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.

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.

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

 

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!

Weltschul Maus - Kleidung enrichment for Deutsch 2... and a request

https://www.wdrmaus.de/filme/sachgeschichten/welt_schul_maus.php5 

As promised last week, here is the Enrichment activity for Deutsch 2 focusing on the topic of clothing in the Sendung mit der Maus Welt-Schul video. 

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1isWxAL9QVNItM_6OSnU3BLrTGCjLshX6 

This time I focused in more detail on the first 10 minutes.  Students need to write complete sentences describing the different school uniforms worn by the children in different countries.  My students worked on it yesterday, and the level seemed good for them.

This is such a great video!  There are so many things you can pull out of it - clothing, languages, weather, transportation to school - and it's really accessible even at the beginning levels.

And, readers, now a request from you:  Could you please leave a note in the comments about which German textbook you use in your school?  We are entering textbook adoption season and embarking on the eternal quest for the perfect German textbook.  What do you recommend or not recommend?  Danke im Voraus!

Weltschul Maus - Enrichment for Deutsch 1

Die Sendung mit der Maus had a great new episode recently which works perfectly for enrichment for my German 1 Schule unit.  (Have a I mentioned lately how much I love Die Sendung mit der Maus?)

https://www.wdrmaus.de/filme/sachgeschichten/welt_schul_maus.php5

It's a fairly long video  - 23 minutes - for German 1 in the target language at the beginning of the year, but so much of it is understandable from the videos that I feel like they can handle it.  I also have a strong German 1 class this year, and I really want to challenge the students who are doing well.

Ralph visits schools in 10 other countries and spends a day with a student in school in each one.  There are so many great topics you could focus on, but I was mainly trying to get my strong students to try watching a show in the target language and realize how much they are able to understand.  I created a short worksheet to go along with the video, mainly just to hold the students accountable for watching all of it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MCodj8W_T9bihYg8zJ4VunEr_87_MifZ/view?usp=sharing 

I plan to use this same video as enrichment for German 2 at the end of their Kleidung unit, focusing on the uniforms worn by many of the children.  I'll post it to my blog once I make it!

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!

Eins, Zwei, Drei Tier Video

This weekend I found a great video from Die Sendung mit der Maus to use as enrichment with my German 1 students for this unit:  

https://www.wdrmaus.de/filme/lachgeschichten/eins_zwei_drei_tier.php5 

Students have been working with adjectives and adverbs in opposite pairs as well as Haustiere recently, so it's a great fit.

You can turn on subtitles in German (UT), so students can see what they're hearing.  

I've created a short worksheet to go with it so that students can view the video independently while I am helping students who need reteaching.

 

Here's the file if you'd like to try it with your students: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JtvQJ6yr-t8oAoAUfgvXmGfeTdvPLqZ8

Clothing, Nouns and Cases

German 2 finished up their first unit, Feste Feiern, and took their test on Wednesday.  Results were fantastic - 88% average across my three classes.  I'm proud of their hard work!

Now we're on to Kleidung (clothing).  Students started the day on Friday with coloring.  

Life is good when you get to color in German class on a Friday.  One of my students told me, "I love you, Frau Swank!"  I warned her that she might not love me as much by the end of class...  

Some of my students wanted to color for the whole class, but I was not going to pass up an opportunity like this to talk about article and adjective endings!

We looked at the sentences in detail, observing how the article and adjective endings changed in the accusative case depending on the gender and number of the clothing item.  

Then, students had the information they needed to describe one item of clothing they were wearing, such as

If they struggled, they just needed to look at the sentences below.  I love it!

Now it was time to flip over to the back and really review cases with my favorite example:

First we analyzed the English sentence, 

and reviewed how to figure out what's what in a sentence.  I emphasized that there aren't shortcuts - they have to understand the sentence and do the thinking.  (My student didn't love me quite as much at this point.)

We reviewed our articles charts

and finally wrote the sentence in German.

That was the end of our notes, and it was time to practice.  I've noticed that students are more willing to try difficult things with dry erase markers instead of pencil and paper, so I created 4 practice sentences that fit in page protectors for table group practice.

I heard some great conversations among students using words like direct object, indirect object, accusative case, and dative case.  It made my German teacher heart sing!

For some groups, those 4 sentences were enough of a challenge, and I didn't want to overwhelm them.  Other groups wanted to try level 2:

and even level 3:

This structure really let me differentiate and individualize.  (It is also wonderful that none of my German 2 classes has more than 24 students this year, so I can work with groups more individually without other groups getting off track and on to their cell phones!)

Students finished up with work time for their assignment:

with one of these two pictures on the back:

Here are my files:

     Nouns and Cases Review Notizen

     Cases Review for Dry Erase Pockets

     Nouns and Cases Review Worksheet 

Less Paper, Faster Feedback - Online Assignments with Canvas

When I first started teaching German at Bloomington North 6 year ago (wow - time flies!), all of my assignments for my students were paper worksheets that I made myself.  We weren't 1 to 1 yet with hp laptops, and our textbook was awful and the worksheets that came with it even worse.

Homework assignments are 25% of students' grades, and I graded the worksheets on completion.  At the beginning of class, I walked around the room and spot-checked the assignment while students were doing their bell work.  If they had attempted the entire assignment, they got 10 of 10.  Otherwise it was a 0 out of 10.  

After bell work, we went over the assignment in class, and students corrected their own work.  Students who hadn't finished the assignment filled it in as we went over it and received 5 out of 10 when they had done so.  

It was a pretty good system - students got a review of what we did 2 days ago (Ach, block scheduling, I am not a fan of you for language learning!), students who hadn't done the work were motivated to at least fill in the worksheet as we went over it, and I got a quick snapshot of students' understanding.  Sometimes, though, going over the homework was a bit boring for students who had mastered it easily.  And it takes time in class to go over the assignment.

Fast forward to today: Our district is starting its 4th year with 1 to 1 laptops for the high schools, we've adopted a better (though not perfect) textbook, and I have several more years of experience under my belt.  

I'm slowly changing over most of my worksheets to online assignments, which are automatically graded by our LMS, Canvas.  (Our new textbook has online assignments too, but our book is designed to be used in college or high school, so the level of the assignments is quite high.  I've tried them in German 1 and 2 but find that students get frustrated pretty quickly.  I do use them in German 4, with students who are more mature and headed for college the following year.)

Students get immediate feedback and can re-do the assignment as many times as they need to.  I set Canvas to keep their highest score.  They can even re-do assignments later when reviewing for a test or the final. I choose not to have Canvas give students the correct answers because I want them to think about and figure out their own mistakes.  They don't really like this, but I think it is good for them.

Like any teaching strategy, there are pluses and minuses.  One of my students lamented, "I miss paper!"  Sometimes I do too.  And for assignments that are really challenging or more open-ended and not easily graded by a computer, I do still use paper worksheets.

I like that students get immediate feedback and that we don't need to spend as much class time going over assignments.  But I don't get that quick sense of how they are doing as automatically - I have to take the time to click on the assignment in Canvas and look over the analysis.  But when I do, I can get an item by item analysis of what they are understanding and what is still unclear.  Data, lots of data!

On the downside, assignments are more anonymous.  When I walk around and check worksheets, I can have a brief conversation with a student whose work isn't done.  Is it a one-time thing due to a late sporting event or play rehearsal the night before or is it becoming a pattern?  I lose this with the online assignments.

Canvas is a computer, so it counts students' answers wrong if they misspell a word or forget punctuation.  My students really don't like this, but I like that it forces them to pay attention to details.

All in all, I think it's working well so far for my students and me.  

I make my Canvas assignments publicly available, so if your school uses Canvas, you should be able to see them in Commons.

On an unrelated but fun note - my German teaching colleague at South high school celebrated her 50th birthday this month.  I made her a crochet jellyfish in German flag colors as a gift:

Here she is, showing it off in front of her classrooom: