Ms. Haberlen is teaching a unit about months and holidays. She uses only German in the classroom.

The first activity she did with the students was a greeting song, which the students sing to a partner every day, then switch around, and sing to another partner.

Next, Frau Haberlen handed twelve of the students a piece of paper with a month written on it in German. The students’ job was to sort those months into the four seasons.

After that, the teacher had the students sing a song about the months of the year. During this song, the students turn the hands of their “year clocks” to the appropriate month. The students had made their year clocks in class a few days before.

The next activity which the class does is a guessing game, tying the months of the year to the holidays that take place during them. The teacher provided an example, “I am a month in Spring, Mother’s Day is in me,” and the students guessed. Afterwards, the students took turns following that model and posing new riddles to each other.

Frau Haberlen handed out to a group of children the first halves of sentences about the months and holidays, while another group received the second halves. The children read their halves of the sentence and then mingled until they found the person with the other half. After that, each pair read their sentence out loud to the class, who said whether it was right or wrong.

Then the class played a game similar to 20 questions, where one student came up to the front of the room, and was given a card with a holiday on it, which they looked at and put behind their back. The rest of the students took turns asking five yes and no questions in order to narrow down what the holiday was. Frau Haberlen said that this activity practices listening skills and helps the children practice producing questions in a communicate way. The teacher provided a list of possible questions on a chart which the children could use as a reference.

Next, Frau Haberlen asked the children to compare a German holiday (Faschig) with an American holiday (Halloween). The students suggested comparisons, which the teacher then used to fill out a Venn diagram with the differences and similarities between the two holidays.

Finally, the teacher led the students in a farewell song which incorporated themes and vocabulary from the unit on months, seasons, weather, and holidays. The song is a traditional German song which German children learn.

Frau Haberlen stated in the video, “I think it’s very important that the students experience some kind of positive emotion while they are involved in their language learning.” I believe she accomplished that effectively during her class, through games and songs and a positive up-building atmosphere. The children all seemed to be excited, comfortable, and having fun. I want that to be the case in my classroom too.

By starting off the class with a song the students are familiar with, the teacher puts the students at ease, helps them to focus their minds on German, and gets them up and moving around, which will help reduce the effects of their shorter attention spans.

Games, fun, and interaction are critical, especially at young ages like third grade, in order to maintain students’ attention and motivation. It was interesting to see how Frau Haberlen bookended her class with music, and sprinkled it with games throughout. Even in grad school, students still enjoy an appropriate game.

On the topic of whether teachers should communicate with young students exclusively in the target language, I would say no. I think that using the L2 exclusively is not necessary or even desirable until more advanced levels. However, Frau Haberlen seemed to pull it off exceptionally well, and I think that, used the way she used it, L2 exclusivity is not bad. She made sure that what she meant was always obvious from context, and she spoke in a way that was understandable, bringing her German speech to her students into Krashen’s category of comprehensible input.

Some other topics I would put in a syllabus for third graders are pets, food, and around the house.