U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  P I T T S B U R G H

Volume IX, Number 2  

Beverly Harris-Schenz
Germanic Language and Literature

As students express their thoughts in small groups, they are compelled to deepen their thinking.

Beverly Harris-Schenz

Photo by Jim Burke, CIDDE

I continually incorporate classroom activities that empower students with the realization of what they already know. For example, in the first class each semester of Germany Since 1945 (a course which investigates the history, politics, and culture of contemporary Germany), I begin by asking students to think about what they already know about this time and place. I draw columns on the blackboard, labeling them with the decades from 1945 to the present. In groups of three, students are asked to record on each adhesive-backed note card an event that they can think of that happened in a particular decade and to place the cards under the appropriate decade on the board. After tapping their existing knowledge, students view a film giving a historic overview of Germany since 1945; at the same time each uses information from the film to fill out a timeline. Finally, they use these timelines to compare the results of their group effort with the actual historical events they have recorded from the film.

This lays a foundation for the main work of the course: to deeply explore this period in German history and culture and fill in the cursory time line with more substantive information. Then I take a photo of the blackboard with the information they have placed under each decade the first day of class and show it to them at the end of the semester. They are highly impressed with what they have learned. A group effort of discussing and placing events within a particular period is also a useful review for the final examination.
I use variations of this activity throughout the semester to help students formulate their prior knowledge and bring it to the fore. For example, I begin each class by outlining major topics from the previous class on the overhead and having students summarize and review what they learned. Students find this very useful. We use variations of this activity to brainstorm and pull together what students already know before starting a conversation on a new topic.

As an effective way to promote active learning, I’ve found that small group work allows students to discuss things thoughtfully with one another. Creating groups of two or three, I give them 10 minutes to talk to each other about a particular question selected from several they had been asked to think about as they did their homework. Each group then reports back to the class as a whole, and others can chime in. Expressing their thoughts in this way, students are compelled to deepen their thinking. For example, after a lecture on the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, I distributed copies of contemporary American press coverage on the day after the wall, and groups were asked to (1) briefly summarize the coverage, (2) assess the nature of that coverage, and (3) summarize the prognosis for the future presented in the article. Once groups report their findings to the entire class, we can then discuss this contemporary information in light of historical events.

In the Germany Today course, where students read a lot of historical texts, I try to present information to them in various formats. For example, when discussing the aftermath of World War II, we viewed a film, The Murderers among Us, directed by Wolfgang Staudte, with images of destruction of cities and people returning home from concentration camps. Then we read a short story, “A Slice of Bread,” by the German author Wolfgang Borchert which illuminates the impact of hunger on the quality of human interactions.  Similarly, when they read historic and statistical information about the so-called “economic miracle” that happened in Germany after the war, works in literature and film depicting the period give them other perspectives. To gain a sense of how the lives of individuals were affected by a focus on hard work and the acquisition of material goods, students read a two-page short story, “Anecdote on the Decline of the Work Ethic,” by Nobel prize winner Heinrich Boell.* The story is about two men with different approaches to work and the role of work in their lives. When students compare and contrast the characters, they see the other side of issues associated with economic success. Finally, we use a third genre, a film, One, Two Three, directed by Billy Wilder, a political satire which juxtaposes communism and capitalism in Germany in the ‘50s, providing yet another way of looking at the similar issues.

*The translations of the two literary pieces were done by a student, Robert Nickl. He did an excellent job, and I would be unable to use those works had he not generously agreed to donate his time and skills to translate them into English.

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