The German Department
At Presdales, German does not just mean learning the language: it also encourages an understanding and appreciation of the people, the turbulent history, the diverse landscapes and the geniuses which lie behind it.
- German is spoken by 120 million people in Europe as their mother tongue.
- German is the 2nd most commonly used language in the Internet.
- German is the 2nd most important language for scientists.
- German is the biggest economy in Europe and the 3rd largest in the world.
Our Vision and Aim
The Presdales German Department comprises four teachers and a German Language Assistant, who are passionate about the subject and keen to pass on our knowledge and a love of the German language and culture to the pupils we teach.
Our aim as a department is to achieve optimum progress for all our students and to promote a passion for German. To this end, we will challenge and stretch our students to help them gain an outstanding understanding of the grammar and vocabulary. We will develop their ability to speak spontaneously in German as soon as possible and we hope that they will enjoy doing so. To be a successful linguist, you must be proactive in your language learning and as a department we are continuously striving to develop the independent learning abilities of our students. We also provide our students with as many opportunities as possible to experience German culture and to understand the importance of the subject outside of the classroom context.
Students have two lessons of German per week throughout Years 7 -9. In KS3 we follow the NCELP pedagogy in line with research-based best practice resources from our lead school status. This is the Language Driven Pedagogy (LDP)and at KS3 we teach the building blocks of language learning, phonics, vocabulary and grammar. These are taught and consolidated through meaningful practice, so that students can listen to, read, speak and write German in a broad range of contexts using high frequency vocabulary.
During our weekly phonics sessions, Year 7 and 8 students learn the most frequent German sounds to enable them to say and write all the words encountered during the year. In Year 9, the phonics is extended to learning the more complex sounds involving intonation, stress and rhythm.
In Year 7 , the grammar element covers the present tense of common regular verbs and grammar rules such as genders, negation, adjectives, question words, plurals and pronouns. In Year 8 we revisit those grammatical points and build on prior knowledge to develop an understanding and use of modal verbs, more question forms, word order and future intentions ad. In Year 9, we regularly revisit and retrieve the grammar points already taught, adding adjective endings, the perfect tense and the future tense with’ werden’ as well as comparisons and work with prepositions. They learn to manipulate the language to produce more and more complex language, providing an excellent base to support GCSE study.
At the end of Year 7, students have studied and encountered around 250 of the most frequent German words and they are able to apply this knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and phonics to their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. They double that number of words by the end of Year 8 and triple by the end of Year 9. This is all vocabulary needed for successful GCSE study.
Year 7 students take part in the Spelling Bee House competition. Our students have reached the national finals in this competition. Our year 7 students are also matched with similar aged students in our partner German school for a class to class partnership with the ultimate end of meeting each other during reciprocal visits.
KS 3 students extend their German language and cultural knowledge in a range of different contexts from extra-curricular German themed activities through to exploration of cultural features within the language, national events and famous places.
Students are encouraged to taste German food, decorate eggs for a German Easter, make masks for ‘Karneval’ and participate in other cultural activities organised in school. Our first visit abroad for two and a half years took place in December 2022. . 84 students from Year 8, 9 and 10, travelled to Düsseldorf and Cologne visiting the Christmas markets, the awesome Cologne Cathedral, the Lindt chocolate museum and the well-known theme park of Phantasialand. St Nikolaus even filled their shoes with chocolate on 6th December. Especially pleasing was the visit to our Partner School ‘Gymnasium am Neandertal’, where students were able to meet partners they had been corresponding with during the Pandemic.
Assessment is in the form of regular class and end of year testing. During Year 9 students will be able to opt to study German to GCSE level.
