Three Words: Das doofe Fischlied (Dumb Fish Song)

It was a good week in German 2.  Students had their first unit test on Wednesday, so Monday was dedicated to review.  

We played Kahoot with holidays and their German descriptions.

Then, I pulled out 4 in a Row to give students some drill on changing sentences from present tense to conversational past and from conversational past to present.  They really needed this practice, and most students really enjoyed it.

It finally occurred to me to laminate the 4 in a Row boards so that they can be reused.  Better late than never!

The test was on Wednesday.  We've moved all of our quizzes and tests to Canvas, and one thing that became clear very quickly is that my students can be very sloppy.  They had to change sentences from present tense to conversational past and from conversational past to present tense.  This required them to type the new sentence, and Canvas graded this automatically.  I can't even count the number of students who missed those questions because they misspelled a word that was in the original sentence or because they forgot a period or question mark.  I can go back and give students partial credit, which I did, but I still took off half a point for these kinds of unnecessary mistakes.  It may be a painful lesson at first, but there's no reason to misspell a word that is right in front of you or not to punctuate a sentence in high school.

Which brings us to Friday.  We started our new unit on clothing with a review of colors and coloring.  Life is good when it's Friday and you get to color in German class.  (We also had a pep rally mid-day, so this really helped everyone to settle down after that.)

We used this activity to introduce adjective endings.

And then it was time for Das doofe Fischlied:

We first reviewed definite and indefinite articles in the nominative, accusative, and dative cases and recorded them on our German Grammar reference cards.

Then, we watched this subtitled version of the song and listened for the adjective endings.

Coloring and adjective endings - pretty good for a Friday in German 2.

If you'd like a copy, the Kleidung worksheet is here.  It was modified from a worksheet at Grundschul Atelier: https://www.grundschulatelier.de/kostenlose-arbeitsblaetter/DaF-Arbeitsblatt-Kleidung.pdf 

Malen und Basteln in Deutsch 1

The past few days in German 1 have been a lot of fun, which is what you need in February: coloring, cutting, pasting, and Das doofe Fischlied.  

Our current unit, Wie sind sie? How are they? focuses on descriptive adjectives.

Adjectives in German means adjective endings, which is a really difficult topic for most students.  It's often not introduced until 2nd year, but our current textbook gives an introduction to it in 1st year, and I think it's good to start chipping away at the topic early.

Time for Das doofe Fischlied:



There are many versions of it available on YouTube, but I like this one because it has the lyrics on the screen.

Before we get to the song, I introduced the difference between predicate adjectives and attributive adjectives: 

Then, we listened to the song and completed notes for the nominative and accusative cases:

I don't test students on adjective endings or expect them to use them correctly at this point, but I do point them out when we encounter them so that students start to develop a feel for them.  Just planting the seed...

The next class began with coloring:

And some partner speaking practice, with a few adjective endings snuck in:

The following day we followed up coloring with cutting and pasting of adjective opposite pairs, which I've blogged about before.   Just like last year, students seemed to really enjoy this activity, and it pushed them to work on their vocabulary.  

Files for the activities I've described can be found here:

     

     Introduction to Adjective Endings with Das doofe Fischlied

     Colored Pencils Picture

     Introduction to Colors with Partner Speaking