Learning with ‚moving‘ ideas
On 17 and 19 December 2024, we offerend a special workshop that combined learning German with movement. True to the motto ‘shoes off and go’, there were a wide variety of exercise sequences from preposition hunting and article jumping to vocabulary pantomime and verb kungfu.
Öykü Kaygusuz, a teacher of German as a foreign language and teacher of the Technical University of Berlin, led the workshop and tested new methods for promoting language learning together with interested participants.
Here Öykü describes her ideas in more detail:
‘The initial thesis was that learning German with movement is not only fun, but also promotes memorisation through haptic and motor learning. The feedback from the participants after two days confirmed that the joy and fun of movement and the playful grammar work encouraged motivation and that the structures were consolidated differently than in the classic classroom setting at the table. Some of the structures from A2 and B1 were new – some were repeated. At the end of the workshop, the participants wished for more level retention and confirmed that the selection and realisation of the exercises were very appropriate.
Tables were cleared away, shoes were taken off and lessons took place in the open space on socks on two workshop mornings. We tried out the following exercise sequences together:
1. degree meter in the room: W questions to get to know each other with alphabetical (name), geographical (origin), numerical arrangement (age) in the room
2. connected walking in the room
3. irregular verbs with ablaut rows: Hopping to correct ablaut series
4. preposition hunt: distributing places in the room (cities, countries, places in the city and in the countryside: Where are you? Where do you come from? Where are you going?
5 This is me – what do you know about me?
6. body and movement: Demonstrate movement sequences and verbalise body parts and movement (vocabulary work)
7. love poem with acc and dat (ich – mich – mir – du – dich – dir) with verbs with prepositions
8. linking a list of verbs with prepositions with movement
9. preposition songs with movement (alternating prepositions, dative song, songs by participants: durch – um, – ohne – gegen – für – ia ia o)
10. article hopping
11. kungfu verbs: separable verbs
What should we do next?
In the next workshop, I would organise the exercise and movement sequences thematically so that there is room for vocabulary development in addition to promoting grammar skills. Visualising structures in written and pictorial form and retaining the card methods has proved successful.The singing and the variation of movement qualities (slow – fast – structured – free – running – jumping – dancing – standing) were enriching in many ways. The feedback from the participants was very important for further development.Above all, the desire to maintain the level commitment so that no one is over- or underchallenged was evident.’
Whether cards for visualisation, singing and dancing speech melodies and tempo – our participants were able to get to know many new and tested methods.
Thank you Öykü for your moving ideas! 🙂
It was great and we are looking forward to the next workshop with exciting new insights. Stay tuned!
