Modern Foreign Languages – Summer Term News

German Spelling Bee

What an exciting term for our German spelling bees!

Our two regional final winners, Poppy and Zoha, went to the Sedgewick Site at Cambridge University on Monday 27^th June to compete in the national final of the ‘Routes into Languages’ German spelling bee.

The day was broken down into two halves. In the morning, they competed in the semi-final. Each student had one minute to translate and then spell as many words as they could using the German alphabet. Both girls did so well and made their families and all of us at PGHS, super proud!

We then had a nervous wait for the grand final. It’s possible that Miss Gelder was the most nervous of all! The grand final then followed the same routine as the semi-final.

Unfortunately, we did not make it into the final four but by Miss Gelder’s count, it was extremely close.

Both girls should be proud of themselves for making it to the final. Out of nearly 20,000 official entrants, our girls finished in the top 29 in the country – an incredible achievement!

Miss Gelder has been truly blown away with the effort and commitment of all competitors. You have been truly amazing and made everyone so proud. We cannot wait to get started with the year 8 Translation Bee in September. Watch this space!

German Penfriend letters

We have had a really successful year with our German partner school, Sickingen Gymnasium by exchanging letters and video calls with them this year. Mrs Gill’s year 8 German class have received some fantastic letters from our friends in Landstuhl and we have returned some amazing letters, telling our friends about our Easter holidays and what we plan to do in the summer holidays. This has not only helped to improve our German but also enabled us to find out interesting information about our German friends, their town and their culture. We look forward to continuing this partnership in 2022/2023.

French- Penfriend letters

Year 8 have been very excited to receive replies to our penpal letters from France. They wrote to us about their school and their timetable, and we have been shocked by the length of their school day, from 8.00am till 4.40 pm! However, we are still a little envious about their longer summer holidays and Wednesday afternoons…

Year 9 received lovely letters from their penpals and some students even sent friendship bracelets. Classes have enjoyed receiving and sending letters this year. This has helped them develop the PGHS core values of empathy and curiosity.

French – Y8 Roleplay Practice

Every year, around 60 students have the opportunity to start learning French in year 8 as an additional foreign language alongside studying German. Year 8 have worked really hard this year and made huge progress in a short amount of time. I am super proud of them. Bravo! Madame Raine ☺

In French, this term, we have been learning to read, write and speak all about different sports and hobbies. We have been covering everything from horse riding to football and then discussing our opinions on them in French. We have also been learning to describe the weather – il pleut beaucoup! We’ve been improving our pronunciation and working on our understanding of masculine and feminine words. I thoroughly enjoy French as it is always a fun and lively class. I love learning about its culture and the day-to-day life of children in France. We all have French penpals that we write to every term – mine is called Naim. Rosie Y

Students have been learning how to form questions in French. They practised their questioning skills to interview celebrities. You may recognise familiar faces…

French – 8p Boules Practice

As part of the Festival of Performance and Arts, 8p have been practising their “Boules” skills. 8p had a good time, but I feel some students may need to work on their techniques!!!

Märchen. The Brothers Grimm. Year 9

We all know and love the stories of Little Red Riding Hood (Rotkäppchen) and Cinderella (Aschenputtel). These stories were originally German folk tales, which were collected and adapted by the Brothers Grimm.

In year 9, we have been making storyboards based on fairy tales or stories which we enjoyed when we were younger.

There is a great deal of linguistic skill involved in writing a story in German. German books are written in the imperfect tense and it is important to master this tense, if we are to read for pleasure in German. We have also tried to keep to the Grimm Brothers’ distinctive style of presentation.

We hope you can work out what the stories are about and that you enjoy Year 9s German versions of some well-loved classics.

Masks. Year 8

For our final module in Year 8 German, we have been exploring different festivals in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. I can certainly say that we have been working hard with the PGHS Core Value of curiosity.

Our studies have taken us from onion festivals in Switzerland to music festivals in Austria, finger wrestling in Bavaria to the World Beard Championships in Hesse.

The festival which caught our imaginations the most, was Fasnacht or Fasching (depending on which part of Germany you live in). It is an opportunity to drive out ‘evil spirits’ with scary masks, costumes, processions and loud music.

Here are some of the masks we made. Can you work out if your daughter is hiding behind a mask?