In Week 6 of this term our Year 7 students were on a very exciting (and very cold!) school camp to Canberra.

During this week, the Year 6 students spent time designing and creating German language books for our Reception students.

Our Reception students are actively involved in book making themselves so we decided that they would enjoy being gifted with books made by older students.

The Year 6 students chose their working groups, negotiated a topic and then split the task up so that each student had an equal share of creating to do.

Well done, Year 6 students! I’m sure the Reception children will enjoy learning with the language books you have made.

On Wednesday of Week 10 Craigburn Primary School welcomed 11 students from the Valentin-Heider Gymnasium in Germany. The visiting secondary students are part of a long-running exchange program exisiting between Reynella East College and VHG, located on Lake Constance in Bavaria, Germany. Every two years the German students travel to Adelaide in March and the Australian students back over to Germany in December. Over their four week exchange they live with an Australian host family, experience life in an Australian school and participate in a wide range of excursions highlighting our city and country.

The exchange students were welcomed to Craigburn Primary in an assembly run by SLEG members, Holly, Sriya and Jess. As part of the assembly the German students gave a presentation to introduce themselves. They showed us where they are from, talked about the differences in school (they don’t have to wear a uniform in Germany!) and talked about their favourite German foods. They also shared their opinions with us on Australian food and Tim Tams were a favourite!

Our Junior Primary students then shared two German songs before the exchange students were presented with Craigburn mugs as a way of saying ‘thank you’ for visiting our school.

During the afternoon on Wednesday and then again on Monday of Week 11, the German visitors worked with our students and Frau Smith in the German room. They enjoyed reading to the Junior Primary students in German and chatting with our older students about life in Germany. During break times, our students took the German students into the yard and gave them a tour of our school.

These visits have been a fantastic opportunity for our students to communicate with German speakers and to see the potential in learning languages and travelling. Many have since spoken of the idea of exchange programs in high school and shared other experiences with different languages.

We wish the Lindau students a safe journey home and I would like to thank the Craigburn community for welcoming these students into our school so warmly!

Frau Smith

I find it very important to start each year brainstorming with students about why it is important to learn another language.

This gives the students the chance to reflect on why they think it is important, to share ideas with others and to develop an understanding on just how many ways second language learning benefits them.

Here is some more information about language learning at Craigburn Primary:

Willkommen to all Craigburn families! German at Craigburn this year will be full of new, exciting learning and will give all students the opportunity to further their language skills.

This year the German room has moved (back) to room A7. I will be working Monday-Thursday over 2018 so please drop in if you’d like a chat about the program!

Each class will have one lesson per week (either 50 or 70 minutes long) over the whole year.

I’m looking forward to hearing about your holiday stories!