| Topic | Politics |
| Goals of the Class | get to know the German political parties and their programs. form your own opinion about important issues in a country. what is important for me or for society. |
| Warm Up | Where is which city in Germany? the students had to take a quiz on different cities on the Germany map positions. |
| Activity 1 | I showed the students the colors of the six major parties. What do you associate with which color? What do colors stand for? What do they stand for in a political sense? |
| Activity 2 | Input about the programs of the German parties from My Side. Results of the last elections were shown. – Which points are of great importance to you? – If I were head of a party, what things would you focus on? – What colors and what name would your party wear? |
| Activity 3 | Voting at 16? sensible or not? Discuss advantages and disadvantages |
| What worked well in this class? What did not work (and how could it be improved)? | The lesson was very well received by the students and was also requested as a proposal in the first lesson. the two participants were able to represent their opinions very well and participated very strongly. The students were also very interested in the input about the German electoral and party system. |
Tag: parties
Theme/topic: La fête –Parties/celebrations in France –This class is designed to last for two sessions
Warm-up: What are some celebrations/French holidays you know or have heard of before?
- Quick cultural overview of the most important French Holidays
- Video screening of a typical French holiday – le 1er Avril – On this day it is customary for a lot of French people to prank others and/or stick a paper fish on their back
- Provide a few expressions in French for specific holidays – New Year, Christmas, etc. –
- project pictures of objects and actions related to either one important holiday – Christmas, etc.- or Birthdays. Ask the class if they can associate what they see on the pictures with any words they know. Then provide them the vocabulary
- Example – Birthdays:
- Activity 1:
- Create groups: Put the students in pairs or groups of 3/4
- The students will have first to individually brainstorm for 5 minutes on the best birthday they had had so far and their best birthday memories. They can jot down some notes and then share them with the rest of their group
- The instructor can also add more questions to ask them in order to make them practice expressing themselves on the topic in relation to their own experience using the past tense and the vocabulary provided beforehand: Quel est l’anniversaire dont vous vous souvenez le plus? (What is your best birthday experience?), Quels sont vos meilleurs souvenirs d’anniversaire ? (What are your best birthday memories?)
- Activity 2: keeping the same groups, ask them to discuss their favorite celebration in their home country/region/where they’re from and tell their group about it and why they like it specifically. They can list various elements -activities, actions, foods, costumes, traditions, music, etc.- they associate with that particular celebration/holiday -.
- Before starting the activity, give an example to guide them: je préfère mon anniversaire parce que ma famille et mes amis m’offrent des cadeaux / parce que il y a un gâteau d’anniversaire OR: ma fête préférée est mon anniversaire parce que…
- I Personally loved how responsive and engaged into the conversation the students were. They put a lot of work in writing about their best birthday’s memories and then when I put them into groups to share what they had written with their classmates, they couldn’t stop talking, and I realized how good their French speaking skills were when they were really into something/interesting into a certain topic, especially when it concerns sharing a personal, intimate story.