LANGUAGES

WELCOME TO OUR GERMAN EXCHANGE GROUP

On Friday 14 October 2016, a group of 22 excited McKinnon students and families welcomed their exchange students and their accompanying teachers at Melbourne Airport.

After settling in on the weekend, our German visitors attended their first day at school in school uniform, a quite new experience for our visitors. German students do not wear a school uniform, but the response was very positive, as nobody needed to worry about what to wear on the day.

Our Principals’ welcomed the student group and teachers on the first day, followed by an introductory session to McKinnon and a tour around the school organised by Mr Nutting.

Then the school routine started and I can say that our German exchange students have now settled well at McKinnon enjoying a quite different educational program than at home. They make contributions to the German program by presenting topics in classes and having discussions on cultural issues with senior students.

Their first day-excursion to Melbourne last Thursday introduced them to the Melbourne Immigration Museum and the Screen Worlds exhibition in the ACMI at Federation Square. On the second day in Melbourne they visited the MCG and the Ian Potter Gallery, where they were introduced to Aboriginal art. The German students are now looking forward to the Cup weekend and the Great Ocean tour next week.

We would like to thank all families involved for their tremendous effort so far. Our happy visitors are very appreciative and excited about all their experiences and look forward to the remaining time with their families.

Andrea Fowler

Head of Languages

TEACHING GERMAN AT MCKINNON PRIMARY SCHOOL

We retain approximately 5% of what we learn from listening to a teacher. We retain 90% of what we learn when we can teach someone else.

As part of our German course in Year 7 we visited McKinnon Primary School to share our love for language learning. Twenty-two German students in Year 7 applied to be involved in the program and teach a one-hour German lesson to Year 6 students. Coming together in their enthusiasm and achievement in the subject, the languages faculty at McKinnon would like to thank the following students:

Libi Benoish

Alexander Bogushevski

Catherine Braniska

Keenan D’Souza

Alisha Gollen

Aidan Greenwood

Milo Howe

Grace James

Pooja Kampli

Nicholas Lanaras

Adam Laskaridis

Jack McGill

Thomas Natsikas

Alice Pfeiffer

Kevin Pious

Victoria Poulos

Shubh Shah

Bridget Soteriou

Zoe Stahmer

Chloe Tang

Vatsal Ved

Sahithi Yenna

The students showed great preparation, enthusiasm and team-work in the delivery of their lessons and left the primary school students and teachers genuinely impressed. As a German teacher, I cannot help but be proud of their development as language learners, particularly when seeing them run activities or complex ideas that we have learnt in class.

Thank you to Jenny de Kretser for organising the event and Andrea Fowler for preparing the students for their lessons.

Joshua Kamener

German Teacher