This unit involves the use of a PowerPoint presentation to introduce the village of Nabburg and the Bavarian culture. During the PowerPoint presentation, the students will use Guided Notes to help them follow the show and gather important information and vocabulary. Students will then do follow-up activities from this PowerPoint on their own computers, doing further investigation on the German school system. Older students of mine that actually spent time in Nabburg in a home-stay situation will come and be an interview panel, answering questions about the area and the school system, also demonstrating good use of conversational past tense. German II students will then do a mock debate between the German and American school systems, comparing and defending the two systems.
In addition to the focus on Bavaria and the German (and more specifically, Bavarian) school system, the students will be practicing their conversational past tense in German. Students will have learned the concept and will have been introduced to many verb forms previously; they will use Internet activities, improvisational prompts, and role-play activities to review and perfect their spoken past tense, being able to compare and contrast the German and English past tense structures and switch between the two.
The culmination learning activity of the unit will include a student-planned recreation of the Bavarian festival, Oktoberfest. Students will study typical Bavarian culture through the focus on Nabburg and individual websearching, and then will celebrate their own learning by putting on the festival. |