German I Lesson Plan Group: German I Grade: College Freshman
Objective(s): The students will be introduced to the German language and will learn about some simple German-English cognates by analyzing some German words and identifying the English equivalent.
Procedures: 1. Students will be asked to name some German words that they know from prior knowledge (i.e. Kindergarten, Autobahn) to check for how much German they already know.
2. Students will be presented with some simple German-English cognates (i.e.
Akkordeon = accordion) and will have to identify the English word based on the
German word given in groups. We will then come together as a class and assess how well the groups did.
3. Students will use a simplified Phoneme Relationship Key to identify some harder cognates and to give some more structure to how they identify cognates.
4. Students will look at some false cognates so that they understand that there are exceptions to the rules and won’t use a German word in the wrong context without first finding out the actual meaning.
5. There is a section marked homework on the back of the sheet, but assuming that we get through the course material in time I will reward students with no homework and we will use the homework section as a final check for comprehension.
Materials: Handouts for the students, whiteboard and markers.
Vocabulary: Phonemic Awareness is “ the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds 1 ”, therefore a Phoneme Relationship Key is a chart that shows the relationship between certain speech sounds of the German and
English languages in a written way. Students will also learn simple German Vocab.
Prior Knowledge: Students will exhibit their level of prior knowledge through procedure 1. I will assess how much prior knowledge they have and this will determine the pacing of the class.
1 “Phonemic Awareness,” University of Oregon, accessed April 3 rd , 2014, http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php

Closure: Some final cognates will put on the board at the end of class and students will have the opportunity to demonstrate the ability to identify the English words based on only having the German words.
Indicators of Success: the amount of time it takes for the students to identify a word should decrease as we go through the examples. By the end everyone should have contributed to answering at least one word. Students appear engaged and interested in learning more about the German language at the end of the lesson.
Follow-up: In following lessons students will expand on the knowledge gained during this lesson by examining an increasingly difficult Phoneme Relationship Key.
Phonemic Awareness will be increased by starting to speak the German language and relating the syllables found on the Phoneme Relationship Key back to spoken sounds and a words.