October 2008

Liebe Schüler und Eltern,
Dear students and parents,

The new school year has started and it is great to see the children’s smiling faces again. They are all very excited about the new grades they are in and the new topics we will learn about in the German language.

Grade 1
In grade 1 the children started to learn about introduction sentences and greetings. They will learn to ask where is something or somebody, were introduced to some stationary they find in their schoolbags and how to say what to do with them.

We will have great fun learning about games in German, playing the games, singing all the songs, using rhymes and making lots of things we use in dialogs and games.
Our new friends are Clown Otto, Clown Anna, Katze Kika, Maus Mimi, Oma, Affe Attila, Timo, Indianer, Tiger Tristan and Esel Emil. The kids really love them and like to act them out. Our unit “Circus” are going to have us all dancing Rock’n’Roll and singing a lot of verses to a new song. We even create more verses by ourselves.
Further we will continue with such exciting topics like “Body”, “School” and “Drawing Things”. We are going to learn to write and read words with letters N, E, S, L and much more.

Advent and Christmas will come up in December with lots of traditional songs, poems, videos, cookies and many more.

The POI units which we will integrate with as much as possible with our 3 chapters are: “Where we are in Time and Place”;“How the World Works” and “Who We Are”.

Grade 2
The Grade 2 children started with a good revision on how to introduce themselves, to greet each other and to count till 12. We are using a new book called Tamburin 1 and so far the kids really love the songs, games, dialogues and other inspirations from the book. Our second chapter introduces numbers till 20 and their spelling.
Chapter 1 & 2 are an excellent chance for our new students to catch up with some topics, which were taught in grade 1 already.

In chapter 2 we will also focus on our family members. We are going to create posters and write short texts about them.

In our new chapter 3 we are talking about things in the classroom and in school. We will learn to talk about activities we like to do and we don’t like to do. All students are encouraged to write new verses for our song and sing along.

Further we will learn topics like “School/ Things we Need in School” and “The Body”. We will learn lots of new words, dialogs and songs. The children also work on articles of nouns and their colors (red-die, blue-der, green-das). Advent and Christmas will come up in December with lots of traditional songs, poems, videos, cookies and many more.

The POI units which we will integrate as much as possible with our 3 chapters are: “Who We Are”; “Where We Are in Time and Place” and “How We Express Ourselves”.

Grade 3
The students in grade 3 started with a new book “Tamburin 2” and a very exciting unit about the circus. We learned lots of new words especially about animals and what do they do in a circus. The children loved to act out some of the artistic things; they extended the numbers till 100, learned their spelling and a song too. The children wrote and read a lot more too. Well done girls!!!

In the coming weeks we will continue with our next chapter “We are Celebrating our Birthday”. Here we are going to revise lots of words like toys, school things and clothes. We are learning a lot of new words and dialogs, which are related to the topic “Birthday and Celebrations”.

Advent and Christmas will come up in December with lots of traditional songs, poems, videos, cookies and many more.
The POI units which we will integrate as much as possible with our 3 chapters are: “How We Express Ourselves”; “Sharing the Planet” and “How We Organize Ourselves”.

Grade 4
Students in grade 4 started with the book “Tamburin 3” and were very happy to start the new year with three more students. We learned new words from a school holiday story with a ghost. Beginner students focused more on conjugation, which is one of our main grammar tasks. Continuing students worked on past tense and past participle. The students worked on numbers till one hundred and practiced their spelling too and soon will learn them up to 1000.

We are revising words for family members and animals. Also we will describe people.

In the next chapter 2 we will “go” on a fun fair and learn about things there, including the world known “Oktoberfest”. More new words will cover a lot of verbs/ activities we can do there. Money is another topic which will be covered.

Chapter 3 will take us to Germany and tells us about the many things we can see and/or do there. The students will be introduced to directions. New vocabularies are places in a town. A historical children's festival will tell us more about Germany's history.

Advent and Christmas will come up in December with lots of traditional songs, poems, videos, cookies and many more.

The POI units which we will integrate as much as possible with our 3 chapters are: “The Value of Me” (chapter 1); “Some Useful Machines Around Us” (chapter 2) and “Living Long Ago” (chapter 3).

Grade 5
Our grade 5 has grown from 7 to 10 students now and we started the book “Planet 2”. It's a brand new text book, which we choose from a German publisher Hueber.

In chapter 1 we are having reading and listening comprehension about youth hostels in Germany, things we find around and inside of them. Further topics are body parts, feelings, describe people and different types of sport.

In chapter 2 we are covering the vocabularies for family, food and learn more about the past tense.

Chapter 3 will lean on to the POI unit “Where We Are” and we cover rooms in the school, hobbies, professions, buildings in a town and revise directions.

Advent and Christmas will come up in December with lots of traditional songs, poems, videos, cookies and many more.

The POI units which we will integrate as much as possible with our 3 chapters are: “Who We Are”; “How the World Works” and “Where We Are in Time and Place”.