During this period of remote learning, A-Level Modern Foreign Languages students are using a range of different resources to continue exploring their course work.
Auf Deutsch …
Elise is reading Ich Fühl Mich So Fifty-Fifty, learning about how a girl her age lived in the GDR in 1989, when deciding to escape to West Germany. It explores concepts of freedom and independence.
Sophie is learning about TV habits in German speaking countries. She has been watching the film The Wave in which the director asks the audience the question: “what would you have done?” when it came to the rise of the Nazi-party and dictatorship in Germany. The film is set in the present day and based on an experiment by Ron Jones called the Third Wave, in which a History teacher introduced discipline and team spirit in his history class when asked by students how the rise of the Nazis was possible.
En Français …
College II are working on the topic of “marginalised people in society” and are currently learning about issues around poverty and homelessness in the French speaking world, as well as building their language and grammatical skills they study the issues as well. This is what Noami had to say about the topics studied in A-Level French:
“There is lots of variety in French at A-Level, listening to the artist Stromae whilst studying French music or immersing ourselves in French history, art and culture through books, magazines and films. The topics get increasingly harder as you work through the course, beginning with the French family and how it has changed in recent years and progressing through to the right to vote, protests in France and even the issues faced by France’s prison population. The course also widens beyond France, taking into account the French speaking world – not only its individuality, of course, but also its impact on the European country, just across the channel from us, here in the UK! “
In College I, girls are now studying the topics Naomi mentions: the changing nature of family, and looking at what is happening in the Francophone world. At the moment, the topic is focussed on young people and their worries and stresses, what causes them, how to combat them and issues around this. This has been very timely given that it currently Children’s Mental Health Week.
In Year 9 German, the girls have been creating a journal in the form of a cartoon as final project for their topic exploring perfect tense and talking about the past. Throughout the project, they have found creative ways of remembering and understanding German sentence structure, such as creating mnemonics and drawing and labelling burgers (above).