Today was my first lesson with my year 7 German class; well it was more of a starter lesson, given that it was only 30 mins long. They had 3 objectives: say what you are called and ask someone else, learn a little about Germany and learn a little about the Schultüten tradition in Germany. My objective: to make myself understood and deliver most of the lesson in German. Did I achieve this objective? Yep. How? See below!
To start, I had to seat them. We usually start by seating them alphabetically. I had done a seating plan on PowerPoint from their perspective, then for me I copied the slide then flipped the 'tables' to print off. So as they came into the class, all I had to do was greet them, then refer them to the plan:
"Hallo! Findet eure Namen und dann setzt euch"
I gestured towards the board and the tables and it seemed to work.
Next on my plan was to do the register. I wanted them to say 'Ich bin hier' and 'nicht hier' (as mentioned in a previous post), so I showed them the phrases with accompanying pictures and we drilled each one ("die ganze Klasse") with mimes where necessary. I then removed the phrases and we did the register.
Learning how to say what you are called and asking someone else was the first objective and for this I had a speech bubble with 'Wie heißt du' and 'Ich heiße Frau Wylie' in it. Again, some drilling and a few appropriate mimes did the trick. To practise this, I asked them to ask 5 people in the class. I simply said "fünf Personen" and then did some examples myself. To finish off, I used my lovely new inflatable microphone to ask random pupils their names, which seemed to go down well!
Objective 2 was to learn a little about Germany. Originally this quiz existed in English, but I was determined to do it in German, so I doctored it! (See below) They wrote the answers (A,B,C,D) on their mini whiteboards. As you will see below, some of the questions are obvious, but some required a little explanation. Where possible I gestured (Frage 4), but occasionally, we needed a proper explanation, so that's when the Union Flag hat came out (see post on 26th August - Chapeau). I simply said, "Was ist das auf Englisch?" and showed the hat and I had a volunteer raise her hand. I placed the hat on her head, which caused a little giggle and then she explained what it meant. Sometimes having a pupil interpreter is extremely useful. It means that they don't hear you speaking English, thus keeping to your TL.
Finally, the third objective was to learn about Schultüten and for this I had made a short explanatory video with PowToon (See last slide below for link). I showed it and then asked for someone to explain (With the hat) and before they left to go to their next session, they were given a hand made Schultüte (Made by last year's Year 10 classes!) as a nice memento of their first German lesson.
To get them quiet, what I normally do is count down: "drei, zwei, eins, null, STOP!". To accompany this I raise 3 fingers, then 2, then 1, then make a zero with my fist and on STOP I raise my hand to show my palm. It never fails. I have done it in English with my form, but I have found that it always works best in German or French!! Weird!
There were a couple of pupils, who were clearly struggling with the quiz, but I dealt with this by kneeling down next to them and helping them out individually. There were also 2 TAs in the room as there are a couple of pupils with SEN, but generally the class coped well. No-one complained or mentioned that there was no English spoken; it seemed to be expected. I have them again tomorrow for a full lesson, so we will see how that goes, but so far, so good!
I can't remember where this slideshow originally came from as we have had it for a few years now. We really like it!. It was in English and as I mentioned above I translated it into German. I also added the link on the last page and put some more pictures on to make the answers easier to understand.
First Lesson Quiz About Germany
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