Modern Foreign Languages News April 2021

As well as learning how to communicate in French and German and learn all our vocabulary and grammar, it is also one of our priorities here in the MFL department to learn about the culture and people in that country.  With this in mind during the last few weeks, we have been exploring our links with France and Germany and we have begun our venture into setting up our pen pals with our Year 9 German classes.  This is something our pupils have been really excited about and we started by sending Easter cards over to our new German school just before the Easter holidays.

We are exchanging letters with the Sickingen-Gymnasium in Landstuhl, a grammar school in the Kaiserslautern district in southwestern Germany.  The town of Landstuhl is steeped in history and culture.  It has a population of over 8,000 people and is situated northwest of Stuttgart, an hour away from Heidelberg and not far from the French and Luxembourg borders. It is home to the Sickinger Schloss, a small castle.

The school itself was founded in 1873 and is a wonderful school that offers a huge range of subjects to all the pupils ranging from geography, art, sport, IT to a huge range of

We began writing our cards and letters just before Easter and we wrote a little bit in English about our own traditions over the holidays.  We also wrote some information about ourselves in German.  We wrote about our hobbies, our interests, what we do at school and our ambitions for the future.  Some of our students also drew some pictures and wrote some little poems for the German pupils to read.  We are now eagerly awaiting our returned cards from our German school so that we can return their letters with information about us, our school and our family traditions.  We hope over this term to video call the school during our lessons and talk in German to them.   We are also planning a video tour of our school for the German pupils and we hope to see their school too.  Who knows?  One day we may get to visit in person!

Here are some photos of the cards we sent:

languages such as Russian, Spanish, French, English and Latin.

Here is what our Year 9 students thought about our new penfriend programme:

At the end of the Easter term, we wrote letters to a German school telling them about our Easter traditions.  We also told them about ourselves and what we enjoy.  We hope to do video calls with the German school and maybe go and visit them. I can’t wait to receive my letter.   Lola U 9P

Closer to the Easter period, our class decided to get in touch with a school in Germany and we made festive Easter cards.  In doing this, we hope we can make some new friends, share our Easter traditions with them and when they reply, we will get a taste of their culture too.  This is a fantastic experience, as we get to apply vocabulary into real life situations.  Sanuli W 9P

At Easter my class began our exchange with a German school.  We made creative Easter cards to send to Germany whilst waiting for a return letter.  This lesson was not only fun but very important for our grammar knowledge.  We learnt lots of new vocabulary, which we are currently applying as we prepare for our upcoming assessment.  Liv W 9P

In German, we have been learning a lot about a ski resort in South Germany and what we can do there and we had the opportunity to write pen pal letters to students in Germany.  In the letters, we wrote about our Easter traditions and what we enjoy about our holidays.  I hope to continue writing to them so that I can improve my German and make world-wide friends.  Hibba A 9P

Mrs Gill
Curriculum Leader for MFL

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