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Two Thematic Units for the Middle School Curriculum: An Initiative by the Kinder lernen Deutsch Steering Committee's Writing Team 1
Author(s) -
Busch Iris,
FreimannCavanaugh Corinna,
Eichler Ester
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
die unterrichtspraxis/teaching german
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1756-1221
pISSN - 0042-062X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1756-1221.2009.00051.x
Subject(s) - steering committee , german , curriculum , thematic map , political science , library science , management , government (linguistics) , usable , pedagogy , sociology , psychology , engineering , computer science , engineering management , cartography , philosophy , geography , linguistics , multimedia , economics
The Kinder lernen Deutsch Committee (KLD) is a standing committee of the AATG that has existed since 1987 and that was originally charged to support the advocacy of German in grades K‐8. With generous funding by the Ständige Arbeitsgruppe Deutsch als Fremdsprache (StADaF) from the German government and the Goethe‐Institut, the Kinder lernen Deutsch (KLD) Steering Committee has made great progress in many directions. The contribution here represents an initiative by a writing team of the committee to provide two curricular proposals to address the glaring omission of usable and useful classroom materials for middle school learners of German. The writing team applied the concepts reflected by Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design as well as the thematic planning framework of Helena Curtain and Carol Ann Dahlberg. The thematic units entitled “Die Umwelt und ich” and “Oma Annas Schatzkoffer: ein neues Leben in Amerika” provide a design template that can be used for developing additional thematic units for middle school learners.