How we left school. When we switched from in class to online learning, I decided that I wanted to keep with mostly input. This is tough, when you don't see your students and they are beginners. Of course they weren't able to take books home, because we left school on a Friday and found out on Sunday evening that we would not come back Monday morning.

What I do. I decided to continue with stories from home and record videos, then have some short activities. This allows the students to focus on the input and only spend very little time on the activities. Yet, I can see if they watched the videos and have some accountability. (Below is remote lesson 1)

German diary. Every week on Monday the students receive an activity on Seesaw called German diary. This helps them to keep track of what they have done and what still needs to be done. Questions can also be answered in here as well. All videos are posted to their journal and are announced through a message to families and students. Here are the links to the Seesaw activities I used for this. They can be copied and edited:

1. German diary week 1 & 2
   Videos (week 1) Todd and Vom fröhlichen Monat Februar
   Activity Todd
   Videos (week2) Bibi and Rotkäppchen
2. German diary week 3
   Videos (week3) Die Geschichte vom König and Vom eingebildeten Monat März
3. German diary week 4 (coming soon)
   Videos (week 4) Der Tag an dem Louis gefressen wurde und Narziss
   

This is what I have learned from this so far. KEEP IT SIMPLE. Students and families are as much in a new situation as we are. Some parents have to work full-time and have more than one child to keep up with. Many of the parents won't be able to help with German, so make sure the language is really comprehensible to the students. This is much harder to do in front of a camera than in front of your students. And something I realized is that the length of the stories is too much for some students. Yes, they can follow these kinds of stories in class, but they are harder to follow online. The stories from week 3 are a little shorter, the stories from week 4 are much shorter than the first ones. If this continues for longer, I will pick shorter stories and rather do three shorter ones than two long ones.  And lastly, stay in touch with your students and if they can't do something DO NOT PUSH THEM.
Be compassionate with them and their families. Everyone is doing their best and it's a learning process for all. Be kind and available to your students as you stay at home.

Please let me know about your experiences with remote learning and what was helpful to you,
Kathrin

This year I have been recording all my lessons in class. Every single story we have done in class can be found on my YouTube channel and is posted in the students' journals on Seesaw.  To see which stories I have told, you can click on the picture bar on the right, which will take you to my Instagram or on the post 50-before-winter-break (another post coming shortly with stories 51-75). This has some wonderful advantages:

1. Absent students can watch stories at home.
2. Parents can see what the students are doing in class.
3. Recordings can be used for substitute lessons.
4. Students can watch stories again and again and receive more optimal input.
5. Easy transition into remote learning.

I have not seen a disadvantage of providing the stories online. Some students have told me that they really like watching the stories again at home after listening to them in class. Others are not making use of the videos as much. Since we know that more optimal input means greater gains in language, my thought was: How can I gently encourage students to watch a story at home each week to receive more input?  Here is my solution.

Listening Challenges
First off, the listening challenges are voluntary. Every week or two, I send one challenge to the parents of my students. The students do not know what the challenge of the week (or two) is and have to ask their parents at home. This way the parents are very aware of what the kids are doing in class and are informed of what they are asked to voluntarily do at home. Here are come examples of challenges we have done so far:

• Watch a story while eating popcorn
• Watch a story with a family member
• Watch a story and reenact a scene with toys/stuffed animals (see pictures)
• Watch a story and write down 5 words from the story
• Watch a story in a weird space
• Watch a fairy tale

All challenges are low pressure and are supposed to be fun for the students. Don't have popcorn at home? No problem, the important part is watching a story.  The students have to have someone take a picture of them completing the challenge and send it to me by the given due date. Then comes the fun part. On Fridays (or really now every other Friday), after I tell a story as usual, we look at all the pictures (and videos) that were sent in and I talk about them in German and ask the students questions, which they answer in English or German. With many of the challenges we have made it a game to guess what story that student was watching (for the reenactment and the 5 words for example). And that is it. There is no price, no winner. It's just a fun way to encourage the students to watch the videos and get more input. Everyone in class looks forward to seeing the new pictures and videos and the majority of students participate in the challenge. And as a teacher I love seeing what the students come up with, which stories they choose to watch again and what part of themselves they want to share with the class.

This school year I have told many stories (62 so far) from different genres, such as folk tales, fables, legends, sagas, myths, children's literature,... as part of my pure Story Listening program. I love the variety this adds to the class and it let's me find out which kinds of stories my class like the most. A couple of weeks ago, I started reading the book Sideways Stories from Wayside School to my daughter and I thought, "my class would love this book." Not only is it written for the target age group 8-10, but it also has great attributes for Story Listening:  naturally repetitive, short stories that play in school (play on students' world knowledge) and some students are familiar with the book.
Now usually I don't think using a book is a great idea for Story Listening for the same reasons Beniko Mason does not recommend continuing a story from one lesson into the next; students that were absent miss the beginning or the end. Either way this really takes away from the story. You have to redraw key elements and remind the students of important details in order to continue.  However, in this book every chapter is a story in itself. Every one of the 30 chapters is about another one of the 30 characters. So it isn't a big deal if a student misses one chapter, because the next story does not build on it. Sure there is some overlap, but nothing that is necessary to ensure comprehension of the context.

Stephen Krashen has recommended series reading to develop reading habits. He extended this idea into Narrow Listening, which involves listening to recordings of different native speakers on the same topic multiple times. I think that Story Listening can provide great opportunities for narrow listening. In fact that is what Beniko Mason already does using folk tales from the same collections (Grimm/Long). So the idea here is just an extension on that with materials suitable for younger students. Similarly to the Grimm tales, I already used books from the same author for my students (Robert Munsch books, etc.) However, in all of these books we follow different characters. Using the Wayside School books gets closer to the original idea of Narrow Reading by using stories with the same characters. Creating opportunities to getting to know the characters better and developing likes and dislikes as well as empathy for them. This I believe can strengthen the connections Krashen talks about (text to text, text to self and text to world connections)  in just the same way through Story Listening as through Narrow Reading.

A word of caution though, the book has to be picked well. My students ask me every class if we can continue this story (which we can't because I have to translate it as it does not exist in German). If they hadn't liked it, I would not have used it to try this out with them.

So far we have done two chapters. I am doing a low pressure assessment with this book by having the students prepare a smash doodle of one chapter which I can then use to review the chapter ("Previously on Wayside School....") before we start the next. I will also collect them to put together a book which the students will receive at the end of the school year. Let me clarify, every student only does this for ONE chapter! So in 14 weeks, they have one turn. The first chapter was done by me as an example. I am looking forward to receiving the first smash doodle next week and to continue this story that I enjoy telling very much, and my students clearly enjoy listening to.

It's been a great school year so far, just watching the students in class grow. Listening to their increased spontaneous output in class, predicting the story lines and suggesting details in German. More students joined in to make the switch to German in class and I have also received more videos from students as they retell stories in German at home for fun. So here is a little comparison of two videos a student sent  to me. One after 28 stories in class, the other after 41. According to her mom, who graciously allowed me to post these videos (Danke!), her daughter has been quite obsessed with watching the videos from class, so I am not sure how much time, she has spent on getting more input on her own through the videos. But the power of interest based input is quite obvious when students chose to spend their free time by watching the stories from class again.

When watching both videos the improvement in pronunciation is quite striking. Her speech has gained clarity and fluency. She self-corrects and uses verb endings in the past automatically (landete, sagte, suchte..) as well as high frequent irregular verbs (fiel, sah, ging...).

Here is the description of the student again:
Age: 8yo       Grade: 4th
German: total beginner at start of school year with no prior German experience
School: International School in Germany, language: English
Outside German: no other German classes, little input from life in Germany as they are mostly surrounded by English and native language. Not involved in German teams, clubs, etc.
Home country: India

We are not quite through the first semester and today I will tell the 50th story in class. We still have lots of time left and I am looking forward to seeing the results of the first year in German at the end of the school year.

1. In einem dunklen, dunklen Zimmer | In a Dark Dark Room
2. Suppenkasper | Soup Casper
3. Der kleine Frosch mit dem großen Mund | The Little Frog with the Big Mouth
4. Die Zähne | The Teeth
5. Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt | The Very Hungry Caterpillar
6. Die Ente und der Wolf | The Hen and the Wolf
7. Mmh Plätzchen | Mmm Cookies
   
8. Die drei kleinen Schweinchen | The Three Little Pigs
9. Ein Geräusch in der Nacht | 50 Below Zero
10. Danielas Zopf | Stephanie's Ponytail
    
11. Das grüne Halsband | The Green Ribbon
    
12. Der Daumenlutscher | The Thumbsucker
13. Der Pinguin | Penguin
14. Die Frösche und der Regenbogen | The Frog's at Rainbow's End
15. Vom dicken, fetten Pfannkuchen | The Big, Fat Pancake
16. Der Punkt | The Dot
17. Tikki Tikki Tembo | Tikki Tikki Tembo
18. Hans Guck-in-die-Luft | The History of Hans Stare-in-the-Air
19. Das kleine Blau und das kleine Gelb | The Little Blue and the Little Yellow
20. Vom kleinen Maulwurf
21. Die traurige Geschichte vom Feuerzeug | The Sad Tale of the Match-Box
22. Katharina | Cattarinetta
23. König Löwe und der Käfer | King Lion and the Beetle
24. Matschpfütze | Mud Puddle
25. Wie man ein Monster Strickt | How to Knit a Monster
26. Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten | The Town Musicians of Bremen
27. König Midas | King Midas
28. Der Klassenclown | The Class Clown
29. Der süße Brei | The Sweet Porridge
30. Der Junge, der Katzen malte | The Boy Who Drew Cats
31. Die kleine alte Frau, die vor nichts angst hatte | The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything
32. Boo | Boo
33. Warte bis Martin nach Hause kommt | Wait till Martin Comes Home
34. Moiras Geburtstag | Moira's Birthday
35. Die drei Ziegen | The Three Billy Goats Gruff
36. St. Martin | Saint Martin
37. Zilly, die Zauberin | Winnie the Witch
38. Frau Holle | Mother Hulda
39. Frau Trude | Frau Trude
40. Der haarige Zeh | The Hairy Toe
41. Rauf, rauf, runter | Up, Up, Down
42. Georg und der Drache | George and the Dragon
43. Schneeballschlacht | Snowballs
44. Wie die Sterne in den Apfel kamen | The Story of How the Apples Got Stars Within
45. St. Nikolaus | Saint Nikolas
46. Das Mädchen mit den Streichhölzern | The Matchstick Girl
47. Tomte Tummetott | Tomte Tummetott
48. Sterntaler | Star Money
49. Die gesprächige Schildkröte | The Talkative Tortoise
50. Die drei Federn | The Three Feathers

I will update the links as I am posting the German versions on the Story Reading page.

These videos show what these kids are able to produce after 21 hours of instructions that included 28 stories (535min). The stories the children are retelling can be found here:

1. Ein Geräusch in der Nacht. (left)
2. Das kleine Blau und das kleine Gelb (right)*
   

Of course not every student in class is able to produce the same amount of language, which is always the case, but more and more output is emerging from all students in class during the stories. Students recognize content overlap to other stories and are able to recall the German for it, they predict or simply repeat. And asides from all that as one student said today "We all love coming to your German class!"-- the students have no anxiety about class and love being there.

*Das kleine Blau und das kleine Gelb continued for another 2 minutes that were sent separately and not shown here.

You will hear the students comment in English and I am not expecting them to be all quiet. They were a little nervous when I told them that I was going to tell them a whole story in German, but it went well. Keep in mind this is story 1 on DAY 1 - we just met.
I almost ran out of time as the students from the other German classes started to come in, which is why you see me wave them off in the end. ;) But we finished and after the story I had two very excited boys come up to me and ask me if they could tell me the story in English, because they understood EVERYTHING! I call this a great start.