Hints
Since Grade 4 students will not
be reading Borchert's play, they are pre-reading in the
curricular sense -- being prepared conceptually and
linguistically for a text to which they willbe exposed at a
future point in their German language learning.
Consequently, both Exercise A
and B try to address the communications standards, by
focusing largely on how one might express in another
language concepts used in English. Conceivably,
Exercise A might also serve the connections standards
by linking other disciplines (history) and expression in
German.
Praiseworthy for both exercises
from the perspective of the Standards is the fact
that neither demandd more than single sentence comprehension
or usage by students, an realistic expectation about the
discursive capabilities of ten year olds. If you chose
Exercise B, it was because it is superior to exercise A in
presenting concrete rather than abstract ideas and by
offering two minimal variants of the same conceptual
pattern. B prepares students first to see a dichotomy
and then to express it using the "ein / kein"
distinction. On these two counts, then, B is the
preferable choice when measured according to appropriateness
for Grade 4 cognitive capabilities, and for Grade 4
preparation for language communication.
If you chose Exercise A, you may
have been influenced by the fact that the vocabulary to be
introduced is, indeed, central to Borchert's play. The
caveat we stress here, however, is that all of the central
ideas proposed as exercise items are abstract. They
are neither cognitively nor experientially within the range
of most young students in the United States.
Consequently, these words are less likely to be well
understood and memorable to a ten year old than are the very
tangible words stressed in Exercise B.
Further, to execute Exercise A,
the teacher must rely on a fairly sophisticated grasp of
historical events, probably beyond the range of Grade 4
students -- it is likely to turn into an exercise in
fact-finding, rather than in communication. Thus,
although the learning task for Exercise B involves cognitive
synthesis of two linguistic factors (conjugation of
"tragen," use of negation) in addition to possibly new
vocabulary, it represents a pre-reading task more
appropriate for a Grade 4 cognitive level. The fact
that the teacher will be using various forms of the verb
tragen need not pose cognitive overload for young children
as long as they need only repeat the form uttered by the
teacher (Teacher: "Trägt Jimmie eine Brille?"
Respondent: "Ja [nein], Jimmie trägt eine
[keine] Brille". To answer any question, then,
students need only make one linguistic decision, not two;
the teacher has set up the cognitive problem clearly,
allowing for the possibility that some fourth graders may
draw conclusions about what makes a member of an
"in-group."