German Language and Culture Project

Do you want to give your students the opportunity to research and present an aspect of German language and culture, while giving them the freedom to apply their own talents and interests? Then this document is for you!

It includes detailed directions, examples, and scoring rubrics that can be applied to a variety of projects. I have been using this approach for years as an authentic assessment, and students have turned in music videos, paintings of German landmarks, posters of grammar or vocabulary concepts, how-to videos on German recipes, slide shows about art, history, or inventions, scrapbooks about their trip to Germany, and even a Viking Chess game created in their woodshop class. One student researched sewing patterns and sewed an authentic German dirndl she wore to class. Students often come up with very creative ideas!

During in-class instruction, students present their projects, then everyone gives feedback in form of a short note (a good mini-lesson on note writing) and votes for the best project in each category (2D art, 3D art, music, etc.); during online instruction, I put all the submission into a Google Document and had the students describe their three favorites as part of the final exam.

The document is in Word so that you can add due dates, change the directions, requirements, examples, and scoring based on your class' needs, and customize the information. You can also cut and paste it into a Google Doc or virtual notebook (you might need to play with the formatting a bit, mainly line breaks and tabs, nothing complicated).

I have updated the document with coronavirus precautions, for example not working in person with people outside their households; that way, you have a document that's ready to go. Once the crisis is over, you can just take those parts out.

This project meets the Communication and Culture standards, and the rubric makes it easy to score.