Our fun experience in Bladel

Our fun experience in Bladel

16.03.2023 | Bilingual, Exkursionen, News, Sprachen

Nach langer Coronapause konnte dieses Jahr endlich wieder der bilinguale Austausch mit unserer Partnerschule Pius-X College in den Niederlanden in vollem Umfang stattfinden. In Begleitung von den beiden Englischlehrerinnen Kim Biermann und Claudia Schall besuchten 26 Schülerinnen und Schüler der 7. und 8. Klassen vom 13. – 15. Februar 2023 ihre Austauschpartnerinnen und -partner in Bladel, in der Nähe von Eindhoven. Neben dem niederländischen Schulalltag, lernte unsere Schülergruppe auch das Leben in ihren niederländischen Gastfamilien kennen. Den genauen Ablauf der drei Tage schildern unsere beiden Schülerinnen Eve Pokrass und Maris Jahn aus der 8b in ihrem auf Englisch verfassten Erlebnisbericht:

The bilingual student exchange, which was optional for all 8th graders and accompanied by Mrs Biermann and Mrs Schall, took place in a wonderful town called Bladel, which is located in the Netherlands. The journey was around 2 hours by bus, and everyone was very excited about the three days in Bladel. When we arrived, the first thing we noticed was the huge modern school, the Pius X-College, and the many bikes in front of the building. With our suitcases in hand, we saw a group of children of our age walking towards us. Only a few moments later everyone found their exchange partner. They gave us a warm welcome, and we were offered a tasty lunch including sausage rolls and hot chocolate. We talked about the daily programme, and after that we had an interactive game throughout the school, where we had to find clues from diverse puzzles, and give a code into a laptop, which we figured out in the process of the game. We had a limited amount of time, and the group that had the most correct answers and finished first got a prize, which was a delicious cake and lots of candy.

The next interesting game we played was called the ‘Big Ball Bonanza’ in the sports hall. Working in partners, you had to ensure the softballs didn’t touch your mat, only using your arms, feet, and body to defend. This was lots of fun, and many people’s highlight!

After the school programme ended, each of us went to the house of their hosts. After meeting the families, some of us went out in Bladel to meet friends and eat together. We met at a local restaurant, while other staff went bowling. The Dutch food is very teenage friendly. The chips with mayo, and the Dutch Frikandel were the absolute highlight. We continued the adventure further, and some of us were invited to watch a movie together.

The next morning most of us cycled to school, which even though it was cold, and some lived so far out the trip was 45 minutes long, the views of the sunrise, and the stars at night made it all worth it.

The next activity was a day trip to Antwerp. We travelled by bus. Antwerp is a very nice town with a rich history. We had a long walk in the centre, and we visited the MAS museum, which offered astounding views of Antwerp from the top floor; the Brabo Statue, the city hall, and we took many photographs. After a lunch break and some free time, we then did a photo tour of Antwerp. Navigating our way through the city, and taking photos of landmarks really was an experience to remember!

We spent the last day of our stay at school. We attended different workshops, such as: Art class, Biology, Science, Bliss (which means learning a new language), and Star Wars.

In the Science workshop, we played detectives, having to distinguish different powders to see which are drugs, and which are harmless. To do so, we had to conduct experiments and research different ways to identify the drug.

During the Star Wars workshop, we talked about the Space Race, the first man made object ever to leave the earth’s atmosphere called Sputnik; about Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow that occupied the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2, and was launched into outer space. We even talked about the first steps of Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969.

For a lot of us, the best activity of the day was the Biology Workshop. In this workshop, we dissected owl pellets (which had been in the freezer long enough to have killed any bacteria), and took out whole animal bones, which we then glued on paper to create our own monster! We could really get a close insight into the skeletal system of different animals, such as moles and mice. We learned that the owls cannot digest the fur and bones of its prey and a special organ in the owl separates the bones and fur from the meat.

Lastly, we had an evaluation together, and we talked about the funniest parts of the trip.

After the cool workshops and the great time spent with our hosts, our time in Bladel was approaching its end. Full of great memories, new experiences, and new friends, we said a heartfelt goodbye to our Dutch friends, and got on the bus back to Düsseldorf! We are looking forward to welcoming our friends to Düsseldorf in May.

(by Eve Pokrass and Maris Jahn, 8b)

 

Claudia Schall Kim Biermann
Authors at Work

Authors at Work

25.01.2023 | News, Sprachen

by Clara Altfreder

Under the guidance of Mrs. Christen our English class wrote their own short stories and created great characters, creative storylines and even more creative plots. In order to achieve the best outcome in writing short stories, Mrs Christen developed a plan for us.

We followed this plan step by step.  Each of us first collected ideas and we then chose from what we liked best or combined them till we had the idea we wanted to follow.  Then a good story needs its characters so we also made up our minds about what characters and personalities we wanted in our story and what their role in the story should be.  Not to forget, the plot that makes a good story into a memorable story so we also took care of that.  Last but not least we thought about the small things one can’t forget in a short story like the motive, point of view or a conflict.  Finally, we took all these things we wrote down and put them together into our own short story.

All this was a school day worth of work and for most of us even more time to finish the story at home even during the holidays.  But we had a lot of fun getting creative and using our English skills as best as we could.  Sadly, not all of our stories fit here so we made a contest in which our course voted for the best 5 stories.  The final touches these stories got were then supported by our foreign language assistant Shona Erasmus. These are the 5 final picks the course decided on. Enjoy reading!

My future wife, by Anastasia Loch

What if…?, by Clara Altfreder

Airplane Takeover, by Henrik Weitz

A Nightmare, by Lea Mandla

Karma, by Patricia Sommer

 

 

Birgit Christen
All of Europe’s a Stage 2022

All of Europe’s a Stage 2022

19.10.2022 | News, Sprachen, Theater

Anlässlich zum 75. Jubiläum der Städtepartnerschaft zwischen Düsseldorf und Reading (England) fand, wie bereits 2021, auch dieses Jahr ein internationaler Theaterworkshop statt. Das English Theatre Düsseldorf hat dieses Jahr in Kooperation mit Rabbel Theatre aus Reading und dem Goethe Gymnasium das Theaterwochenende vom 24.9. bis 25.9. wieder auf die Beine gestellt.

Hierfür hat eine Gruppe freiwilliger Schülerinnen und Schüler der Stufen 8, 9 und EF das Wochenende in der Schule verbracht und mit Theaterpädagogen aus England gemeinsam das Thema Europa theatral erforscht. Immer wieder fanden auch interaktive Zoom-Konferenzen mit der Gruppe aus Reading statt und am Sonntag wurde das Ganze mit Aufführungen über Zoom von beiden Gruppen abgeschlossen.

Ein großes Dankeschön geht an das English Theatre Düsseldorf, Rabble Theatre und natürlich an alle Schülerinnen und Schüler, die so engagiert mitgearbeitet haben an diesem Wochenende!

Für einen Einblick finden Sie hier Fotos von diesem Jahr einen kurzen Trailer vom letzten Jahr und weiter unten einen ausführlichen Bericht von Amestris Pour Ali aus der 9c. Vielen Dank dafür!

 

All of Europe’s a Stage 2021

 

Fotogalerie 2022

(Klick zum Vergrößern!)

 

All of Europe's stages 2022

All of Europe’s stages 2022

by Pour Ali, Amestris 9c

A bunch of theatre kids from Düsseldorf and Reading, England, on a Zoom conference. With the Assistance of Mr. Valente, the English Theatre Düsseldorf and two theatre tutors from reading, the children from both countries partook in theatrical activities and games with one another, despite the distance. The topic for this weekend was Europe, its past, presence, future and its people. A reoccurring word in our Brainstorm on Saturday was “Change” what changed in Europe, what will change, what would we like to change and how did we change? We got divided into small groups and improvised little skits about change in Europe.

Düsseldorf

A group of three performed a little musical and chorographical skit, in which a young girl, stuck in an office job would like to change her career path and pursue singing. She sees an audition poster from a music record. Little did she know, that the audition was a scam. But she had already quit her job so what was she supposed to do? Europe is a place, that supports dreams and is open for change, and so, as she was singing while doing her work as a cleaning staff, an agent overheard her and invited her to a real audition. She had changed her life. Another group of two, originally five performed a comedic skit about climate change. The group however, was confronted with quite a hard situation. Three of the members sadly couldn’t make it on Sunday, and so, a few hours before their finale performance, they thought of a whole new technique. They recorded most of the interactions and cut the clips together. The skit started with a protest. All the students were shouting and holding up posters demanding action against climate change but in middle of all the rabble, a student received a notification. There was news about the whole situation. The clips showed, how different countries and their leaders reacted on climate change. Most countries were ignorant, but the prime minister of Finland wanted to invest in the climate. For change and a better Europe. The protesters seemed to be very content and happy with the news and greeted the prime minister with joyful cheers. The last group, a group of four, originally five, consisted mostly of children of immigrant parents. They showed the life of a child, immigrating at a young age due to the war, how his life and his family situation changed and how he developed. The first scene showed a mother preparing dinner, trying to ignore the sound of bullets for her mind´s wellbeing. As the family, consisting of the mother and her two daughters, was dining, her grandson ran to his mother, telling her about the family next door, from which they haven´t heard of in a while. They were dead. The two sisters argued. The eldest was planning to flee with her son, the youngest blamed her for wanting to leave the sick mother. Eventually, they left and flee to Germany by illegally crossing the borders. In Germany, they got a lot of support, like home and shelter from the government, it wasn´t but as easy as they thought it would be, since they were confronted with racism and people mocking their culture. Despite all this, the son found friends in his new home. It seemed to go well, but his aunt came to Germany to deliver terrible news. His grandmother had passed. She blamed her older sister for it, who at first didn´t want to believe it. Now with nowhere to go, the aunt decided to stay with her sister. She looked at her nephew who had changed, she thought, he had become more European.

Reading

The group in reading performed their skit in one big group. It played at a parent teacher conference with a judgementally portrayed teacher, discussing her students´ grades and behaviour. The first scene played in the waiting room. We saw three families and a child by itself. The first student to attend came alone, telling the teacher that their parents couldn’t make it. They seemed quiet but were a straight A student. The next student was from Spain, there with their single mother, which the teacher questioned a lot. “Is it only the two of you? No husband?”. The student seemed to have failed English, so the teacher asked about their ethnic background. When she found out, that they were from Spain, she got pushy and demanded the child to take an English course for people who don´t have it as their first language, despite both, the mother and the student being perfectly fluent. A posh mother and her son were next. She excused, her partner, who would come later. The teacher said that her son didn’t have any difficulties academically, but that he was very quiet. As she mentioned that, another mother entered the room. The teacher told her to exit, since she was busy discussing another student’s matter, but the lady was in fact his mother. Seeing that the boy was raised by a lesbian couple the teacher asked if he had any male role models in his life and that if not, that was the reason why he was, and I quote, “such a whimp”. The reason for the boy being not very talkative, we would meet next. A Russian girl and her father were followed, and since the father wasn’t fluent in English, his daughter translated the teacher´s words to him. Or did she? The father seemed rather proud of his daughter after the teacher informed him about her failing school and being a bully. In the last scene, the teacher was exhausted from all that had happened. The other characters entered and held her accountable. Starting with the first girl, telling her that her parents weren’t informed about today’s meeting in the first place, because she didn’t want to disappoint them, the Spain student telling her, that she shouldn’t belittle them, just because they are from foreign ascent, the son of the lesbian couple telling her that he is quiet because he gets bullied and not because he got raised by two women and the Russian girl explaining that she has a difficult home life and that she is just an impressionable product of her environment.

Games

But there was more to those two days. We also partook in activities and games to bring us closer to the students in reading and their culture. Before the weekend started, both groups were asked to record videos, introducing their city and school. We had a great laugh and got a taste of each other’s humour and character. Of course, they were informative too. We played a game, where we would act like animals, while the other group would play reporters and describe and decide what the animals would be doing. Another game we played within the group and against each other was where we had to recreate letters from the alphabet with our bodies and whichever group finished first would win. Sadly, we lost. But we hope to get our revenge soon. One other game consisted of two out of our group being shown on reading´s screen, but only from the him upwards, with two pairs of legs from their side poking out under our upper bodies. We then had to figure out how to fulfil certain tasks, like dances, while making it look like a whole body is doing that. The cherry on top were the English sweets we got to try. Of course, reading also got sent some German snacks like Hanuta and Haribo. We sure did feel silly throughout this weekend, but we mostly enjoyed ourselves way more, and feeling silly is just a part of theatre. You have to cross your own boundaries and be comically confident every once in a while. Thank you for this experience!!

 

André Valente
The English Theatre Workshop is looking for actors

The English Theatre Workshop is looking for actors

09.09.2022 | News, Sprachen, Theater

Nach den Herbstferien startet die englischsprachige Theater-AG wieder und dafür suche ich experimentierfreudige Schülerinnen und Schüler (9|EF|Q1|Q2), um an einem neuen Stück zu arbeiten. Bei Interesse einfach eine kurze Mail schreiben an andre.valente@goethe-gym.de.

Wir werden uns nach den Herbstferien regelmäßig Donnerstag von 16 bis 18 Uhr in der Aula treffen. Bitte schreibt in der Mail in welcher Klasse/Stufe ihr seid.

Klickt auf den nachfolgenden Textlink, um weitere Infos über die AG, Fotos und einen Trailer von der letzten Produktion zu sehen.

 

André Valente
Die fiktiven Festivals – Les festivals fictifs

Die fiktiven Festivals – Les festivals fictifs

08.03.2022 | News, Sprachen

Am Anfang von 2022 hat mein Französischkurs in der Jahrgangsstufe 9, geleitet von Frau Descamps, einen Projekttag geplant. Anlass war der jährliche deutsch-französische Tag zur Zelebration der deutsch-französischen Freundschaft im Zuge des Elysée-Vertrags von 1963. So sollten, in Anlehnung an das erste Kapitel unseres  Französisch-Lehrbuchs, fiktive Festivals von dreier/vierer-Gruppen gestaltet werden. Der Fokus lautete : Drei bis vier Künstler von den Genres Electro, Pop & Rock, oder Rap aussuchen, sowie ein Lied von jedem/jeder KünstlerIn, das dann bei dem fiktiven Festival gespielt werden sollte. Dazu wurde dann ein Plakat gestaltet, womit jede Gruppe ihr eigenes Festival vorstellen konnte, inkl. Aufenthaltsorte, Verpflegung und touristische Aktivitäten, was noch etwas mehr Planung erfordert hatte. Zuletzt wurde eine Playlist für einen schulweiten Wettbewerb über IServ erstellt.

Als der Projekttag kam, hatten alle Gruppen ihre Projekte fertiggestellt und in unserem Kurszimmer aufgehängt. Im Anschluss daran wurden sie dann den anderen Französischkursen der Stufe 9 mit Karteikarten vorgestellt, die die Gruppen vor dem Projekttag noch vorbereitet hatten. Es kamen einige LehrerInnen und beide weitere Französischkurse zu Besuch, die in Wellen aus kleinen Gruppen den Klasseraum betraten. Ausgerüstet wurden sie mit einem Schul-iPad, um die präsentierten Lieder abspielen zu können, und mit einem kleinen Flyer, wo sie am Ende für ihren Favoriten unter den Festivals abstimmen sollten. So liefen sie durch den Raum und ließen sich von den Schülern deren selbstgestalteten Festivals auf Französisch präsentieren. Zuletzt haben mehr als 200 LehrerInnen und SchülerInnen im Wettbewerb für das Lieblingslied abgestimmt. Bald wird es präsentiert werden… Spitzt die Ohren !

Ich fand diese Idee mit den fiktiven Festivals sehr innovativ und eine gute Übung, da ich sehr viel auf Französisch präsentieren konnte und auch mein Vokabular dabei noch mehr erweitern konnte. Diese Idee hat auch etwas Wechsel in den Französischunterricht gebracht, was mich und die anderen SchülerInnen dazu inspirierte, unsere Französischkenntnisse mehr zu erweitern.

(von Raphael Badiian)

 

Début 2022, mon cours de français de 9ème, animé par Mme Descamps, a organisé un grand projet à l’occasion de la journée annuelle franco-allemande, qui célèbre l’amitié franco-allemande suite au traité de l’Elysée de 1963. En accord avec le thème du premier chapitre de notre manuel, des festivals fictifs ont été organisés par groupes de trois/quatre élèves. L’objectif était de choisir trois à quatre artistes parmi les genres électro, pop-rock ou rap, ainsi qu’une chanson de chaque artiste à écouter au festival fictif. On a ensuite conçu une affiche, par laquelle chaque groupe pouvait présenter son propre festival, y compris le lieu, l’offre de restauration et les activités touristiques, ce qui nécessitait un peu plus de planification. Enfin, nous avons préparé une playlist pour un concours proposé à tout le Goethe-Gym.

Lorsque le jour du projet est arrivé, tous les groupes avaient terminé leurs projets et les avaient accrochés dans notre salle de classe. Ils ont ensuite été introduits aux autres cours de français de 9ème  à l’aide de fiches que les groupes avaient préparées avant la journée du projet. Quelques professeur.e.s et les deux autres cours de français sont venus nous rendre visite, entrant par petits groupes dans la salle de classe. Nous les avons équipés d’un iPad du lycée, pour qu’ils écoutent les chansons présentées, et d’un petit dépliant, pour qu’ils votent pour leur festival préféré. Ils se sont donc déplacés dans la salle et ont écouté la musique et les élèves qui leur ont présenté leurs propres festivals en français. Enfin, plus de 200 professeur.e.s et élèves du Goethe-Gym ont voté au concours pour leur chanson préférée. La chanson élue sera bientôt présentée… Ouvrez grand vos oreilles !

J’ai trouvé cette idée avec les festivals fictifs très innovante et un bon exercice, car j’ai pu présenter beaucoup de choses en français et j’ai aussi pu élargir encore plus mon vocabulaire. Cette idée a également apporté quelques changements au cours de français, ce qui m’a inspiré, ainsi que les autres étudiants, à approfondir davantage notre connaissance du français.

(par Raphael Badiian)

 

Charlotte Descamps