Language

Learning a Language Remotely – Ein Kinderspiel – Child’s Play? 

Learning remotely has tested and developed students’ ability to manage their time, organise and prioritise their workload, start and finish tasks without encouragement or immediate feedback from a teacher and use online learning tools. While some students enjoyed working without distractions, others sorely missed working cooperatively and noticed that solving a problem is often easier when it can be discussed and brainstormed with a group of people. 

Here is what Zahra thought about learning remotely: 

I really enjoyed learning German from home. It wasn’t the same as learning from the class room but I liked learning over Microsoft Teams. Each week we would learn vocabulary and new content and then we would practise in our weekly meeting. With my German class we practised ordering food and desserts with our teacher and we got a feel of how it would be like to go to restaurants in 

Germany.  

- Zahra Blake, 8D

Both teachers and students were thrown into remote learning unexpectedly and with little preparation but it forced us to mobilise strategies, tools and skills that have been available for a while. Unexpected circumstances led us to discover and utilise them more. Speaking more than one language is a desired skill in many industries, a requirement in some. Language learning is a global business and thanks to innovations in communication technology there have never been more flexible options to learn a language online and not just in a classroom. An abundance of online apps and language courses allow for self-paced individual learning. During remote learning, students completed activities using: 

• Quizlets
• Tinycards by Duolingo
• Kahoot Challenges
• Learnclick Quizzes
• Microsoft Forms
• Education Perfect

Bringing these tools back into the classroom allows teachers to implement differentiated learning and create more time for individual feedback and intervention. Students can access these apps and activities any time outside class and practise language structures introduced in class. Any interested parents who would like to learn the language with their child, should check out Duolingo or the online language courses by Deutsche Welle for German. 

- Ms Jana Kühn 

A Teacher's Reflection

Stay Home,  read your learning plan, submit your weekly task, participate on Teams, repair your mic, upload this, download that, click on it, listen to that, create it, switch on your camera, mute and listen, attend the meeting. These were all the directions the students got from their German teachers, and now that we are coming to the new normal back to school these are a few of the students experiences. We are proud of the way the students and teachers coped with the situation and adjusted to the new learning from Home environment. 

Student Reflections

Learning from home was an experience that I would have never imagined especially for languages! At the start, it was hard for me to accept that I wouldn’t be seeing my friends at school, but as time passed, I got used to it. I will miss the flexibility of learning from home, but I am extremely excited to go back to school and see everyone. 

It was good, we learnt as much German as we normally would, and it was easy to understand. All the material was broken down. 

I liked the examples given for us to follow at home, and the weekly planner was easy to access.

I didn't really like working from home, as it wasn't a great environment for learning. I prefer talking to the others and listening to the teacher. 

It is easy to understand what the task is and it is good that we have limited platforms to work on so it is not hard to find things.

It was fine, I learnt a fair bit of German, and enjoyed the online activities and there wasn't too much work. 

It was easy to understand, reasonable amount of work and the Kahoots were fun.

We missed our wonderful teacher.

We could play games and work at the same time.

It was a nice experience and I am learning quite a lot of German.

It is a different experience than normal but I don’t mind having it like this.

I don't mind home learning, but sometimes I get sick of my brothers. 

Working from home is not as enjoyable as school, but I still learnt a lot of German.

I practised talking German with my cat.

My brothers also repeat German after the teacher during the class meets.

- Ms Meena Nathan