Language Resident Name: Tilman Viëtor
Day and Date: Monday, 04/27/2020
Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class): German, Intermediate
# of Students: 3
Class theme/topics discussed: traveling
Goal of the class: Students repeat traveling vocab, practice a common German grammatical construction, practice presenting information.
How did you structure the class?
- Warm-up (Prior knowledge):
I put questions in the google doc, that the students talk about in pairs in breakout rooms. 1. What was the best trip that you ever went on? What was so great about it? 2. Can you imagine living in a different country one day? Where would that be? 3. Where would you travel to if money was not an issue? 4. Is traveling important to you? Why/why not?
- Activity 1 (Input):
The students brainstorm as many terms that are connected with traveling as possible. After two minutes, we look at all the terms together and talk about them.
- Activity 2 (Guided Practice):
The students answer the question “Why do people travel?” with the “um…zu”-Construction (in order to). Together we collect as many reasons to travel as possible. When the students run out of ideas, we look at a website together that gives ten reasons for traveling.
- Activity 3 (Task):
Students prepare a mini-presentation about the most interesting trip they ever went to. They explain where they went, for how long, how they got there, what they did there, what was most interesting, etc. They also explain, why traveling is important to them. They can also show pictures with the screenshare function. After about 5 minutes of preparation time, they get together in breakout rooms and present to each other.
- Activity 4 (Follow-up):
We meet in the main room, everyone quickly summarizes what they talked about, before we say our goodbyes.
What technology, media or props did you use? (Internet resources, playmobiles, handouts, etc.)
Google Doc, DeepL, website : https://www.auslandsjob.de/10-gruende-reisen.php,
What worked well in this class? What did not work?
The class went pretty well. The students talked a lot and were active and engaged all the time. The activities were not as dynamic as I had hoped, but I think that was because half of the class was missing. Also, I had one more, pretty big task prepared for the students, but we did not have the time to do it. But because I did not try to squeeze that activity in, the timing worked out very well.
How could this class be improved/ modified?
Finding a short video or some other kind of input with travel-related vocabulary would have been good to stimulate more ideas in the brainstorming activity.