Our German English Environment

1. Our German English Environment

2. Our letter writing project • Back in year 8 we started a letter project with a school in Germany. • This is good as we learn about German culture and it enables us to attain a broader understanding of life in Germany. • About once a term we send a pack of letters in German to our penfriends and they reply to us in English. • This is a good way of improving our language skills. THIS IS THE CLASS THAT WE WRITE TO

3. About the German School • The school is located in a town called Vreden on the border of Germany and Holland. • It is a very quiet and rural area. • There are about 22,000 people in the town. Holland Germany

4. The German School Lessons • In the German school they learn and work in a different way. • One example is when they do History they learn it in English. • This helps them with their languages. • They learn English, French, Latin and Dutch.

5. Their School and Environment This is their class they are a mixed school. The class below is in year 9 The outside of their school This is their quad And this is the church near the school and field

6. The German school’s Environment • The German students are very keen to improve their environment. • They have been allowing trees to grow in their quad. • They have lots of plants growing freely. • We wanted to investigate if their school was more or less eco-friendly than ours.

7. Cycling • The Germans in the school are less likely to use cars and in Vreden there are no hills. • They would rather cycle to school. • They find it is much better for the environment.

8. The eco project • We usually write to the German students about topics we have covered in our lessons. This term we have been studying a unit on the environment . • We have also been learning to use the comparative and the superlative in grammar.

9. www.surveymonkey.com • Using this website we designed a survey in German to ask the German students about their attitudes to the environment. • We wanted to include the grammar points that we had learned. • We asked them what their greatest concerns were and how serious they felt problems like noise pollution and power stations were.

10. We asked them how environmentally friendly they were. We also wanted to know how they travelled to school and which country they thought was more environmentally friendly- Germany or England. • We asked them too if they thought life was better in the town or countryside.

11. Here you can see the German students completing the survey.

12. Their teacher Herr Pfahler also sent us photographs of the recycling facilities at the school.

13. Analysing the results • We found out that the German students were more likely to cycle to school, to recycle and to separate their rubbish. • They used far fewer plastic bags and used cotton bags instead. • They were more concerned about the use of pesticides, whereas our students thought traffic was a greater problem.

14. Both sets of students thought that life was better in the countryside and that Germany was more environmentally friendly than England.

15. What next? • We are going to send today’s presentation with the results of the survey to the German school. • We hope that they will also use the surveymonkey site to create an English survey for us to do.

16. We are also sending them details of our Carbon detective project to show them how we have tried to reduce waste in our school • We think that we can learn more from them about how to encourage students to cycle to school. We will investigate what the town of Vreden does to make cycling safe for young people.

17. Thank you for listening. • Please remain silent whilst the staff leave. Presenters : Jonathan, Krishanthan, Ankit, Akhil, Safeer, Ismail, Humza, Huzepha, Mayuran ,Sid Devised by Year 9 and Mrs Drummond Special thanks to Herr Pfahler and the students of the Gymnasium Georgianum, Vreden.