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A Brief History
In the winter of 1987, Helena Anderson Cur- tain and Carol Ann Pesola (Dahlberg) participated ina meetinginWashington,D.C.,to discussthede- velopment of a support network for foreign lan- guage in the elementary schools. This network was named the National Network for Early Language Learning(NNELL)anditwasgoingto be"aspecial interest group without attachment to any existing language organization but with ties to all of them." (Curtain & Pesola, 1987, p. 104). The AATG was calledto actionto beonthe"cuttingedge," offering leadership and support for the development of elementary school programs in German at a time when these programs were enjoying a resurgence of interest across the country. In April 1988 the AATG Infoblatt opened with "Kinder lernen Deutsch: Ini- tiative forElementary School German" (p. 1).Sup- ported by the Ständige Arbeitsgruppe Deutsch als Fremdsprache (StADaF), a new committee had been established by Horst Bussiek, Helena Cur- tain, Carol Ann Pesola (Dahlberg), Patricia Pillot, and Helene Zimmer-Loew.
As tangible goals, the following components were suggested:
* Planning and training grants
* Support for pre-service and in-service teacher education
* Development of materials
* Establishment of a Materials Center
* Development of a public relations pamphlet
* A regular column in Die Unterrichtspraxis
* Establishment of a network
* A national Kinder lernen Deutsch planning meeting
Over the past 25 years, the Kinder lernen Deutsch (KLD) Steering Committee has made progress in many directions as illustrated in the graphic on the following page.
Periodically, the Kinder lernen Deutsch Steer- ing Committee conducted evaluations of the ma- terial that was available for all levels of teaching K-8. As a result, materials like Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt, Loseblattsammlung and Loseblatt- mappen and the KLD Liedersammlung, among others, were developed and made available through the AATG Materials Center. In 2002, it became very clear that appropriate, high-quality materials for middle school learners were in short supply. TheKLDSteering Committeeestablished a writingteam withthetask todevelopthreethematic units for pre-adolescent learning needs, with an emphasis on hands-on and project-based experi- ences. Key reference points for the design were to be Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (1999), the concepts of Understand- ing by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001), and the curriculum model found in Curtain and Dahlberg's (2004) Languages and Children: Making the Match. Members of the original...