„Planning a Birthday Party“
This is our learning cycle for the topic “planning a birthday party”. It consists of five different stations to work at. Two students form a group.
1) Writing and painting birthday cards and invitations cards

Here the pupils find examples of invitations and birthday cards. The children are asked to write their own invitation card for their birthday and a birthday card with greetings for their best friend. They can use a “word-snake” as a help to write the invitation. This snake consists of words that are written right next to each other, so the students have to separate the single words before using them.

2) Shopping

At this station the pupils are supposed to create their own shopping list with food, drinks and decoration they need to buy for their birthday party. A sheet with useful vocabulary is provided as a help. After doing so, they should simulate a shopping dialogue to “buy” the things on their list. Useful expressions are given for “customer” and “shop assistant”.

3) Birthday Presents
(3 players and 1 pupil checks answers)
Here the pupils play a game in the same way as “Ich packe meinen Koffer und nehme mit…” Each player chooses one birthday present (vocabulary needs to be provided) and says: “I’d like a book for my birthday.” The next player has to repeat the other pupil’s answer and has to add a new item and so on. The single pupil has to write down each item on a prepared list and also has to check whether the answers are correct. There is one winner in the end.
4) Colouring candles

One pupil takes two pieces of paper out of a box (or an envelope): one with a name and a number on it and one with a colour. Then, the child has to build a sentence according to the structure “Tom turns 8 next week. So we need 8 red candles.” (Sample sentence and structure is explained on a separate sheet as additional help.) The other pupil, who has not seen the two pieces of paper has to colour the respective quantity of candles on a worksheet.

5) Making Masks

At this station the pupils shall create masks for the birthday party. Therefore a worksheet with English instructions is provided and the needed material such as paper plates or elastic band is given as well. They read the English instructions in pairs. Furthermore the children are allowed to help each other and they also can orientate on a provided picture of the complete mask.

Katsios, Heiligers, Seidensticker, Holtappels, Edling