Hi! I'm currently student-teaching high school German and working on a site that breaks down learning German into digestible units that students will be able to complete, mostly on their own and mostly within a 50-minute class period. We would have students choose the unit they'd like to work on once per week in the computer lab so that the weaker students get a chance to catch up and stronger students can learn beyond the limits of the classroom.
I still have a lot I'd like to add, but I'd really like some inspiration and insight from more experienced teachers. Here are some areas I'd especially like to work on (though any comments are very welcome):
1) I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how I should structure some parts of the site. I want students to be able to very easily see the prerequisites for any unit (for example, they probably don't want to learn the irregular conjugations in the present tense before they learn the regular conjugations.) Above all though, I want the site organization to be easy to follow. I'm not sure if I should even be dividing topics into "Grammar", "Vocabulary" and "Oral Proficiency" like I do now, since everything is so interconnected. I would love suggestions here!
2) I'm looking for effective ways to assess students on the computer. Right now, I'm playing with having students sending me recordings that I can send them feedback on. I'd also really like the more advanced students to be able to evaluate the less advanced students (we teach German 1 through 4). I think it would give me more time for one-on-ones with students and also help the advanced students review what they've already learned. Advice on how to get this working effectively would be very helpful!
3) I want to frame explanations in a story structure as much as possible (e.g. introduce a topic and why we're learning it, introduce the problems we need to overcome to learn it, then offer solutions to overcome these problems). I'm looking for more ways to do this as, for example, I'm not sure how to present vocabulary this way (the Vocabulary section has the least development since I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with it).
Any other suggestions or comments would be extremely welcome and if you like something, feel free to use it for your own students! Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom with me! Here's the URL for the site:
That sounds great! I'd love to hear your thoughts. I've never used that service before, but I just signed up and created a class here. If you'd like to join me, I'll be around all day. I added a Google Voice widget to the bottom of my post, so you can call me and make sure my attention is on that page before we start.