Lego and German word order.

This is an idea I stole from Alex Bellars, who is incredibly cool and there aren't many teachers I've said that about!

Two years ago Alex wrote this blogpost about  how he uses lego blocks to help his students practise and understand the minefield that is German word order.

Today, I used this idea with some of my students who were not quite so confident as I would like.

They are studying the topic of school and I wanted them also to practise the perfect tense, too.

I gave them a pile of Duplo bricks, some whiteboard markers and this key:
Time phrases = Green blocks
Verbs (& pronouns) = Blue blocks
Nouns = Red blocks
Connectives  = Yellow blocks

This is what they came up with:

 

When they had got the basics right, I then shared out all the bricks and asked them to use them all to make a long sentence. There was an abundance of green blocks for some reason, so intensifiers and adjectives became "green words", too.

Then the students had to write a paragraph in German using their lego models as, well, models.  They really enjoyed themselves and learned something, too.

It doesn't get much better than that.