Libby and I knew we would be leading a 5th grade English class this morning, but we thought we would be joined by one of the existing teachers at our school and that they would explain what direction the lesson was supposed to take. When we showed up at the Lehrerzimmer (teachers’ lounge), Mr. G called out, “Alex! Libby! You’re on your own today." One of the math and physics teachers then handed us a typed lesson plan, a textbook, a pack of CDs, and some other assorted papers, and he walked us to an expectant class of 5th graders. The teacher explained the situation to the students, giving us a chance to look over the lesson plan, and then left us to go cover another class. We were supposed to introduce the students to the present progressive tense. (Full disclosure: I had to Google what this meant before class started.) By the way, this class contained 26 students, and 22 of them were boys.

The students had prepared short skits related to buying a birthday gift for their friend Sarah. Actually, some of these skits lasted for almost 10 minutes, but several of them were quite funny, and the students’ mastery of English at this age was pretty impressive. After this, we played a CD that narrated an illustration from their book. This audio highlighted the use of the present progressive tense, and students followed along with the narration in their books as they listened. Then, Libby and I guided the students through an exercise in their book that required them to fill in missing words in the sentences relating to the illustration while using the present progressive tense. We went over rules for this tense (like when to use “are" or “is" as the helping verb) and gave students a chance to start their homework, which was another book exercise. We did not get through the entire lesson plan, but we felt that this went pretty well, and we enjoyed having the chance to teach!

Betsy, our university supervisor from UNC, had come in the middle of this class to watch us teach and see how things were going, and she came to our next class with Ms. S also. This was the 7th grade English class we had seen earlier this week, and Libby and I had prepared topics related to meeting new people and shopping. We broke up into three groups as we had earlier this week. Ms. S discussed eating at a table with her group of students, Libby discussed meeting new people with her group, and I discussed shopping with my group. The three groups rotated to the three stations over the course of the class. In my groups, we discussed a variety of things, including what souvenirs they might want to buy in England, what they should do if they meet a rude salesperson, and the method for converting pounds to Euros. There are some real characters in this class, so I enjoyed these conversations. I also think it is good for the students to practice using English in the practical context of talking with a native English speaker in preparation for their trip to an English-speaking country.

After school, we took Betsy to Bergedorf, visited the bank, and had schnitzel for lunch. We also had a pastry break (mine is pictured below). Libby had a streuselschnecke, and we passively wondered what schnecke meant. Curiosity got the better of us while we were sitting there, and, after looking it up, we found out that schnecke means slug. This caused a little panic, but we later learned that this is only a reference to the shape of the pastry and not its contents.

In the evening, I met up with Marjam, Isabel, Hannah, and Ashley for dinner. We each had a little pizza (see below), and we tried Spezi (which is a combination of coke and Fanta or orange juice), which has surpassed Mezzo Mix as my favorite German soda.

Afterwards, we walked around and shopped a bit, and then we went to see The Jungle Book. The movie theater was so nice– we were basically sitting in recliners. The movie was excellent, and we had a great time out!