“At ISS we view literacy and language acquisition as an integrated and developmental process. Our focus is not on learning language for its own sake, but on promoting and supporting the effective use of language as a communication tool across all areas of the curriculum, and in life.” (International School of Stuttgart)
Today (26th of March 2018), I began my work with the grade 1s at the International School of Stuttgart. Prior to starting this week, I made it my goal to make a critical analysis on the progression of the language-learning at ISS, so when I found out the kids at German today I knew that it would be very beneficial for me to see what their lessons look like, when I’ve seen both grade 2 and grade 4.
The teacher was very helpful in providing me more information on how the German classes are structured. German comes under two branches at ISS: branch A being mother tongue (where the children have been speaking German as their main language from birth/been in a german education system) and branch B being learners (this can range from never learning german to learning and speaking it for a few years). Within these branches, further differentiation must take place, also. The particular group that I was working with today had only just began their journey in acquiring German, as this year is their first year in learning the language. Looking into section 3 of the portfolio, I find that this shows that ISS really has considered the various backgrounds of their stakeholders: students from the host country of Germany should be able to extend their knowledge of the language through their education whilst students that have come to the country from all over the world should also be able to obtain the opportunity to learn it also. This means that the staff members (like the one that I worked with today) need to differentiate, formulate timetables and work collegiately to ensure the facilitation of language is provided. Even more so, as IB believes that the students they create should be internationally-minded (which means that they should be rightfully equipped with the skills to work across the world, also).
Teachers also have pull-out lessons out with the normal constraints of the timetable, where students can get one-to-one lessons in German alongside their English as an additional language and vice versa if it is necessary, showing that the needs of the learners are always taken into consideration on an individual basis by ISS.
What was also beneficial for me was that the teacher enthused me to, sometime this week, take the class through a German children’s book. This will create a duality product of improvement of my pronunciation and language skills, whilst also aiding the learning of the students. I hope to take this offer up when the grade 1s next have their German lesson.
I digress, however, as I hope to also further analyse what I witnessed and got involved in today.
Much like grade 2, the children began their lesson with a song in German, which centred around the children selecting a German verb and then acting it out to the song that was being sang and played on the teacher’s guitar. An effective approach, in particular with understanding new verbs, as the students will no doubt further in their studies have the actions they performed interlinked with the verb that correlates with it (something that my German teachers of the past also did).
Now, much like all the other grades, grade 1 also have a specific Unit of Inquiry at the moment and it centres around the understanding of the types of forces that can be used in a playground. The German teacher used this as her learning basis also and connected vocabulary and phrases to the types of actions and forces that could take place in a “Spielplatz” (playground):
climbing, playing, pushing, pulling, jumping, crawling … etc. all these forms of verbs were used in first person by the students from the questioning by the teacher – was machst du gerne auf dem Spielplatz? – what do you like to do on the playground?
The practitioner then emphasised that she will lead this same topic on into exploring second person and third person responses so that the children can wrap their heads around the implications this has on the verb’s appearance and meaning – extending the children’s knowledge beyond purely memorising phrases in another language. The students are actually engaging with the constructs of language.
The students were then asked to design their own playground with pre-printed equipment that they had to find the vocabulary for and label on their poster playground. I was also able to assist groups in naming their playground in German (we suggestions such as rainbow playground, for example) and examining the pronunciation of the words. Not only the pronunciation, but also formulating full sentences with our words: “Our playground is called the rainbow playground” vs. simply “rainbow playground”.
The students then ended with an Auf wiedersehen song to bid goodbye to the German for the day.
Overall, I feel that spectating and participating in the German lessons at ISS has really been crucial for forming my concept of what is necessary for teaching another language to children. Not only have I been able to really comprehend the factors that go into the teaching of German at ISS, I have also understood the various levels that are evident at the school. In the future, I hope to improve my language skills even further to get to a point of confidence to speak to my future students in the desired language (something I was capable of doing with my kids last year in German, however, I could only do this a few times due to their main second language being French). This means more than German; I will need to learn the necessary grammar for the more commonly taught language of French (possibly even Spanish) to ensure that my foreign language teaching is of a high standard, and that it does not become a thing that many other unconfident teachers put to the side when they are swarmed with other priorities in the curriculum. The evidence of the International School also emphasises to me that we are well behind our peers in our willingness to experiment and try to speak out-with the constraints of languages beyond our mother tongue. Complacency towards the teaching of another language will only instil further complacency towards purely relying on English in life. I hope to continue my learning in the German classes and hope to take part more during this week particularly with the grade 1s, something i will reflect upon in my week 3 reflection.
