SLOs for the New School Year

I'm not sure how many teachers out there are dealing with SLO's (Student Learning Objectives) at the moment, but since it's something I've been working on lately I thought I'd share.

Our county asks us World Language Teachers to come up with two SLOs - one for Content (Presentational Writing/Speaking, Interpersonal Writing/Speaking, Listening, etc.) and one for Literacy (Explanatory, Argumentative or Summary Writing).  We pick one class to collect data for, gathering a baseline score at the beginning of the year and then at least two more times to measure student growth.  Obviously the goal is for students to improve or to at least maintain the level they scored on the baseline assessment.

Last year I focused on my AP students, but this year I'm working on my German 2 class.  They're a weaker class in part because last year they were on an A Day/B Day schedule (I only saw them once every other day).  I'm also worried because they are on that same rotating schedule this year.  By the end of this year, I will have spent less time with them than with any other German 2 class I've taught.  Part of my goal with these SLOs is to help them improve to where they need to be by doing periodic checks and by showing them this data.

Here's a look at my two SLOs for the year and the baseline assessment for each.

For the baselines, I didn't give students a grade for them.  You'll notice that the rubrics are holistic and not analytic - it's a way for me to give them feedback in specific, targeted areas without them feeling the pressure of a grade.  I might decide to use an analytic version for their later assessments, but that's something to think about later on.

Content: Presentational Speaking
I know these students are weak when it comes to speaking, so I really want to emphasis it this year.  We're slowly transitioning into them speaking more German in class (German 2 currently has an extensive grammar review unit built into the beginning of the school year), and the baseline assessment seemed like a good way to show my expectations for more speaking.

For the baseline assessment, I started by having five objects in a bag (pig, apple, socks, calculator and a ball).  We played Was ist in der Tasche? until students were able to guess all the items.  Once we had them all, I asked students to tell me why they thought I had each item - what could I possibly do with these things I was carrying around in a bag?  (Yes, they said I was going to eat the pig.)

After we'd done this introductory activity, I gave students their prompt:  I was going to give them a bag and they had to identify the items in it and explain why they had them.  I told them to tell me as much as they could about the items in their bag, which contained a cat, a water bottle, a highlighter, an agenda book, and a scarf.

Our department has a set of digital recorders that we share for speaking activities.  I had students go out in the hallway to record their responses one at a time while the rest of the class did some review activities.

If you'd like to see the Level 2 rubric the HCPSS World Language Department has provided us, please click here.  The rubric is great - it's easy for the kids to see what they need to do and the level they're trying to achieve.  And it's based off the ACTFL Can-Do Statements... when these kids get to German 3/4, they'll be familiar with the phrasing which will hopefully help them learn to better rate themselves.

Here are some other activities you can use to evaluate Presentational Speaking:

One thing that they've been emphasizing is not to make your prompt too specific.  Don't limit them by saying, "You must say six sentences.  You must use three different verbs.  You must use twenty different vocabulary words from the vocab list."  Give them some freedom - just tell them to give you as much as they can (maybe within a time limit).  Weaker students will place on the lower end of the spectrum, but this will give stronger students a chance to give you more and truly show you their capabilities.

Literacy: Summary Writing
While we do other types of writing, the idea of doing 3-4 argumentative writing assignments throughout the year seemed a bit much.  I decided to go with Summary Writing because it seemed the easiest to incorporate multiple times throughout the year.

For our baseline assessment, I showed students the video below.  The prompt was: Create a timeline of events that took place in the video (Yes!  I had them draw out a line, label the left side "Anfang" and the right side "Ende").  Be sure to include the beginning and end, as well as details in between.  Tell me as much as you can about what happens.


We first viewed the video once.  The second time through, I told students they could take notes if they needed to (I didn't want any distractions the first viewing, so I made them hold off on notes).  Then students had time to complete the prompt.

I think this was a great video for a German 2 class.  There will be words they don't necessarily know (leise, rufen, etc.) and tenses they haven't formally learned (Present Perfect Tense), but the visuals help and the speaking isn't too fast (and it's fun!).

And this is a great way to practice circumloqution.  I maybe don't know how to say "rufen," but I can describe what they're doing as "singen."  I might not pick up the word "leise" but I might be able to figure out that Bert wasn't "laut" enough.  I don't know how to say shark, but I can say "gross Fisch."
It's perfect for giving students the chance to show what they can do - I got everything from 1-2 word phrases from some students to students who were able to give lots of details in complete sentences with a variety of vocabulary.

Here are some other activities you can use to evaluate Summary Writing:

If you'd like to see the Level 2 rubric the HCPSS World Language Department has provided us, please click here.

I'm looking forward to seeing my students improve over the course of the year!  I'm already thinking about what to do for their next assessment ;)

- Frau Leonard

P.S. 
Credit where credit is due - the amazing rubrics I'm using for my SLOs were provided to us by our World Languages Coordinator in Howard County, Leslie Grahn, and World Languages Resource Teacher, Jen Cornell.  She is an amazing educator and does a lot to support us.

Dirndl und Lederhosen: Traditional German Clothing

Our last vocabulary topic in German 1 is a clothing unit.  We look at a variety of vocabulary words, practice describing outfits, use the verb gefallen, practice shopping, and basically just practice describing things we already have and do in America.

I had some extra time this week so I put together something I felt was missing - a little bit of German culture!

It started earlier in the year when my AP kids did a reading from the Cornelsen AP workbook (which I highly recommend) that talked about Dirndl.  The boys had no clue what a Dirndl was (and as boys, I guess I wouldn't expect them to...), which made the reading more challenging for them.  I decided that deutsche Tracht was something I should incorporate into the clothing unit we do in German 1.

When I went through making this activity, I wanted something that gave a general overview, had some fun details, but wasn't too detailed or overwhelming for students.  We basically talked a little bit about everything, learning some words like Lederhosen, Bundhosen, Edelweisshut, Dirndl and Tracht.  I then gave students a cultural quiz - seven true/false statements that we then discussed one by one.

After that, we watched the following video about Dirndl:


There is a German version available as well (alas, I didn't find the German version until after we had watched the English one), so you can decide which version to use based on your class' abilities.

Next class, we'll talk more about Lederhosen and the Edelweisshut.  Deutsche Welle has a video (similar to the Dirndl one above, though with less of a focus on fashion) on Lederhosen that I plan on showing.


And just like the previous video, there's a German version as well.

Previously when we've had a World Language Fair, my Honor Society students had a craft table where they showed people how to make an Edelweisshut out of construction paper.  We'll be making these hats next class based on this craft page.  I will say that you will need to find the longest/biggest construction paper possible - for teenagers it'll be a tight fit once it's done.

If you're interested in a copy of the materials I used, they're available for FREE on TPT - just click here!

- Frau Leonard

Falschparker

We're still in our car unit in German 3, focusing now on how to drive.  In addition to talking about traffic signs, speed limits and general rules of the road, today we talked about bad driving.

I stumbled upon a couple of resources provided by Deutsche Welle that fit into this mini-topic.

The first one was about der Idiotentest.  I asked students to come up with what they thought it would be, then we listened to the provided audio file and edited our definition.  I then asked students to come up with examples of bad driving that would force someone to have to take the Idiotentest.

We then moved on to bad parking via a video article from Deutsche Welle: Eine App gegen Falschparker.  We watched and discussed the video using the provided exercises.  Then I asked students if they thought parking was an issue at our school.  Our senior class has already left (they graduate tomorrow), so the general consensus was that parking has improved a lot recently but that it could be bad (we often have people parking in spots that are not actual spots).  I broke students into groups and challenged them to go into the school parking lot and find Falschparker.  And just like the app we just talked about, they would need to photograph the cars.

Obviously I didn't want to incriminate any drivers at our school - students, teachers or otherwise.  This was just an extension of what we were doing in class.  To make sure that the photos stayed anonymous, students were told not to show any license plates.  And to make this part fun, I designed these European-style fake license plates.

Fake license plates based on ones found from a quick Google search :)

Each group was given one of the license plates (today we had team Deutschland, Liectenstein and Belgien).  In each of their pictures, they had to display their license plate and not the actual one.  I then gave them 15 minutes to try and find as many as they could (we have three parking lots, each on a separate side of the school - the time was necessary just to allow them to walk between them).

When time was up, each group had to send me what they thought were the five most egregious parking mistakes along with a count of the total number of Falschparker they found.

Here are some of the photos:

If you plan on doing this (and I recommend it!) make sure you tell students to include enough of the car to show how bad the parking was - some of the student photos are close ups that basically just show you a car.  There was also one group (ahem, my group of boys) who decided to fabricate some bad parking jobs... by re-parking their own cars.  Props to them on the creativity and effort, though!

Also interesting to note: both of the girl groups found a lot of Falschparker, while the boys found fewer.  The girls were looking for lots of examples whereas the boys were looking for the most obvious examples (higher - or maybe lower? - standards for what it meant to be a Falschparker).

- Frau Leonard

Trabis, Trabis, Trabis!

In German 3 we have a unit that talks about cars - it's a well-timed unit, because students are usually juniors and are just starting to get their license.  In addition to all the usual car-related activities (identifying car parts, talking about car features, talking about how to drive/rules of the road, etc), we spend some time talking about Trabis.  

I start by having students do a little brainstorming.  I use this Power Point to see what they already know.  Depending on their level of familiarity, you can give them more or less background info.  This year, for example, my students had no clue what a Trabi was - even with the picture on screen they weren't comfortable making the guess that it was a car (senioritis a year early?).  

There are also some great videos out there that have Trabis.  Deutsche Welle has this one on YouTube that could be used as a follow-up to the brainstorming activity.  It's a little long, so you might just want to pick snippets to view as a class.

I also really like this one from the movie Toedliche Traeume: 

There's a lot you could do with this video.  Aside from just watching it and discussing what happens, you could stop it at various points and have students predict what will happen next.  

I recently read a blog post about inferring and how to use it to build critical thinking skills.  This seems like a good clip to use - without showing them the title of the video, ask them when and where it takes places, etc. and use what they see and hear in the video to justify their answer.

Deutsche Welle has a great Video-Thema that talks about the new Trabi design.  Like with all of their videos, it comes with a copy of the manuscript and some exercises to go along with the video.  

After that, students have to make an ad for the Trabi (either the old model or the new version).  At this point in the unit, we've already analyzed at German car ads and discussed what we think makes a good advertisement.  Their job is to make the best ad they can for the Trabi - one that really sells the product.  And the only way to do that is to give them a market... German 2 and 4.  Each class gets a chance to look at the finished ads and vote on which they think the best/most effective one is.  

Here are some of the ones from this year:

This is a great cultural tie-in for the car unit.  When students start looking for images of Trabis for their ads, they can't get enough of some of the weirder designs.  Usually we do a short DDR and Ostalgie unit after German 4 has taken the AP exam

And if we get a chance to talk about the DDR and Ostalgie in more detail (usually in German 4 after students have taken the AP exam), they already have a starting point.  When students watched Good Bye Lenin this year in German 4, they all immediately recognized the Trabi :)

- Frau Leonard

Zwerge sind zum Lernen

One of the grammar units covered in Deutsch Aktuell 2 is "Infinitives Used as Nouns."  It's a relatively useful topic, but it's not very difficult nor does it take very long to cover.  I usually use it as a starting point to talk about Infinitives with Zu and with Um... zu.  

A problem I was having, though, was that the text doesn't provide much practice for this topic.  There's maybe four short practice exercises total.  So last year, in attempt to give a more comprehensive look at this topic before moving on to the slightly more difficult one, I scoured the internet to see what other people do.  Luckily, I came across this activity.  

Basically, it's a cloze activity that goes along with the song "Steh auf, wenn du auf Zwerge stehst."  Instead of going through the entire set of lyrics, though, it only focuses on the parts that have infinitives.  The song is ridiculous and the video doesn't disappoint either.  If you're looking for an "answer key," you just have to look up the lyrics as a whole.

I like the song and activity, but I did end up adding to it a bit.  I found that some of the verbs were new to students, so I added a matching activity.  I then make students try to guess which verb goes where before we listen to the song and watch the video.  And at the end, I include a short sentence completion activity to get them using the structure on their own.  If you're interested in my version, click here.

There's another video of this song that's on YouTube - not as interesting, but it does include the lyrics.  Good as a self-check for students.



 - Frau Leonard

P.S.
Sadly, I couldn't back-track my steps well enough to find out where exactly I got the original activity from.  If you happen to know the original author or the site where it's found, let me know so I can credit them!

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

Der Wolf und die sieben Geisslein

A few years ago I stumbled upon an activity that connected the story "Der Wolf und die sieben Geisslein" with the perfect tense and past participles, available from deutschdrang.com  I've used this reading activity with my German 2 students once we've covered weak verbs, strong verbs, and verbs with sein as their helping verb.

There's about 60 verbs.  I divide students into four groups and have each group 12 of the verbs.  They're responsible for writing the past participle for their verbs.  Once students have had enough time to fill in their verbs, we read the story as a class.  Groups take turns reading out the sentences from their section.

I've found in the past that when we do this activity, students sometimes have trouble understanding what's going on.  There's pictures in the file, but they don't always help.  Previously I would act out or draw parts of the story to make it clearer.  For this year I decided to create images using Power Point and clipart - I have six different scenes from the story to help explain as we go along.

I think students this year had a much easier time understanding through both the text and the pictures.  What's great is that the Power Point slides can be printed out, mixed up and given to students.  Using the images, they can put the story in order and re-tell it in their own words (using brand new vocabulary and the perfect tense, of course!).  If you'd like the Power Point I used, just click here!

The story is a lot of fun, but we do a little bit extra once we've gone through the original version.  I find a Sesame Street version in German.  Burt and Ernie (note that they're Ernie und Burt in the German version...) re-tell the story, but this time it's der Wolf und die zwei Geißlein.  It's a cute version that's not as grim as the original.  Check it out:


I also have some activities we do with the video: vocabulary clues, content questions, and a venn diagramm.  If you're interested in the activities, click here.

I really love doing this activity with students.  It's different from just drilling past participles (borrrring) and it's something that's practical - telling a story!  Students enjoy the story and love watching the video.  Try it out and let me know if you like it as much as I do :)

If you'd like to do this activity but with the Imperfect Tense instead, here's another version of the story.  It isn't already edited for students to fill in verb forms and doesn't have the included vocabulary activities, but it could be fixed.

- Frau Leonard

Englisch lernen

This video was shared by another German teacher in our system:



I showed it to my students and they loved it.  I think I might show this at the beginning of German 1 next year as a jumping off point for our discussion on why people learn other languages.

- Frau Leonard

Sport für alle!

This year when Deutsch II was learning sport-related vocabulary, I decided to work with our Physical Education Department at Glenelg to give the students a day to play a sport of their choosing.  I got them the gym for a whole period on a Friday - they chose a game and we took it from there.

First I started with some Piggeldy und Frederick.  We watched the video on Schlittschuh laufen in which Frederick has to explain skating to Piggeldy.


After viewing and discussing this video, I divided the students into groups and assigned each group one of the following sports: Basketball, Fußball, Hockey, Volleyball, Baseball, Tennis, amerikanischer Fußball.  Each group needed to come up with a German explanation of the game for Piggeldy.  They had to find the vocabulary to describe things like how many players were on a team, different positions (ex: goalie) and equipment (tennis racket), and the different rules/actions involved ("don't touch the soccer ball with your hands" and "kick the ball").  Then each group reported out what they had come up with.

At this point, I revealed that they were going to get a chance to play ONE of these sports during class.  They had to pick which sport, though, based on how easy they thought it would be to get the materials necessary and if they could get a big enough team.  After some voting and finagling, they agreed on Fußball.

The next step was I gave them the option of "inviting" (read that as "challenging") Deutsch III and Deutsch IV to the match.  They whole-heartedly wanted to challenge the upper levels.

Of course, it's one thing to have your own class go to the gym and play a game during the period that they have you.  It's another thing to pull students from other classes for a game.  I told the upper level German classes about the match and gave them a permission slip.  It was really more of a way to let the other teachers know what was going on.

A lot of students wanted to participate but most couldn't get out of class that day (we had had several snow days in a row which undoubtedly had something to do with it).  It was definitely fun to get a few new faces.  I hope to be able to do this game again in the future - I want it to be something that builds up and the kids look forward to playing as a team against another class.

As an alternate activity for students who, for whatever reason, didn't want to play, I gave them the chance to take pictures of the game instead.  This is German, not Gym, after all and I didn't want to force the kids to play - it's supposed to be fun!

The game itself went well.  The Phys Ed teachers were super supportive - they gave us pinnies and equipment and (most importantly!) the space to play in.  I think next year, though, I would invite another teacher to help moderate the game.  The kids were well behaved, the issue was more that I'm not personally very familiar with the rules and game play of soccer.  I'm a hockey and football girl, so when we play a game I don't know as well I feel I should ask one of the school coaches if they'd be willing to ref for us.

Now as fun as it was to take a day off and play a game, there's no way we stopped there!  The kids had, after all, spent all that time looking up soccer-related terms and we had all these pictures.  There was a project to be had out of this!

One of our media specialists had talked to me earlier in the year about Animoto, a website that makes you put together videos from your own photos or video footage.  You can get a free account, which does limit you to 30 seconds of footage and you don't have as wide of a selection in animations, music, etc, but the length was actually perfect for what we needed.  Check out one of the student videos!

Sporttag was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again next year!

- Frau Leonard

Compound Nouns: Rabarbara

My German 2 students started learning about Compound Nouns this week.  After class today, one of my students showed me this video he found on Reddit - it goes great with our topic!  Thought I'd share :)



- Frau Leonard

Product Review: Pronunciation Video

PRODUCT REVIEW: A PRONUNCIATION DVD MADE ESPECIALLY FOR GERMAN CLASS!  (Teacher's Discovery)

Product Description:  Snappy, funny and effective! Features pronunciation by native speakers, repetitions on the screen and by your students, and hardly anything else. Excellent introduction to and reinforcement of German sounds. What a great way to speak German! ©2004. 15 minutes. German. Middle School, High School level. Also available on VHS. 

Cost: $21.94 DVD or $9.99 Download

I purchased this video during either my first year of teaching as a way to go over pronunciation with my German 1 students.  To be honest, I showed it to my students once that year and haven't bothered to use it since.

Despite being a pronunciation video, it ONLY covers vowels.  They go over vowels, umlauts, and diphthongs, but there is NO discussion of consonants.  This somehow never made it into the product description, so be advised if you were hoping for something more comprehensive.

The video is only 15 minutes long, but with the *repetition* that it advertises in the product description, that is too long.  Each letter is introduced with a few examples of words with that sound.  As each word is pronounced, there is a short video clip playing that shows a visual for the item in question (for example, there's a clip of a cat as they repeatedly say "die Katze").  

Throughout the video, there are cheesy video effects and unrelated music playing in the background.  Some of the video clips are amusing and the pronunciation is helpful, but the effects and music are more distracting than helpful.  Even my students grew bored by the end of it - I teach high school, so maybe it would be better using this video with middle school.  There's a video clip available on the Teacher's Discovery page - you'll see what I mean.

Practicality: 2/5 

Only useful as a study of vowels, but the video is too long for what it is.

Accuracy: 4.5/5 

Only taking off for the accuracy of the product description - the pronunciation itself is fine.

Fun: 2.5/5 

Some of the video clips are funny or cute, but by the end of the 15 minutes you've had enough.  

Overall: 9 / 15 (60%)

I don't think I would recommend this product.  You could probably get your upper level students to produce something more engaging and useful.  

- Frau Leonard

How German Sounds Compared to Other Languages

This was a funny video I saw while reading through Deut(sch)lich. Thought I'd share. I might show this to my German 2 students before we review German pronunciation, just for fun.

In all seriousness, I was thinking of pitching a similar idea to my department this year as a promotional video for the languages we offer. I didn't think it would emphasize German, but rather we'd focus on students from each language saying their favorite words. Haven't met with my department yet to discuss if they like the idea, but hopefully we can make something happen :)

- Frau Leonard

Die Sprache der Liebe

A student sent me this video - it's funny/cute, though not necessarily classroom appropriate (there is an f-bomb)... Just for fun though! Enjoy!


- Frau Leonard