Idiom of the Week Board

I saw this really cute idea on Pinterest for an idiom of the week board.

In this past I've tried to do an idiom of the week/month/whenever I got around to it.  I think I tried too hard to make it a part of weekly instruction.  I tried to do quizzes and get the students to come up with examples...  Really, it was all great in theory but was harder in practice.  The problem was always that it was another thing I had to keep track of and make activities for.

What I like about this is it's something I can have up and don't have to draw attention to it.  If students are interested, it's something they can keep track of and use on their own.  If students do use the phrases during class, that's something I can praise.  If students don't use the phrase... well at least I can beef up on idioms on my own ;)

- Frau Leonard

German Slang

I was playing around on YouTube when I came across the channel Get Germanized.  There's a variety of videos related to German and more specifically learning German.  What really caught my eye, though, was the slang video.

For this video, Meister Lehnsherr goes through different slang words / expressions that start with the letter M.  For each word/expression, he explains it and then gives an example of how to use it (and yes, he does have videos for other letters of the alphabet!).  Really informative, totally random, and definitely not the type of German we necessarily get to teach.



You might think that because these are slang related words, there will be expressions in here that aren't necessarily appropriate for your students... and unless you teach college, you'd be right.  I think if you wanted to use these videos with your students, you'd have to skip some of the words, but some of the expressions are definitely relevant to some of the units we do and getting some authentic language is definitely a plus :)

- Frau Leonard