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

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 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.

It's β is not ß season

I think you have to have a healthy level of year to year amnesia to be a teacher.  Otherwise, no one would do it more than one year.  Case in point:

β is not ß season

There's always a phase about a week or two into the school year where my German 1 students struggle with typing German special characters, most especially ß.  

I give them a menu of options to chose from:  

But an ess-tset does look a lot like a Greek beta, so more than a few students type that instead of ß, and their answer is marked wrong even though it looks right.

It's especially intense this year since I have 3 full classes of German 1, which makes about 90 students.  

It's also harder to get the word out during remote learning.  In a classroom, once I notice it happening, I make multiple loud announcements, and this catches about 95% of the students.  

There really isn't an equivalent to a loud classroom announcement in remote learning.  I've put an announcement on our LMS, and I'm going through assignments to try to catch the students making this mistake.  And of course I'm replying to emails and Canvas messages asking "Why is my answer wrong?"  It definitely felt like that was all I did on Friday.

Sigh.  This too shall pass.

Detective Work

 

  Detective work describes what I did today during my prep time.  

On the first day of online classes, nearly all of my students logged in, did at least some of the lesson, and/or contacted me in a live meeting.  I consider that a win!

But...not everyone completed the lesson, which involved submitting a short video saying "My name is _____." in German.

So, my first task was to sort through the missing videos to see whether those students had completed the first item on the agenda.  If not, had they managed to log in to the course at all?

For my first two classes, I had only 4 students who were completely MIA. I sent out emails to them and their families to check in and see if there were any problems with technology or access that I could help with.  I heard back from 2 right away, so now I'm just missing 2 students.  

Students who had logged in but not done their video got a message in our LMS checking to see whether they understood what they needed to do and if they needed help with the technology.  I heard back from several more students after that, so I think my students are off to a good start!

First Student Day

 

Today was the first day of online learning for students.  It seemed to go well!  I did not have a required live meeting with my students; instead, they were to work through the above lesson on their own.

Based on the responses I got to the Germany Quiz and Introduce Yourself speaking task, most (though not all) of my students seem to have gotten themselves to the right place and been able to work on the lesson independently, as I had intended.  

I had 3 students live video chat with me to get help with technology problems they were having, and several others sent email messages with questions, so I think communication is off to a good start.

Now the challenge is to track down those students who haven't yet engaged and see what might be preventing them from doing so!

Video Success!

After my struggles trying to record a lesson using Microsoft Teams on Wednesday, I am very happy to report that things went much better the following day using Zoom.

I was able to record a 10 minute introductory video for students and families.  This is pretty much the talk I would normally give at Open House.

I also made a video of the lesson for the first day of school, which teaches students how to ask and answer "What's your name?"

After a busy but wonderful weekend helping a friend drive her son to his first year of college, I'm back home with 2 more days of prep before school starts on Wednesday.

First Teacher Day

Today was originally supposed to be students' first day of school, but that was pushed back a week, and it's now it's the first of 5 teacher professional development and work days.

Successes:

• I recorded a very short video clip introducing myself for an introductory video that my school is putting together for students.  

• I participated in our school faculty meeting on Microsoft Teams and was then able to organize a separate meeting on the fly with two colleagues on Teams.

Not yet:

• After multiple tries, I cannot get my microphone to work within Microsoft Teams when trying to record a lesson and share my screen.  Grrrrrr!  Super frustrating.  It works fine when I am meeting with people and share my screen, but once I start recording, my microphone cuts out.  I may give up on Teams for recording a lesson and try Zoom.

Choice Board for Enrichment

Choice boards have become popular in teaching as a way to give students choices in how they learn a new concept.  

I designed my choice board for students who finish their work quickly and are ready to go deeper (or need something concrete to do so they don't immediately reach for their cell phones).  

This board is designed for German 1 students at the beginning of the year.  I hope to switch out some of the elements as we progress, both to keep things interesting and to provide more challenging choices.

I'm very proud that I've learned how to publish my choice board on Google Slides so that I can embed it into Canvas - and this blog!  You should be able to click on any element in the board and see where it takes you.

I've put a button for the choice board at the top of my Course Resources page

and included a link in the daily agenda.

This will be the first time I've tried a Choice Board.  Since we're starting the year online, it may be hard to know how much it's used, but I hope to keep it when we return to the classroom, too.

Dusting off the Blog

I haven't blogged since the end of last school year, and I didn't really have any plans to get back in the habit, but this morning I saw this:

And I thought, maybe it is time.  No promises that I'll blog every day or that every post will be great, but as I often tell my students, something is infinitely more than nothing.  So here goes...

If an image is worth a thousand words, here's mine for my teaching life at the moment:

That's what I'm working on, anyway - accepting and living with the uncertainty of the current moment.

My school district switched last week from an in person start to the school year (with an online option) to all online learning until at least early September, due to increasing virus rates in our community.  

Since the end of last school year, I had anticipated that when we did return to in person school, there would be some students who would still need remote instruction, and I would need to be able to provide both types of instruction at more or less the same time.  So, I've been planning during the summer with that in mind, which makes the switch to everyone online less hectic. 

During the summer, I was part of a group of teachers from my school who worked (remotely, of course!) on creating a common home page for our Learning Management System, Canvas.  The goal was to reduce confusion for students and caregivers when navigating online learning.  

I had fun learning how to make buttons and customized banners, and I got more experience with Google Drawings.  I also learned just enough html to be dangerous!

Here's what my homepage now looks like:

I'm pleased with the result, and designing it helped me think through how to structure online instruction.  

This is the first 3 day week of school:

It's not the same as in person, but I think it's the best we can do under the current circumstances, and with patience and flexibility, we can make it work.

Transport in Berlin Video from Easy German

My German 2 students just started a new unit on Transportation before Spring Break and the school closures.  I used Edpuzzle to insert comprehension questions into a video from Easy German about Transport in Berlin:



We watched the video as a whole class first without the questions and pauses.  Then, students were assigned to watch the Edpuzzle video and answer the questions in Canvas (our LMS) at their own pace.  Overall, it worked pretty well.  Now, with schools closed and students learning from home, I may be doing more of these videos.

Podcasts for German Learning

I've become a big fan lately of Podcasts, and there are several that are good for German learning.

One that's been around for a while is Slow German Podcast from Annik Rubens.

Annik has been podcasting for more than 10 years and has some great episodes for German students.  The podcasts are usually 8-10 minutes long, and she speaks slowly and clearly.  

You can download them to your mobile phone or subscribe through a Podcast App, or you can listen online.  There is also a transcript of the episode available for free as a pdf download.

If you listen online, there's a really nice feature where she has translated some of the more difficult words, which you can see if you move your cursor over the word:

My German 2 students are now working on a unit about travel, and we listened to part of the podcast about Jugendherbergen (youth hostels) this week.  These podcasts are challenging but understandable for intermediate level students. 

I've blogged previously about using videos from Easy German in my classes.  They have recently started a podcast, which I think is fantastic!

These podcasts are much longer than Slow German - usually at least an hour - and are geared at more advanced students.  They speak at a regular speed but keep their German learner audience in mind and explain (in German) particularly tricky words or cultural references.  

Again, you can download them to your mobile phone or subscribe through a Podcast App, or you can listen online.  The podcast is free, but if you subscribe for $2 a week, you have access to a transcript as well as a really neat vocabulary feature on certain Podcast Apps.

I use Overcast, and when I am listening, the vocabulary and English translations for the current section of the podcast show up automatically on my phone:

Since I only teach first and second year German currently, I wouldn't use these podcasts with my students, but parts of them could definitely be used in an upper level class, and they'd be great for students who want to challenge themselves.  

I enjoy listening to hear native speakers and keep my German fresh, and the hosts Manuel, Cari, and Janusz are voll sympathisch!

Finally, the Tagesschau evening news is also available as a free video or audio only podcast for your phone or mobile app.  

I often listen while driving to or from school, and frequently hear a story I want to share with my students on the video version so that they have visual supports and subtitles to support their understanding.

Viel Spaß beim Zuhören!

Listening Feature in Quizizz

I'm a fan of Kahoot, Quizizz, and Quizlet Live.  All three games provide a fun way to practice material, and each has its own strengths and classroom situations when it works best.

I really like the way Quizizz allows students to work at their own pace.  It also shows the answer choices on students' own screens, which can be very helpful if the answers are long or quite similar to each other.  I have also had classes which are not mature enough to handle the whole-class competitive aspects of Kahoot (or choosing an appropriate name), and Quizizz offers a good alternative.

As I was looking at my collection of Quizizz this week, I found a Quizizz made by another teacher for the German alphabet:

 https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/57c3570c9debbafb240a341f 

It asks students about the German names for the letters of the alphabet: 

My students usually really need practice in hearing and recognizing a letter of the alphabet.

As I was looking at this Quizizz, I found that you can upload 10 second MP3 files or record yourself very easily to give an audio clue.  Perfect!

I found a great website, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-german-alphabet-1444644, which has individual MP3 files for the letter of the alphabet which you can download.  

I'm going to record myself spelling words as well for my students to practice, and there are lots more possibilities for listening practice on Quizizz with this function.  I hope you find it useful as well!

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:

Off and Running

(Me and my amazing colleague from Bloomington HS South.  

My younger son will be in her class this year!) 

Phew!  The first 2 weeks of school are in the books.  Here are the highlights:

• Name Tents were a definite thumbs up.  They have allowed me to change student groups daily until I find an arrangement I'm happy with.  Plus, it's easier to adapt to the nearly daily (sometimes hourly!) changes of student schedules.  I do need to adjust the folding lines a little bit so that they fold flat more easily.  And I want to change the back of the German 2 tents to include haben and sein and "Wie waren deine Ferien?" rather than "Wie geht's?"  Next year...

• German 1 has learned the alphabet, definite, and indefinite articles.  I did definite and indefinite articles in one day rather than two, and it seemed to be fine:

  
 

• My homeroom loves oatmeal.  It started when they kept asking to go to the vending machines for snacks.  We talked about how hard it is to make it until the last lunch period at 12:55 when you eat breakfast at 6:00.  I mentioned that I kept instant oatmeal in the department office and offered them some.  I had one person take me up on the offer the first day, and several on Friday.  The only requirement is that they wash their own dishes, which they have happily done.  Peaches and cream is most popular.  I think bonding over oatmeal works better for me than the more traditional ice breakers.

• The $100 I spent last year buying my own document camera, Ziggi, was money well spent.  No more running around the first week, begging anyone who will listen to connect my desktop computer to AirServer.  It would be great if schools provided resources we need to do our best teaching, but since mine doesn't, I'm glad I could get it myself.

• German 2 is a delight!  They are off to a great start, reviewing nouns, plurals, and present tense verbs while learning vocabulary about celebrations and festivals.  We've started the conversational past and watched Tiba's Geburtstag.

• I started off on day one with the bathroom flowchart.  That one item may single-handedly save my sanity this year (ok, that and A LOT of yoga and running).

I hope your year has gotten off to a good start, too!  Remember:

12 Typical German Dishes

Whew, once you get out of the routine on regular blogging, it's hard to get back in!  My first year teaching full time had me wiped out in March and April, but now with just 11 days of school left, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and have regained some energy.

Easy German recently posted this video of 12 Typical German Dishes, which I really like for our German 1 food unit.  

I've created an assignment on Canvas from the video where students label picture of the dishes after watching the video:

Then, they sort them by category:

This could either be an assignment for the whole class or possibly an enrichment activity for students who have mastered a topic to work on while their peers complete additional practice.

I'll be teaching 3 sections of German 1 and 3 sections of German 2 next year, which is the same as this year, so I'm hoping to add in some things like enrichment and remediation differentiation.  

Sesamstraße - Die neue Jacke für Deutsch 2

After a three day weekend (Martin Luther King Day) turned into a five day weekend due to ice, snow, and very cold temperatures, we returned to school on Wednesday and finished the week on a high note in German 2 with this Sesamstraße video:

My students really enjoyed it, and it was a great way to talk about weather and clothing, and even use the subordinating conjunctions that I introduced this week. 

We watched the video as a whole class and discussed the questions as we went.  I gave my students a handout with the questions written on it so that they could fill it out as we watched.  

My hope is to eventually have students watch videos like this independently, but I want to model what doing a video assignment like this should look like before I turn students loose to do it on their own.

Wetter Kahoot for Deutsch 2

I introduced weather vocabulary to my German 2 students this week.  

In the second lesson of the unit I introduced students to circumlocution with a group brainstorming activity:  each table group got 3 or 4 small cards with a German vocabulary word on one side of each card.  Their job was to brainstorm as many German clues to that word that would help a classmate guess that word.  

Some words were easy - for "trocken," students quickly came up with "das Gegenteil von nass."

Others required more work - for "der Herbst," students came up with "eine Jahreszeit" and "kühl," but to differentiate between fall and spring, they added "September, Oktober, und November."

Eventually, all of the groups has some kind of clue for each word.  Then, one person from each group gathered all the cards and rotated to the next table.  He or she then quizzed the students at the next table, using the clues the students had generated.  

I like this activity because it really pushes students to use the vocabulary they have and it feels like a game.  If we have time, I usually have the students rotate to more tables, though on this day we didn't get to that.

At the end of the activity, I collected the cards and used the students' definitions to make a Kahoot for them to play next class: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/6055f543-72c4-4ee6-a8f2-0e362bc44ed1 

Familie Video from Hallo Deutschschule

When we return from break on Monday, German 1 will begin the topic of Familie.  It's a fun topic that students generally do well on - it's concrete and easy to relate to and the vocabulary isn't difficult.

There are quite a few good videos online that work well for this unit.  A simple one that I found is from Hallo Deutschschule, a German language course in Switzerland.  

I've added comprehension questions through Edpuzzle to make an assignment for my students:

https://edpuzzle.com/media/5a4b9a89b3b18640e3b5000f 

Welcome, Ziggi!

The highlight of this short week - only 3 days due to fall break, with one of those days being PSAT day when 2/3 of my students were out - was the arrival of Ziggi, my document camera!

My husband said I was so excited when it arrived that it was like Christmas morning.  I am really happy to be done dealing with all of the frustration connected with getting my iPad DIY document camera to work.  

Ziggi just connects directly to my computer by USB cable, and here's the result:

I ended up not bothering to write a grant and just bought it myself.  I figured that the time I would have spent writing a grant was worth $99 to me, and this way Ziggi belongs to me, so I can take him with me if I ever move to a different school.

Here's Ziggi in position:

and here are his first two pictures:

Two Way Prepositions Notizen file

I haven't tried video recording yet - I'm still getting used to all of the features, but hopefully that will come soon.

I spent quite a bit of time Friday after school crawling around among the cords and dust bunnies behind my desk to try to figure out the best permanent location for Ziggi.

My conclusion was that Ziggi needs an extension cord.  So that's on this weekend's shopping list.  It's definitely worth it!