Ideal for topics relating to friends and going out, these ‘chat up’ phrases encourage interaction and develop students’ skill in choosing specific phrase types for different purposes. Works well with Year 9. Get students asking each other out and encourage them to play ‘hard to get’ so that the ‘asker’ has to try a bit harder and the conversations are more extended. Give it a go!

Monopoly-style game based on Christmas activities (dice & counters needed). Fun and useful group activity for end of term. Students start on ‘Los!’ with 3 points. If they land on a picture they have to say what they did at Christmas: 1pt for a short answer e.g. Ich habe sehr viel gegessen. 2pts if extended e.g. Letztes Jahr habe ich Truthahn und Gemüse mit meiner Familie gegessen. 3pts if an opinion is added to an extended answer. The pictures are a just a guide i.e. picture of a turkey represents anything to do with eating, meals etc. Players could also use future tense / structures to say what they are going to do this Christmas. If a player lands on a question mark square, they pick up a (chance) card from the middle, work out what it means using help sheet, and win or lose points. Great for practising tenses, encouraging extension and ambition, and allowing for peer evaluation and fun interaction. Has always worked well in class and can lead on to students creating their own speaking and writing answers linked to exam questions.

Monopoly-style game based on Christmas activities (dice & counters needed). Fun and useful group activity for end of term. Players start on ‘Allez hop!’ with 3 points. If they land on a picture they have to say what they did at Christmas: 1pt for a short answer e.g. J’ai beaucoup mangé. 2pts if extended e.g. L’année dernière j’ai mangé de la dinde et des légumes avec ma famille. 3pts if an opinion is added to an extended answer. The pictures are a just a guide i.e. picture of a turkey represents anything to do with eating. Players could also use future tense / structures to say what they are going to do this Christmas. If a player lands on a question mark square, they pick up a (chance) card from the middle, work out what it means using help sheet, and win or lose points. Great for practising tenses, encouraging extension and ambition, and allowing for peer evaluation and fun interaction. Has always worked well in class and can lead on to students creating their own speaking and writing answers linked to exam questions.

A Powerpoint showing how to build up a paragraph in a film / literature essay, here using 2 examples about the film Good Bye Lenin. Students are encouraged to support their statements with specific evidence from the film / text and then to extend and analyse. Having looked at the 2 examples (they can decide how successful they are), the final slide has a selection of essay titles for students to choose from and write a SEXY paragraph of their own.

When marking German essays, teachers only need to number any grammar errors and students than then refer to the related notes to help them self correct. This sheet contains common errors made by my KS4 students over several years. It has developed their ability to discuss and ‘fix’ errors independently.

To find the correct article to go with a noun, start at square one and answer the questions until you arrive at the correct word. Colours indicate the ending on any adjective that is used. Good for getting students used to the factors that determine the case of a noun. Covers NOM, ACC and DAT but no GEN.

Original song about a hamster called Habensein, to practise the 2 verbs, with accompanying gap text. Audio file of song is on the Powerpoint. Proven activity to motivate and engage students in the classroom.

German listening activity with questions to answer on 6 audio recordings of a hotel guest making complaints. Links in well with the Holidays topic at GCSE and is a good vocab booster. Proven to help with role-play tasks too.

Students listen to the descriptions of a dream holiday and spot / correct the errors on the transcript. They can then use language from the task to write their own answer to the question ‘Wie waere dein Traumurlaub?’ Good activity for developing use of the conditional.