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!

Three Words: Always Making Improvements

We have a four day weekend coming up, with Monday and Tuesday off for Fall Break.  Yay!  Initially my three words were Four Day Weekend, but then I noticed that most of this post was about the evolution of my guided notes for teaching haben and the accusative case.  More on that in a minute...

We don't have any big plans for the break, but I'm going to visit my parents in Lafayette on the weekend.  Then, on Monday and Tuesday we're doing all of the stuff that is hard to schedule during the school day - doctor appointment, orthodontist appointment, and delivery of a new washing machine.  I'm most excited about the last one - with 2 teenage boys in 3 fall sports having a reliable washing machine is a must!  This is my first year working full time since having children, and my husband works full time, and I just don't know how people get all of this stuff done with all the adults working full time.  

Ok, back to German:

German 1 took their unit test on Schule, numbers, haben and the accusative case on Friday.  I'm about a third of the way through grading them, and they're doing pretty well.  In my first class of 30 students, 10 scored 90% or better.  

My notes on haben and the accusative case continue to evolve.  Two years ago we made a foldable:

I liked the foldable, but it was a bit cramped, so last year I tried a different format:

Also pretty good, but I felt like maybe a foldable was more time and setup effort than I wanted to expend for this topic, so this year I went back to more straightforward guided notes:

I think I like this best - it focuses on the essential elements without overwhelming students with too much information this early in the process.

I do still love German Sentence Dissection and plan to use it in the spring when we learn the dative case and indirect objects.  I find that as we go on, students are frequently telling me that they don't know how to figure out the cases.  Usually it's because they haven't taken the time to read the sentence and analyze what it means, so my plan is to always insist on the Sentence Dissection Steps when we're working on cases from second semester of German 1 onward.

Help yourself to whatever you like best:

     2015 Haben and Accusative Foldable file

     2016 Haben and Accusative Sentence dissection file

     2017 Haben and Accusative Guided Notes file

Deutsch 2: Vergleiche Comparatives and Superlatives

This week's big grammar topic in German 2 was comparatives and superlatives.  

To begin, I has students review adjectives and adverbs they had learned in German 1.  (It was the first day back from Spring Break, so they were pretty rusty.) Then, we watched a great little video from Die Sendung mit der Maus:

This clip lead right into the need for comparatives and superlatives and a foldable:

After labeling the title flap, we labeled the three tabs:

Under the flaps we wrote instructions for each form and created an example:

And now we were ready to use our foldables for some practice:

That was a lot!  So, it was a good time for a Sesamstraße video with Bert and Ernie talking about heavy and light. 

Students did a self-checking Learning Apps activity based on the video (which I blogged about previously here) so I could assess their understanding. 

  

That was plenty for the first day!  Students practiced some more on their own with a worksheet: Vergleiche WS 1

We continued the next class by adding the exceptions to the rule to our foldable:

and some examples for our notes:

Again, students practiced some more on their own with a worksheet: Vergleiche WS 2.

If you'd like a copy of the notes, click here: Komparativ und Superlativ Notizen

All in all, it was a pretty good first week back from Spring Break!

Now is the November of our Discontent

I don't know what it is about late October and early November, but it seems to be the time of year when we all hit The Wall.

This foldable that I did Monday with German 1 pretty much sums it up for me:

 


Sigh.  It's a great foldable that I designed last year.  But somehow when I copied it this year, I didn't check to make sure the inside would be right side up before I made 70 copies.  Oh well, I guess it was an opportunity to model flexibility and a growth mindset for my students.

November is when the days are getting shorter and the concepts are getting harder.  Students who haven't mastered the material from the beginning of the year are really struggling now with new concepts that ask them to use those previously learned skills.  

Students who have decided to drop the class at the semester have pretty much given up: a student on Wednesday asked me if she could have a pass to go to the library instead of staying in class because "I really don't like this class."  I reminded myself not to take things teenagers say personally and told her no.

I get frustrated by the disconnect between the leadership making decisions and the teachers in the classrooms dealing with the day-to-day challenges.  Often it feels like I am at the bottom of a deep well, buried in grading, lesson plans, and forms to fill out, shouting up about what I need to the people who can provide it but who are too far away to hear what I'm saying.   

I believe that public schools are neither the cure for nor the cause of all the problems in our country.  They are more like a mirror, reflecting our communities back to us.  In places where communities are healthy, the public schools are doing well.  In communities that are struggling, the public schools are too.

Right now there's a high level of discontent in our country, so I guess it's not a surprise that I feel that at my school too.  Our leaders aren't able to find ways to disagree and discuss without disrespect and vitriol.  Is it any surprise then that teenagers are finding that hard too?

In short, it's November.

So, what do I do about it?

At least twice a week, I think about becoming an engineer.

But the rest of the time, I remember that I do view teaching as a part of my vocation, my calling.

So

To the best of my ability, I keep planning and delivering interesting and engaging lessons, like these foldables for German 1 about question words, so that students will focus on the excitement of learning a new language rather than the issues that divide us (or how to leave my classroom).

and guided notes for months and seasons:

I drink a lot of tea.  My instinct is also to eat a lot of chocolate, but my goal this year is to keep eating healthy food - lots of fruits, veggies, and Greek yogurt.  So far I'm doing pretty well at this.

I remind myself that most students enjoy my class.  Some even tweet to me from college.

I try to pray the Liturgy of the Hours on my lunch break (when I'm not watching a required video about teen suicide prevention).  

I exercise every day and practice yoga on Saturdays, even when I'm tired or sore or just want to drink tea and eat chocolate.

I keep calling out, respectfully and through the proper chain of command, from the bottom of the well, even when the response (if I get one) is that what I'm asking for isn't possible or isn't really what I need.

In short, I keep on keeping on...

Haben and the Accusative Case for German 1

This week German 1 learned the verb haben (to have), which means also introducing the accusative case (for direct objects).  

Cases are something that most German students struggle with because they are a lot less noticeable in English.  (The one exception is my students who have had Latin - they are usually thrilled that German has only 4 cases instead of 6!)

The question I get asked the most is "How do I know what case the noun is in?"  My answer, which does not please students, is that you have to figure out the role of the noun in the sentence, which means figuring out what the sentence means.  In other words, you have to think.  Students would like a simple formula, such as the first noun is always the subject, the second noun is the direct object, and so on.  Sadly, it just doesn't work that way.

So, I tried to come up with a way to describe what I mean by "you have to think" and came up with German Sentence Dissection.

The mad scientist on the cover is Dr. Two Brains from PBS Kids Word Girl.  (I love PBS Kids!)  

We made a stacked foldable with the steps for German Sentence Dissection on the outside and the details inside.

I separated out definite and indefinite articles into two separate days.  Here is Step 2: Find the Subject on day one with only definite articles.

And here is Step 3: Find the Direct Object after the second day with definite and indefinite articles.  

I have a terrible time with my students using "eine" (a/an) before a plural noun.  In the past, we used to write "keine" (not/no) in the chart for plural, but then students thought it means a or some for plural nouns.  These days, I have students write "meine" for plural in their ein words charts because it goes along with Das doofe Fischlied.  

But German 1 hasn't learned possessive adjectives, and I wanted to emphasize that plural means more than one, so we wrote "zwei" (two) to signify that you can't say "a books" but you can say "two books."  We'll see if that helps...

This was German 1's first foldable, and they did quite well.  I had them do all of the cutting and preparation work as their bell work, so that when we got to this point in the notes, they were ready to go.

Here are the files for the guided notes plus two worksheets for practicing haben, the accusative case, and articles in the accusative case:

Haben and Accusative Guided Notes with Foldable Templates

Haben and Accusative Worksheet 1

Haben and Accusative Worksheet 2

Accusative Pronouns Foldable

Our current unit in German 1 has a lot of important grammar structures in it:  We've already learned modal (helping verbs) and the imperative (command) form, and the topic for this week was accusative prepositions and pronouns.  

We learned the seven accusative pronouns on Tuesday (I should probably write a separate blog post on that...) and on Thursday I wanted students to review and practice those as well as learn the accusative pronouns.  

Whenever we're doing something with pronouns, my go-to foldable is a Shutterfold 6 flap because it works so well for first, second, and third person singular and plural.

As their Macht jetzt (Do Now/Bell Work), students cut out their foldable and wrote the nominative personal pronouns on the outside of the flaps:

We've been working with these most of the year, so this went smoothly, and we were ready to review to the uses of the accusative case in guided notes.

Then, we opened up the flaps and added in the accusative forms of the pronouns:

One the back sides of their notes, students completed some examples of accusative case with nouns and with pronouns.  We did the first few examples together, and then students worked on the rest independently.

Click here for a copy of the notes and foldable.

From Statistics to German - Transformation of a Foldable

The creation of this foldable is a story of inter-state cross-disciplinary virtual collaboration.  

Recently I was looking for a  good foldable to use with my German 1 students to describe four characters in the video series that goes along with our textbook and to summarize what happens in each episode.  I had a vague idea of what I wanted it to look like but nothing in my foldable repertoire fit the bill.  So I turned to the #MTBoS...

The  #MTBoS is the Math Teacher Blogosphere.  I'm a German teacher, but I have also taught math previously (which I love and miss, even though I LOVE teaching German) so I have naturally drifted toward the blogs of math teachers and the #MTBoS.  I have gotten a lot of inspiration and ideas from some great math teachers out there, and I think there is actually quite a bit of overlap in methods of teaching these two subjects.  

I'm trying to connect/find/start a #GTBoS (German Teacher Blogosphere) but there aren't as many German teachers on the internet as there are math teachers.  (There are a lot more math teachers overall, so this isn't so surprising.)

In any case, I visited the site of my blogging inspiration and internet friend-I haven't-yet-met Sarah Hagan, Math=Love, and came across this foldable, which was exactly what I was looking for:

Perfect for a German foldable about 4 characters in a video, right?  Of course!

Sarah very kindly gave a link on her blog to the publisher file for making this foldable.  I made some changes to the foldable and voila!

I put in a picture of the four main characters in our video series.  In class the students and I worked on describing them,  what they are majoring in, and where they are from.  

On the inside, I wrote the titles of the first four episodes of the video series.  We talked about what happened in the first three episodes and how we could write it in German.  I am so proud of my students for describing all three episodes entirely in German!

We haven't seen the 4th episode yet, so we left that space blank and will fill it in when we get to it.  

I don't know if this foldable has magic powers, but my classes were really attentive and persistent while we worked on this.  It made me ridiculously proud!

Want a copy of my file?  Here you go! 

Back from Fall Break

We're back from a week of fall break.  It was great to have such a long break, but after a whole week off, I can definitely tell that my students' German skills have gotten rusty.  Maybe a four day weekend would give everyone a break without quite so much learning loss.  The calendar for the next three years is being discussed right now in my district, so we'll find out soon if that's what the district decides to go to.

But I digress...

Really the only way to start back on a Monday after a long break is with a foldable.  Two foldables would be even better, right?

So, here are two foldables for Interrogatives (Question Words) in German 1.  The first one is a 6 petal foldable for our first 6 question words:

We wrote the English meaning of the question words on the undersides of the petals and the word order for questions in the center.

We put the German question words on the other sides of the petals:

That was probably enough for one day, and in retrospect, I think I would split this topic into two days.  But we forged bravely ahead with a three petal round foldable for the three different words for "where":

Finally, we talked about the word for "which," which changes depending on the gender of the noun after it.  By this time, students' eyes were definitely starting to glaze over, so I will definitely save that for a separate lesson next year.

Overall, though, my students did a great job with Interrogatives on the first day after break.