Primary Teachers PD, July 2005

The day (July 29th) was ably led by Catherine Gosling, who had not only efficiently dealt with the organisation of the day but also prepared lots of handouts and food for thought for us to take away.

In the first session Wiebke Kleine of the Goethe Institut displayed some new materials purchased for the Resource Centre. I didn’t know that Big Books are called ‘Kniebücher’ and Wiebke learnt from the group that you could use a ‘flip book’ (available from Zart Art) to create your own (rather than going to the expense of laminating individual pages). Time was spent showing us the resources available in the new “Ein Koffer Deutsches”. There are activities such as Memory and card games, toy shopping products, German money, CDs and posters and an A4 folder filled with many activities designed to be used primarily in Learning Stations. The lot is housed in a metal trunk and available for the bargain price of $275 from the Goethe Institut.

Eva Schwemmer from the Goethe Institut & Partner, S.A. gave a practical example from the new CD recently published – »German Junior Primary Curriculum Resources« and showed us the wealth of material available on this CD (can be purchased for $50). (The picture below shows participants holding pictures of family members which were part of Eva’s demonstration.)

I shouldn’t forget to mention the lunch enjoyed by all. Catherine surprised us by presenting everyone with a rectangular white box. On opening, these were found to contain miniature sandwiches, savoury flans and cakes. This description does the lunch little justice - the presentation was not only superb but the items were delicious as well! In typical teacher hoarding fashion the boxes were taken home to be recycled as decoupage boxes or for card storage.

After lunch Catherine gave a preview of the Märchen Kit CD resource (produced by the Geelong Network). We admired the work put into the resource as well as the many activities available.

I showed some of my Schnappi activities and reminded participants of the webpage - http://www.bayswaterps.vic.edu.au/lote/schnappi.htm where German teachers from around Australia have been sharing their Schnappi activities. We agreed that the Schnappi song has been a great motivator for both students and their teachers.

We discussed VELS – the issues facing Primary teachers and the strategies to implement this. We worked in groups trying to complete a VELS audit or just working out where particular language activities fitted into the VELS framework.

All too soon our time was up and it was time to collect our bag of goodies and head home.
I always enjoy the activities and workshops on offer at these Professional Learning days, the handouts of useful resources to be used in the classroom, and especially the networking with other German Primary teaching colleagues. 
Thanks to all who worked on making this day so successful!

Doris Frank, Bayswater Primary School