The Biergarten turns 200 - A Root-Beer-Garten each quarter

In their "This Week in Germany" email, Germany.info writes about the 200th birthday of the Biergarten.

http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/04__W__t__G/04/05/04/Feature__4.html

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Prior to using Comprehensible Input teaching approaches, I kicked around the idea of having a quarterly Rootbeer-Garden, just like the French classes had their "Cafés".  I stopped this after one go.  Why?  Without Comprehensible Input teaching approaches to help focus and grow the new language in the brain of *every* learner, these "cultural activities" are just pseudo-cultural-activities.  As such, they leave a bad taste in a responsible teacher's mouth.
     Many would counter with: the teacher should give out a concurrent assignment.  [Well: yes indeedy-do!] But unless each student and every student in the class is listening to or reading the work of classmates with the intent to understand it and, if enough language has been acquired to do so: respond to it, then the activity is really lacking.
     Cultural celebrations do have a spot in the CI-classroom, but this spot really needs to be hewn out and defined.  And I will be the first to admit that I have only begun to have modest success in doing so.  When you celebrate a holiday, it's clearly a social event.  Ergo: