German Bathroom Signout Form

MTBoS Blaugust Report

 

Today is the final day of MTBos Blaugust!  This will be my 15th post for the month, which I am very pleased with, especially considering that I only blogged 17 times during the entire 2019-2020 school year.  

Many thanks to Sarah Carter (https://mathequalslove.blogspot.com/) and Druin (http://statteacher.blogspot.com/) for inspiring me to join in.  

We've made it through the first month of the 2020-21 school year!

Back to School

 

After starting the school year on August 12 with all students online, our school board voted on Tuesday to return to in-person learning on September 8.

We'll be moving into Phase Yellow, with elementary students attending 5 days a week and secondary students on a hybrid schedule.  Here's the secondary hybrid schedule:

Bloomington North is the only school in the district with block scheduling, and our hybrid schedule now looks like this:

Phew!  It's taken me about 7 years to adjust to block scheduling, and now this maroon maroon gold gold alternating maroon/gold makes my brain hurt!  I will definitely need to write everything down very deliberately.

Our community positivity rate has dropped to about 2%, which is quite good.  The big concern is that we are a university town, and 40,000 Indiana University students just returned to campus and started classes Monday. 

I just hope that we don't get everyone adjusted to being back in school, only to have to return to online learning a few weeks later.  Fingers crossed, and working to be