Class DaF K-1 NV

Our DaF K-1 NV class created a unique online Advent calendar in which they share various projects and activities they engaged in during class. Check out which games they played, learn about traditions in German-speaking countries, or see students' drawings of St. Nikolaus. The Advent calendar is available through this link: https://tuerchen.com/7b724f88

Class DaZ Junior/DaZ Junior 1

Our DaZ Junior/DaZ Junior 1 class wrote multiple Mad Libs stories. "Mad Libs" is a phrasal template word game created by Leonard Stern and Roger Price. It consists of one player prompting others for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story before reading aloud. The game is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime.

Class DaZ Junior 3/4

The DaZ Junior 3/4 class created a presentation of their "essentials" during the pandemic. In their slideshow you can learn how they define "essentials", you can read some of their Elfchen (a style of poems) about their essentials, and you can see what each child chose as their “essential” that is particularly important to them.
View the presentation

Class DaZ/DaF Senior 3
The students of our DaZ/DaF Senior 3 class each created a podcast on the topic "Konsum" (consumption). When listening to the podcast you can find out how much pocket money our students get, if they think they get enough, and how they spend their money. By scanning the QR codes on the pictures provided you can access the individual audio files.

Class DaZ Senior 5A
The students of our DaZ Senior 5A class created adventure game books ("Abenteuerspielbücher"). For their project, each of them developed a storyline which they then brought to life in a storyboard or in Google slides. In the course of the story, the reader has to choose between different options and those decisions enable different story paths.

Class DaZ Junior 2Our class DaZ Junior 2 designed a very neat picture dictionary. For this dictionary, each child first chose several letters for which they had to find a word starting with that letter. In the next step, the kids had to draw a picture of the item chosen or they had to find a sound file to go along with it.
Watch Video

Class DaZ Senior 5B
Our class DaZ Senior 5B created a digital diary with "Journal Prompts" for daily self-development. Find out who you are and what you want to be by using this 368-page strong journal.

Class DaZ 1-2 NV
Our class DaZ 1-2 NV designed a German recipe book showcasing their favorite meals. Each child wrote down a German recipe and drew a picture of it.

Class DaZ Senior 1Our DaZ Senior 1 class gathered a selection of facts about Germany. This includes a mindmap portraying what Germany means to them, a written account of what good German food is and it also provides facts about the Fridays for Future movement.
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Class DaZ Senior 2
The students of our DaZ Senior 2 class took a closer look at the fairytales and stories by the Brothers Grimm and compared the classic versions of their work to newer, modern versions. When you follow the link to their project, you can test your knowledge and by the use of comics, pictures or drawings identify if they portray the classic or new versions of a specific fairytale.

Class DaF Junior 2
Our class DaF Junior 2 used Shopify to develop an online store in which students present various birthday items for VWGS, such as a birthday card, a birthday message, a poster or a virtual cake.

Class DaZ/DaF Senior 3Our DaZ/DaF Senior 3 class created a video wishing the school a happy 30-year anniversary while showing and reading aloud messages written on paper, backed with German music.
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Class DaZ/DaF Senior 4
To celebrate our school's 30-year anniversary, our DaZ/DaF Senior 4 class collected tricky questions about our school and put together a quiz using the platform Kahoot. The class will present this quiz at our year-end party and you will be able to replay it later by accessing the link to the quiz here on our project homepage.

Class DaF Junior
Warm-up for the new school year. Find out more about this project when the school year 2022/2023 is about to start.

Class DaF Junior 3/4
Our DaF Junior 3/4 class partook in a reading project in which students read aloud excerpts from a book about a rainbow fish. Watch the video to see how well the students can read the German texts.

DaF Senior A2: I MovieJust like our class DaF Junior 2, the DaF Senior A2 students used Shopify to send out birthday messages to our school. Some students created a birthday video, while others engaged in baking Happy birthday messages or sang a song.
View Shopify store

PASCHtopia
Some of our students had the chance to participate in PASCHtopia. PASCHtopia is a virtual game and workshop for German learning students in the US and Canada aged 14 years and older, developed for the Goethe Institute. The goal was to create a space for students to come together, practice their German and collaborate on the topic of what their utopia would look like. An archipelago was built on the collaboration platform Miro, each island containing its own challenge. The students are grouped and strand on one island after the other- first solving puzzles together to find water, shelter or food, then heading on to find solutions to scenarios given on specific topics, like education, diversity and health.

Lantern paradeHere is a video to give you an impression of this typical custom people engage in in Europe to celebrate of St. Martin's Day.
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St. Martin's Day competition
Not only are lantern processions customary to celebrate St. Martin's Day, families also bake so-called Weckmänner and Weckfrauen for this festivity. To encourage our students to engage in these customs, VWGS hosted a competition in which students sent in pictures or videos of their homemade Weckmänner/Weckfrauen, of their self-crafted lanterns or of them taking part in a lantern procession. Here are some impressions of the entries we received.

St. NikolausIn December, St. Nikolaus paid a visit to our online classes via Zoom. In our in-person classes, he secretly came by during class time and left some presents and a personal letter for our youngest students. To thank St. Nikolaus for all his good deeds, our students had prepared a special surprise for him, for example a handicraft, or they sang a song or they drew pictures, to name a few.
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Virtual theatre workshops "The Forest"
In October, drama teacher Carolin Lindner from the Goethe Institute held a workshop themed "The Forest". It's an interactive adventure including movement, music, songs, and crafts. Children aged 4-8 years traveled to an imaginary forest where they explored its nature, animals and magical creatures.

Storytelling with Katharina Ritter: "Stories in a box"
In December, VWGS Munich-based professional storyteller Katharina Ritter offered virtual storytelling sessions for all junior classes, organized in cooperation with Goethe Institut. Storyteller Katharina Ritter regularly tours in Germany and around the world with a repertoire of stories borrowed and tales of her own. After commercial training she ended up in the film industry, working there for over ten years till 1998, when she finally discovered another form of "filmmaking": storytelling - that theater of the mind.

Spelling bee
In December, VWGS hosted a Virtual Spelling Bee (Buchstabierwettbewerb) in cooperation with the German Consulate General. Participating classes were DaF Senior A2, DaZ Senior 1, and DaZ Senior 2. Students practiced complicated German words ahead of time which they then had to spell during the competition. The best students won a prize.

Carnival celebration
In Germany, Carnival is a time of fun. People dress up and put on colorful clothes or masks. Then they go to carnival celebrations or to carnival parades with large colorfully decorated floats which often portray criticism of political leaders or events. Many of our classes took the time to celebrate carnival season as well, either online or in-person. Our DaF K-1 NV class crafted masks for a performance of the so-called "Ententanz" (duck dance), also known as the chicken dance or bird song, originally composed by a Swiss accordeon player. Please check out the video of their lovely performance. Another of our in-person classes prepared a video of them singing a song called "Laurentia" while showcasing their self-made carnival costumes.
Watch Ententanz video
Watch Laurentia video

Carnival competition
February is the month in which traditionally the main events of the Carnival season occur. To encourage our students to engage in the carnival spirit, VWGS held a carnival competition this year. The motto of this competition was "Creative carnival ideas" and there were separate tasks for our Junior and Senior classes. We asked our Junior students to send us pictures of their creative and self-made Carnival-specific costumes, or a video of our students telling a joke, singing a song, or pictures of baking a Berliner, or such Carnival-related activities. Our Senior students were invited to write a creative Carnival story in a digital format. The story could be presented in a video, a comic, or a story board to name a few. Check out some of the amazing entries we received.

Reading competition
In May, VWGS hosted a spelling bee, together with Natascha Daiminger from the Consulate General of Germany, Vancouver. Our students had to read book excerpts, first a text they had practiced earlier and then a text unknown to them. All students did a fabulous job and it was a joy to watch them compete.

Learning about historyOur DaZ Senior 5 A and B classes had the chance to visit the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre this school year. After the visit, they reflected upon their experience and each of them wrote an Erlebnisbericht (report) about their thoughts and feelings connected to it.
Reports: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Music and Language (MAL)
VWGS, together with our valued teacher Antje Mahintorabi, has designed a new concept of learning for our Kindergarten and K1 kids: Music and Language (MAL). Within this new approach, children learn about the German language and culture by practicing German songs in accordance with the specific topics of the workbooks and curriculum. Find out more about this project as more details become available within the upcoming months.

Outlook to the upcoming school year 2022/23
Within this project, we will give you an outlook of the upcoming school year 2022/23. Find out what lies ahead for us in this new chapter as we try to navigate our way back to in-person classes.

Happy birthday, VWGS!
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