Early Finishers Table

As is usually the case, I saw something on Twitter that I thought would be a great addition to my classroom!

I had an extra table in the back of my room that didn't get a lot of use, so I put out a bunch of German games and activities that we don't necessarily get to use in class. Any time a student finishes all of their work and there's still time in class, they can head over to play one of the games or do one of the activities.

I dug through my cabinets to find as much as I could to tempt students, including...

Uno! Complete with vocab help so they can play auf Deutsch.

 

Card games we sometimes use in class including: Pit, Apples to Apples (food vocab), Was memest du?, Trumpfspiel: German cities. The orange cards are a vocabulary game I got a while ago from Teacher's Discovery (on clearance, so no link).

Some authentic German games I have: German Scrabble, Black Stories, Werewolf. 

 

There was unfortunately some graffiti on my walls by this table which I couldn't remove, so I put up some construction paper where students can write on instead. 

German books that students can look or read through. 

I also found and printed out some German-themed coloring pages. 

Students also have access to Duolingo and Gimkit assignments if they would rather do a computer based game instead.

Do you have any activities in place for students who finish their work early? 

- Frau Leonard

Carousel Review

One of the Spanish teachers in my building told me about this activity and it seemed like the perfect way to start out the year in German 1! I structured it as a review of the material we'd covered last year in 7th grade Flex.

Process… 

1. Choose the topics that you want students to brainstorm. Our beginning of the year review included the topics: Germany (geography, history, culture, etc), Greetings/Farewells, Alphabet/Pronunciation, Numbers, Calendar, Cognates/False Friends/Loan Words, Survival Vocab/Polite Expressions, Holidays
2. Write each topic at the top of a piece of paper.
3. Split students into groups of 3-5.
4. Make sure each group has a writing utensil. I use different color markers for each group so it's easy to identify who contributed what.
5. Give one topic to each group. I put my papers around the room on the wall and sent each group to a different topic. They rotated around to all the stations, like a carousel.
6. When you say "Go!" each group has 2 minutes to write as many things as they can about that topic. This could be vocab words/phrases, cultural info, facts/trivia, whatever they remember.
7. After 2 minutes time is up, they rotate to the next topic.
8. Groups can make additions OR corrections to what previous groups said.
9. Repeat until all groups have gotten to all topics.
10. Review their answers at the end as a class, making corrections and additions as necessary.

This is a good way to see what the class as a whole remembers or what they might need to work on. I was not terribly surprised to see they remembered numbers really well or that they need to review spelling, but I was shocked they remembered so little of the holiday topics we'd talked about! 

I also asked students a few follow up questions as an exit ticket...

1. What topic(s) do you remember the best from last year?

2. What topic(s) do you remember the least?

3. Was the review in class helpful? Why/why not?

Overall students said they liked the activity because it helped show them they do actually remember more than they think. A few students weren't happy about their groups when they rotated and some pointed out there were errors (like saying Poland spoke German but Switzerland didn't), which is definitely why the review at the end as a class is essential to clarify those big errors.

- Frau Leonard

First Day Activities: UNO spielen

I don't remember where I got this idea or where I heard the suggestion from, but I remember the idea very distinctly: Don't let the kids walk out of Day One without a chance to use the language.

Not a terribly difficult task for your upper level, returning students. For day one of level one? It's a little trickier to give them something that's practical and engaging.

The suggestion/idea I came across years ago was UNO. Most students are familiar with the game, the rules are pretty straight forward, and the language required is pretty basic. Numbers 0-9, four colors, and a few other phrases, and then students are playing and actively using the language.

This year for my Deutsch I students, I made vocabulary sheets to help them with these words (including pronunciation notes) and divided them into groups to play. They were super excited... and were absolutely aghast when I mentioned the punishment for any student I caught using English. I gave all of the student groups one of the black boxes of cards, but kept a red one for myself - they have different backings but the same shape; the punishment for speaking English was I would give them an additional card.

The different colors helped me keep track of the sets, so I could easily put my red set back together at the end of class. It also made a manageable punishment that would only really matter if it added up.

I also like this activity because I always find the pacing of the first week can be hard - you can't account for all the interruptions with assemblies, you don't know the pace of this specific class during this time slot, etc - and after they learn the routine of playing the game in German, it's an easy way to fill the last few minutes of class.

What first day activities do you do that help get your students speaking the language ASAP?

EDIT: For anyone interested, you can get my copy of the vocab list here!

- Frau Leonard