German Class - Week Two

Guten Morgen!

Even though it's evening now, our mornings in German class have been great so far! We have been moving around, singing, and coloring. We learned a fun "ABC" song and have been talking about our favorite animals and what they do (fly, swim).

Here are some of the phrases we're working on:
Ich heiße ____ (My name is ___)
Ich fliege (I fly)
Ich schwimme (I swim)
Auf wiedersehen (goodbye)

...and some of our favorite animals:
der Vogel (bird)
der Adler (eagle)
der Tiger (tiger)
die Giraffe (giraffe)
die Katze (cat)
das Eichhörnchen (squirrel)

We've also listened to the "Fliegerlied" and we watched the version with Tim Toupet on YouTube, if you'd like to see some of that flying and swimming in a catchy song!

Be sure to keep track of our progress on the German blog and come join us!

Welcome Our 2013 - 2014 German Instructor, Tammy Kirchner!

I grew up in Urbandale, Iowa and started learning German in an after-school program in the third grade. Since then I have gone on to study German and now have my M.A. in Applied Literary and Cultural Studies from TU Dortmund University. I have always enjoyed teaching and working with kids. I've worked with children in Germany to help them learn English through play and this past summer I prepared a group of American high-school students for their year abroad in Germany. I'm excited to be working at Hoover to bring the language and culture to your students as well!

Family and School

Hallo!

Last week we learned family member names and answered questions about a German family tree (your student should have brought this home if you're interested).  We also talked a little bit about Munich, since the family whose tree we studied lived in Munich, which led to a quick geography lesson (Munich is in the south, but Berlin is in the north), which led to a discussion about Berlin and the Berlin Wall.  I was surprised how much the older students already know about World War II and the Cold War and how it affected Berlin!

We also talked about German schools.  We talked about how everyone goes to Grundschule (elementary school, grades 1-4), but then there are 3 different schools that you have to choose from for 5th grade on.  We also talked about how our junior high and high school students move to different classrooms for each class, but German students stay in one room and different teachers come to them.  They were also surprised that German students don't bring cold lunch or have hot lunch at school, but instead bring some snacks to get through the day before having a hot meal at home for lunch.

In the week before spring break, we're going to learn German words for school supplies and subjects.  I've uploaded a school supplies sudoku below in case the older students are interested.  The first page has the words and the puzzle, and the solution is on the second page.

I also want everyone to know that I will not be able to be at class the Monday after spring break, but my friend Herr (Mr.) Medd will be subbing for me.  Since they'll have had a week off, Herr Medd will be playing Jeopardy with them to review what we've done since winter break.  I'll also upload the links to the Jeopardy games once they're made if your child wants to play them again at home!

LG
Frau Lubbers

School Supplies Sudoku

Animals Galore

Hallo!

Since we've learned so many animals (over 30!) in the last couple of weeks, we are going to have some fun with them by playing Memory and Pictionary/Charades with all of our animals!

I've uploaded the memory game to Google Docs if you want to print it out and play at home.  You don't have to do anything special to view it, just click the link!  I'm not sure if you can edit the document, so if you want to add or change anything, let me know and I can email you the original Word document.

Animal Memory

LG
Frau Lubbers

January!

As you know, last Wednesday was our first day back learning German.  We played review Jeopardy to get back into the swing of things, and I have to say, I was really impressed with how much the students remembered!  It's been over a month since I last saw them, but they were able to give me a LOT of vocabulary! 
Jeopardy was requested again for today, so I made the next two rounds harder to challenge them.  I'm posting all three versions here in case you would like to see them or if your students want to play again! 

Jeopardy Review 1
Jeopardy Review 2
Jeopardy Review 3

I'll also apologize for the lack of posts - I can see that at least a few of you have been looking for updates!  I'll definitely try to be better about it! 

LG
Frau Lubbers

Week 3

Hallo!

This week we learned the Alphabet in German and we started learning numbers.  On Monday we played alphabet bingo and today we played number bingo (which the students found to be a lot harder because there are a lot more numbers than letters!).  They know how to say how old they are and how to ask someone else.
We had also talked about how words in German can be extremely long because they create compound words without spaces or hyphens.  Today I wrote up one of the longer words (80 letters!): Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft.  But they also have 7,777 written out, which is still long, but actually manageable!

LG,
Frau Lubbers

New Website!

Hallo WLCP German learners and parents!

To make things easier to organize, each language now has its own individual blog.  Updates about German will now be on this site; the main WLCP site has all the links you need!

LG,
Frau Lubbers