März Musik Bracket Up

The März Musik bracket is now up in my classroom!  

On Friday after their test, my German 2 students received their brackets.  I played a very short snippet of each song, and students filled out their brackets, making predictions of which song they thought would win the whole thing.  

I've invited my colleague, Frau Nessi, to include her German 2 class as well, so for the first time I've tried creating a page in Canvas (our LMS) with dynamic content that updates automatically.  Cross your fingers that it works!

Students have to have their brackets filled out by next class to be eligible to win the prediction contest, and the first vote will be Tuesday, March 10 and Wednesday March 11.

We're a bit behind some of the other schools that are participating in the group bracket, but since we just finished round 1 of sophomore ISTEP testing and spring break starts in a week, this seems to work best for us.  March Madness runs into April, and we will too!

März Musik 2020

modified from https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mdc2dxcQ2-jRsgEwRrQl999IF2qGgH625Na_cObqYp0

It's almost March, and once again, I am incredibly grateful for the internet and German teachers who share their fantastic resources!

Last year, I debuted März Musik with my German 2 classes, and it was a big hit.  Some of my students from last year have already been asking if we'll be doing it again this year.  It's a lot of fun, but also a lot of work to set up.  Here's where the German Teacher Blogosphere steps in:

A German teacher in Wisconsin shared her list of 16 songs to compete in this year's March Music Madness, as well as activities, brackets, and more.  Other teachers have contributed their materials, and now there's a whole Google Folder full of great stuff!  

So, I think I'm ready to go.  Like last year, I'll be doing März Musik with my German 2 classes, and I'll open it up to my colleague's German 2 class and her 3/4 classes as well.

Das Grundgesetz ist 70 Jahre alt!

https://www.bodowartke.de/medien/698 

The Bundesrepublik Deutschland was founded in May 1949, which means it and the Grundgesetz (basic law/constitution) are 70 years old this year!

Bodo Wartke, a popular German piano player and singer, performs a rap of the first five articles of the Grundgesetz.  It's fantastic!  

It's fast, but you can download the lyrics as a pdf here: https://www.bodowartke.de/seiten/download.php?id=7645 

I think it would be great to do with an upper level class as part of a unit on the German government and history.

März Musik Winner

And the winner is...

Happy Birthday, World Wide Web... and thanks!

The World Wide Web celebrated its 30th Anniversary March 12, which makes me feel rather old, but also grateful.

On the day before Spring Break, I was pondering what to do with my students on the first day back from break, and I was drawing a blank.  It's more difficult since it is the second day of our block schedule, and on the day before break, I had a lot of students gone, so it was mostly a catch-up day / make-up day.  I don't really want to come back from break to that, so what do I do with my sleepy students who will claim that they've forgotten all their German?

I glanced at my blog reading list, and suddenly I had two good ideas:

For German 1, from World Language Classroom, a "Who is it?" minibook:

The post does not contain a template for German, but I've done minibooks before, so it was quite easy to make my own template.  

I made one following the model from World Language classroom:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_4HTdBgY-_ghly6tO_DyMfYZd4HSCdmE 

and modified it a bit for my students:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XqxS5cBz0lNg1k_TBDlAtOYD_xvEEGjH

Rather than doing a selfie, I plan to number students' books when they finish writing so that they can read each other's books and fill in a guess on a chart:

For German 2, from The German Sector, a March Madness-style German video competition:

I am very, very grateful to Ashley for selecting, previewing, and sharing the 16 German music videos because I'm not very knowledgable about German pop music.

A quick Google search led me to this great March Madness bracket from Plexkits: https://plexkits.com/march-madness-bracket/  

I deleted the parts of the bracket that I didn't need, and Rick very kindly added a winner box for me.  I added hyperlinks to the bracket so that students can click and view the various videos.  

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/138BiHAN3nwxLbM9Ojbyx7eYRNGs_CQRRy52AmAYu5_Y/edit?usp=sharing

This is definitely something that I couldn't have come up with on my own, and I'm very grateful for all the people who shared resources with me.  I hope it will energize my students next Monday morning!

Backe, backe Kuchen

I love to bake!  And I really enjoy doing it with my students when we have the chance.

This year one of my sections of German 2 is Block 3 with C lunch, which means that class is from 11:35 - 12:55 with lunch at 12:55.  Which means that we are all hungry during class.  Which means that we talk about food a lot!

I promised this class that sometime soon I would schedule a baking tutorial so that we could bake in tutorial and eat in class. (Tutorial is our intervention/enrichment period, which meets right before Block 3 for 40 minutes.)  Naturally, they were all in.  

Of course we had to sing "Backe, back Kuchen" for the students who hadn't learned it last year.

Most of the students who participated were from the section of German 2 which meets right after tutorial and before lunch, but it was open to everyone, and some German 1 students and students from other sections attended.  

Since the cake wouldn't be done until after tutorial, I promised students who weren't in my Block 3 class that we would save them a piece of Kuchen that they could pick up before Block 4.

We used a very simple recipe for Apple Streusel Cake, which I found online: https://platedcravings.com/wprm_print/4265 

I divided the students into three groups: one for the dough (it was Throwback Thursday for Homecoming week)

one for the apple filling

and one for the crumble topping. 

And they really took it from there - I didn't have to do much more!  

I even had two very enthusiastic dish washers!  

The cake was done baking during Block 3 and cool enough to eat by the end of class.  Delicious!

It was a definite success, and not especially stressful or tiring for me - also a plus.  

Students asked to do this every week.  I don't think I'll be able to pull that off, but we definitely will do it again!

Backe, backe Kuchen

One of the best parts of the German Instructor Summer Program that I attended last week was talking with and sharing ideas with other German teachers.  One of the other teachers said that she sings classic German children's songs with her students every Monday.  One of the songs she mentioned was "Backe, backe Kuchen," which would fit in really well with our foods unit.

There are lots of videos of the song on YouTube.  One of my favorites is this one

I created notes to go along with it.  Before students watch the video and hear the song, they will work with the text, finding words they know and hunting for particular grammar forms.

Next, students will watch the video and sing the song.  

Finally, they will label the numbered items in the picture from the video.

For enrichment or bonus, I might have students watch another version of the song and figure out which of the ingredients has been changed:

I hope to do something similar with other children's songs.  Here's the file if you'd like a copy: Backe, backe Kuchen