Year 3 Wetterbericht

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The Year 3 students did a fantastic job creating their own weather reports (Wetterbericht) last term.

In small groups the students;

  • researched the weather in a chosen German city
  • wrote a weather report including the city name, the high temperature, the low temperature and a description of the weather
  • created a poster to form the backdrop of their weather report
  • use iMovie to record their dialogue.

Here is just a small example of the finished products:

If any students would like a copy of their weather reports, please come and see Frau Smith with a USB and we will transfer it over.

Here are some of the laminated weather reports hanging proudly in the German room:

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Well done to ALL of the Year 3 students!

Year 4/5 Profiles eBook!

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After a lot of drafting, working on pronunciation and producing a unique German profile, the Year 4/5 eBooks are ready to share!

All students did a fantastic job in creating a product that included writing in German, reading in German, speaking in German and sharing their German learning with their peers and their families.

Please enjoy the eBooks below!

Year 3 + 3/4: Wetterbericht

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Over the past two weeks the Year 3 + Year 3/4 classes have been very busy learning to become weather reporters… in German!

The first step was to write a weather report in German in small groups. Each weather report had to include:

  • two days of weather (telling us days of the week)
  • the German city the weather is being reported from
  • a description of the weather
  • the maximum temperature
  • the minimum temperature

This week students are making a poster to form the background of their weather report. This will include a map of Germany, showing where the city is, and some basic information from their report.

The final step is to then take a photo of this poster and have students podcast their report over the top.

We can’t wait to see the final products!

Year 3 – Weather Comparisons

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This week the Year 3 and Year 3/4 classes looked at the differences in weather in Germany and Australia. In small groups students needed to use a device to research the weather in Adelaide over a 5 day period. They then chose a city in Germany and did the same.

With their data, the students then created a graph comparing the top temperatures in each city. We found that the German city always had the higher temperature, due to it being summer over there at the moment.

We then discussed how different this graph may look if we did the same task in February. We concluded that a February graph would show a much larger temperature difference as we have very hot summers and Germany has very cold winters!

Year 4/5 – Profiles

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Our lesson this week started with the profiles we worked through last week – although this week, we had to put them into a family tree! Each profile tells us the relationship to another profile so as a whole class, we worked to put the family tree together. All classes were very successful with this!

We then moved onto creating our own profiles, based on the ones we’ve been working with. We had to work out which information in the example profile to keep and which we needed to change to make it about a new person.

To help us with, we started to use Google Translate. We learnt, though, the importance of not translating at a sentence level – only at a word level! We used the tool to translate nationalities and countries.

Year 6/7 – Olympic Profiles

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This week the Year 6/7s lesson focussed on strategies needed to translate a text. We did this in 3 steps:

  • Firstly, students worked with partners/small group to choose a German Olympic profile and search for already known language/keywords. We talked about looking for smaller known words in bigger words, using dates and numbers as clues and making educated guesses. This information was recorded in one colour in their German books.
  • Next, the students were introduced to using Google Translate to help make meaning of other information. We talked about the importance of not translating whole sentences and just translating at the word level. We looked at examples of why we don’t translate at the sentence level! This new information was recorded in their books in a second colour.
  • Lastly, the students were given an English translation of the text. We found it interesting how translations don’t work on a word-by-word basis and that some things are translated differently in English. Last facts were recorded in a 3rd colour in their books.

The end result was a page of colour-coded facts. It showed, at a glance, the prior knowledge the students had, the knowledge they gained using a device and finally the knowledge gained by using a translated piece.

All students were very engaged with the task and worked through these strategies well.

Year 3 + 3/4 – Wie is das Wetter?

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This week the Year 3 and Year 3/4 classes revised short weather sentences in German. They did this by a matching activity in small groups – which showed that most students remembered the language!

We then started to create a weather dictionary in our books. This weather dictionary is a little different though. For each short weather sentence, the students need to fill out 4 boxes of information. They are:

  • the sentence, for example, ‘Es ist windig’
  • how it sounds, for example ‘es ist Vindig’
  • definition, for example, ‘it is windy’
  • picture of the weather

The new learning point in this activity is learning how to write it as it sounds. The older primary years are already practising this and it results in much better pronunciation. The young primary students did a fantastic job giving this strategy a go after being introduced to it this week.



Year 4/5 – Finding Keywords

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This week’s lessons with the 4/5 students focussed on the importance of being able to find keywords. We discussed that even though we might not understand everything we are reading in German, if we can pull out just a few keywords, we can usually form some kind of understanding.

The first task we did was a question/answer matching task. The focus in this task wasn’t on what they meant in English, but on finding stem words that were similar – for example, ‘Wo wohnst du?’ went with ‘Ich wohne…’

The second task involved students looking at a profile of a character in German and extracting information. They were given a sheet filled with boxes where they needed to record information, such as the person’s name, where they live, how old they were, etc. As the students progressed they also needed to colour code each question: green if they understood the information easily, orange if with time and a bit of help they understood the language and red if it was completely new to them. The children did a fantastic job with this task!

Finally, they completed a self reflection of the lesson, following the traffic light process.

What a great start to term 3!

Year 6/7s “Tuning In” lesson

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After a term break from learning German the Year 6/7s had a lesson focussed on “tuning back” into their language learning. They participated in a few activities. They were:

  • Leute Bingo: students had to walk around the room asking questions to find out information from their classmates. Every question started with ‘Hast du…?’ (do you have …?) and was finished with phrases like ‘blaue Augen’ or ‘braunes Haar.’ If a student replied with ‘Ja’ their name went into a box. If they replied with ‘nein’ nothing was recorded. The aim of the game was to fill as many bingo boxes as possible! This was a great game to break the ice and start speaking in German again.
  • Card Matching: in pairs/small groups students had to match German questions with answers. This was revision from term 1. With that information, they then constructed a short interview and then presented to another group. Again, a great way to get the students reading and speaking quickly in German.
  • Reflection: Students lastly completed a reflection where they used traffic light colours of grun, orange und rot to gauge how they were feeling about the task. It was a quick and effective way for students to see where their language learning was at and to show me how their learning is progressing.

Every class approached this lesson with enthusiasm and I was very impressed with how much language they had retained from Term 1!