End of Year Feedback

We've reached the end of the year!

The last four days of the year were exams.  After my students finished, I gave them a feedback form to complete.  I designed this form a year or two ago and find it does a pretty good job of getting useful feedback from students while reducing the number of suggestions for unrealistic changes such as no tests / no homework / no vocabulary memorization.

The comment of the year was

I collected the best student advice for future students 

and created a German flag poster.

I plan to hang it on my door next year to replace my 2014 World Cup poster.

I also asked students in classes which had my student teacher to comment on how having a student teacher affected their German experience.  Most gave very positive feedback, indicating that it was nice to have two different teachers with different styles and perspectives.  One student said

Great job, Matthew!

Here's a link to my feedback form.

Into the Home Stretch

We're getting very close to the end of the school year.  We have 3 more regular class days and 4 days of finals before students are out for the summer.

My students will take a multiple choice final during the exam periods and have a speaking exam on their last regular class day, so we've been reviewing and practicing for those this past week.

Reviewing for tests is always a challenge because it's not really something I can do for the students in the same way that I teach them new material; they get the most out of it when they take ownership of their own review, but by the end of the year, motivation can be low and students are tired out from ISTEP testing, End of Course Assessments, and AP testing.  So, I try to encourage them to push on but keep my expectations realistic.

Most of our review days follow a pattern of 3 main activities:

1. Multiple Choice Vocabulary Review using Quizlet
2. Speaking Exam Practice with their Table Groups
   
3. A Study Guide
   
4.  We've also played quite a few rounds of Quizlet Live for more vocabulary practice.
   

Normally, we go over assignments as a whole class and students are responsible for correcting their own work, but with study guides, I try to check each student's work individually during the class period so that I can talk to them about what mistakes they are making and what they need to review more.  I couldn't take the time this requires every day, but I think it is worthwhile during exam review.

The study guides are tailored to our pacing and textbook, but I'll include links to the files if you want to use them or modify them to meet your needs:

• Lektion 3A: family vocabulary, possessive adjectives, adjectives to describe people, kennen, sehen, and lieben
• Lektion 3B: more adjectives to describe people, modal verbs, accusative prepositions, imperative
• Lektion 4A: mögen and möchten, prefix verbs, adverbs
• Lektion 4B: dative case, dative prepositions

Passive Voice in German 3/4

I haven't posted about German 3/4 in a while because my student teacher took over those classes for most of the first twelve weeks of the semester.  He has finished now (and is about to graduate and go to Germany on a Fulbright - yay Matthew!), so I am back to teaching this group.  

The last big grammar topic we covered was the passive voice.  I introduced it with an example in English about building a house:

We wrote the active voice sentence in German and then learned how to form the passive voice in German:

After a quick review of conjugating werden:

We wrote the passive sentence in German.

We did some more examples of the passive voice without an agent, using vocabulary from the current unit (Umwelt = Environment).

And I used one of my favorite quotes from Angela Merkel talking about the Greek bailout a few years ago:

Finally, we discussed how to indicate an agent.

It was a pretty straightforward lesson, and my students were pleased that it used concepts (werden, past participles) that were already familiar to them.  The biggest challenges for them were remembering irregular past participles and dative case articles and adjective endings.

Here are links to my notes handout for students, my powerpoint presentation, and passive worksheet 1 and passive worksheet 2.  

Another great resource for passive is Tom's Deutschseite.

Introducing the Dative Case in German 1

This year is the first year I've introduced the dative case in German 1.  We have a new, much improved textbook, which includes dative in the Food and Restaurants unit.  Also, we're working to align the curriculum so that students are prepared for AP or ACP German in the fourth year, which means making the first three years a bit more rigourous.

Last week we reviewed accusative case and direct objects to get ready:

So, on Monday we were ready to start the Dative Case.  I started with an overview of when to use the dative case:

Then, we completed charts of the definite and indefinite articles in the dative case, using "Mr. Minnesota" as a way to remember the MRMN pattern.

Next, we looked at indirect objects in more detail.  I used the children's book If you Give a Mouse a Cookie to give students a concrete example of an indirect object.

That was enough new information for the first day.  It was time to practice, and for that we used my new class set of highlighters, which had arrived the week before.

The biggest difficulty that students have with the cases in German is that they don't slow down and take the time to sort out what function the different nouns in the sentence have.  Enter highlighters:

Isn't it beautiful?  

And, best of all, it was right around this time that I told my tale of not being able to use AirServer for guided notes because of the changes made to the wifi for state testing for the umpteenth time to the right person who passed on the right information to the right person who flipped the right switch in the wiring so that it worked again.  Hallelujah! 

Maybe it seems like a small thing, but after more than a month of making do with PowerPoint, it was so nice to teach in a way which feels comfortable for me and best meets my students' learning needs.  Thank you, BHSN tech team!

Click on the links above for a copy of my guided notes and worksheet.

Separable Prefix Verbs

One of the big grammar topics in our Lebensmittel (groceries) unit is separable and inseparable prefix verbs.  

Previously I've only introduced first year students to separable prefix verbs and left inseparable prefix verbs for second year when we are doing the Perfekt (conversational past) and they become important in forming past participles.

Our new textbook introduces all prefix verbs at once, and I felt it was worth trying out.  It fits very well with this topic since our vocabulary included

• kaufen (to buy) - no prefix
• einkaufen (to shop) - separable prefix
• verkaufen (to sell) - inseparable prefix

To start out, I gave students a piece of paper with all 5 prefix verbs from the unit.  Their job was to cut them apart and make sure they knew what each one meant.

[This was right around the time when we started having school-wide wifi issues related to state standardized testing.  The solution to the problem resulted in my desktop computer and my iPad no longer being able to talk to each other so that I can no longer use my iPad for guided notes or for recording the notes.  I've talked to anyone who will listen about the problem, but after a month of asking I think the soonest I can hope for it to be fixed is over the summer.  So, I've been making do with Powerpoint.  Sigh...]

Three of our verbs have separable prefixes, so to emphasize the idea of the prefix separating, I had students cut off the prefixes and move them to the end of the sentence. Students' notes looked like this

For the inseparable prefix verbs, we put our scissors away to emphasize that the prefixes stay with the verb stem.

Click for a copy of the notes or Powerpoint presentation.

Pitch-in German Breakfast

Our current unit in German 1 is all about food.  Everyone likes talking about food, and of course high school students like to eat food even more!

My students had been asking to have German food in class, and I decided the two days before spring break would be a good time to do it.  

I'm pretty big on having activities like this be things that students plan and contribute to rather than something that I do for them.  So, about a week and a half before spring break, we watched this video for inspiration:

Then, I asked students

It gave us a chance to practice both "möchten" (would like), which we had just learned, and food vocabulary.  

We came up with this list in my M3 class

I explained to students that I would provide Brötchen and Nutella and they could sign up for things they wanted to bring.  Students who didn't want to/couldn't bring anything would be able to help out by washing some of the dishes afterwards.

I gave the M4 class, which meets after lunch, the option of having Kaffee and Kuchen instead of breakfast, but they opted for breakfast too.

All three classes ended up having a good variety of foods, and almost everyone remembered to bring things in on the day.  We ate and watched part of the Sound of Music, since we're talking about Austria right now.  

When students had finished eating, I asked one student from each table group of four who had not brought anything in to clear the dishes and trash from his or her table and follow me to the world languages office, where we have a sink for washing dishes.  I showed them the supplies and let them do the washing.  No one had to do very much, and everything was cleaned up by the end of class.  And I wasn't exhausted by the end of the day - I'd call that a win!

Wir mögen Deutsch!

We're on to a new unit in German 1 - food!  It's a good unit for this time in the year when everyone's energy level is low.  We all like to talk about food.

Students learned five modal (helping) verbs - sollen, dürfen, können, wollen, and müssen - last unit.  Our new textbook teaches mögen (to like) and möchten (would like to = subjunctive form of mögen) separately in this unit, which I really like.  

Mögen is an unusual modal verb because it is usually used without a main verb to say that you like something, whereas gern (gladly) is more frequently used to say that you like doing something.  We've been using gern for a while now and have that pretty well established in students' vocabulary so I think it is a good time to introduce mögen to talk about foods we like and dislike.

Our guided notes for mögen and looked like this:

I really emphasized the difference between gern and mögen, and we also had a chance to review the ways in which modal verbs are irregular.  

Then, we wrote about foods we liked and disliked before moving on to möchten.

Finally, it was time for Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street.  I love Sesame Street, both in English and German, and try to incorporate clips from it into class whenever I can.  (The 3/4 students seem to enjoy it a lot, too.  The first year students aren't quite sure yet.)  I happened upon the German version of "I love trash," which uses mögen: "Ich mag Müll."  Perfect!

Here are the files: Mögen guided notes, Mögen worksheet