Die Perfekte Nachbarschaft – The Perfect Neighborhood

For homework one day, I asked students to describe their neighborhoods.  We were working on places in the city (train station, restaurant, etc.) and prepositions (behind, over, under…) Most said they really didn’t have anything interesting to say about where they live… and so an assignment was born.

Here is what they were asked to do:

Aim: Demonstrate your knowledge of vocabulary and grammar from this unit.

Task: Design and describe the perfect neighborhood.  Follow these steps:

1. Design your neighborhood. Draw it out digitally or by hand, but be sure you have a physical map to hand in. (A4 paper is fine, but you can go bigger if you like.)
2. Label the places on your map auf Deutsch.
3. Write a description of your neighborhood of at least 25 sentences. Be sure to include:
   • what kind of building you live in
   • where at least 4 things are in relation to each other
   • what you can do in at least 3 places
   • what you think about 2 places and your neighborhood in general
4. You will need to use the following:
   • Your city vocabulary (I will provide you with a few extra vocab words.)
   • Minimum 4 examples each of both dative prepositions and changing prepositions using the dative case
   • “es gibt”
   • “ich finde” and the appropriate adjectives

Once they completed the assignment, the result were hung up in the classroom and students did a “gallery walk,” looking at each other’s designs and answering questions.