Exercise A, Grade 12 :
Concept Building with Introduction of New
Vocabulary
The teacher wants to prepare
students to read the initial scene of the play.
Anticipating the cognitive problem from the main action of
that scene, Beckmann's leap into the Elbe and his subsequent
conversation with her, the goal of this exercise is to
introduce metaphorical conversations. This activity
corresponds to demands made in the connections
standard; it is cognitively demanding, since it requires
students to link the concrete to the abstract. A map
of central Europe is brought into the classroom, and
students are asked to identify two or three major rivers and
the important cities on which these rivers are located,
introducing a concrete activity furthering the culture
standard, as well. Students are then asked to
speculate about these rivers. "Was glauben Sie?
Sind diese Flüsse sauber oder schmutzig? Riechen
sie gut oder stinken sie manchmal? Wenn ein Fluß
sprechen könnte, würde er eine männliche oder
eine weibliche Stimme haben?"
The point would not be to have
"right" answers. The objective is solely to introduce
key German language and cultural facts that could
contextualize the action in this scene, as well as in many
German texts that deal with rivers: the location of the
Elbe, the Rhein, and possibly the Danube, their associations
with major cities of Germany and Austria, and the fact of
their names' genders (der Rhein, die
Donau). Students armed with this orientation, the
"what" of the scene, can now be prepared for the potentially
puzzling "wer spricht" of this eerie scene. After all,
the "who" of this scene involves two speakers usually not
able to speak at all, far less to one another: the spirit of
the Elbe and the drowning Beckman.