Miezel und Molly: Dative Prepositions

Along with the activities for der Wolf und die sieben Geißlein, I also found an activity on deutschdrang.com called Hund und Katze that focuses on Dative Prepositions.  It's a short poem written by Wilhelm Busch and is super cute (while also being super sad).


In this handout, students listen to a recitation of the story (link is included in the file - see above for another version).  They fill in the missing words from the poem, all of which are Dative Prepositions.  The included handout also has a Richtig / Falsch section at the end to check student comprehension.

I use this activity with my German 2 students when they're first introduced to Dative Prepositions.  They have a general idea of what's going on in the story, but because they haven't seen too much of the Imperfect they usually miss the "Der Herr Förster schoß sie nieder."  

In addition to the activities listed, I ask students to go back through the poem and highlight any other prepositions they find (zwischen, in, etc.) and see if they can find them all.  I also, instead of having them write the summary in English, have them do a short comic.  They have to do three panels describing the events of the poem, then a fourth panel that shows what they think will happen next with Molly - the only catch is that they have to write captions that use Dative Prepositions.

Here's some of this year's comics.  Warning: there are grammar errors!  But keep in mind that students were able to express themselves and (generally) make themselves understood.

- Frau Leonard