Can anyone in Germany talk to me about grundschule?

[oranges]

can I ask what age children often are in Year 3? My son joined mid year at a bilingual school - German and English - in year 2 in feb 2013.

• he was born in 2006 April. He moved up to year 3 in August. He has no German, but is getting extra tuition. I felt in Year 2 he actually went backwards in handwriting and maths and picked up no German either. This year he's much happier, but is younger, smaller and less fluent in German than the rest of the class. The teacher is suggesting he may be better off repeating year 2. I don't mind, but I worry he will not learn anything anyway, and get bored. Any thoughts?

What is a linguistic make-up of the school/class? How much exposure to German does your son get outside of school? Is there a reason why you chose bilingual school over a German only speaking school?

I'm not in a German speaking country but somewhere where many bilingual schools do not produce fluent speakers of the other language, due to a combination of factors such as few speakers of the other language, many speakers of neither language, so many speakers of English they ignore the other language. It does lead to many children leaving and going into monolingual schools. The children for who bilingual education works in these schools are the ones who already speak both languages on arrival. It could be your son is just ignoring the German therefore, as he knows he can speak English.

I know tons of English speaking children where I live who get no formal education in English but are quite capable of reading and writing in English. It might be worth considering full immersion into German, then moving to bilingual later.

I have wondered about that. We chose the school as its very good, close to our house, and has an international ethos and vibe which suits us. The local German only primaries are more mono-cultural and to be honest, not all that great academically. The class is 50:50 between German and English. German speakers are native. English speakers are mainly native but there are a few who speak very well but are not totally fluent.
He is absolutely fine academically, but in year 3 maths is taught in German, and the teacher is concerned that soon he will fall behind, just because he's not understanding.

I'm no real expert, as my daughter is still at kiga, but she will start school at age 6, so dc in year 3 must mostly be 8 and turning 9. There seems to be more flexibility than in the UK, though.

From what I've heard, the grades in year 4 determine whether a child can go to Gymnasium, so maybe your child's teacher is trying to avoid too much pressure too early, especially if your son's German is not yet at the expected level for year 3.

Yes I want him to be happy. And he is much happier for some reason in this year than he was in year 2, though that may be because he is floating cheerfully on a cloud of incomprehension. I'm mildly annoyed because if they had told me this at the end of the school year I may have looked round for a German primary place for him, given him a year to really focus on that, then moved him back to this school if neccessary. At the moment, I fear he will go back to a teacher he didn't really like, learn go German, lose ground academically and be in no better position next year. But the thought of him being tested for Gymnasium next year is also terrifying! No way is he ready.

meant to say: learn NO German,

X-posted. There's always the option of repeating year 3 if he does fall behind, but if you are able to help with maths hwk then you might be able to avoid that.

Does he have any friends who don't speak English?

We are helping with maths homework, and the silly thing is that he is not behind on it - once its explained to him, he can easily do it. No, the problem is that even his German friends speak good English so he simply doesn't get enough exposure. But our daughter is at an all german kita and she's not learning either ! Somehow she's persuading the other children to learn English. argh. Having the option of repeating year 3 is a good idea though.

Can you sign him up for something where the other kids don't speak English? Sports, or chess, or music, or something. Not all German 7 and 8 yos speak much English - at least not the ones I know!

I don't envy you the decision, but I guess you need to decide if you want your son to be with his age group and whether you see an advantage in him finishing school early. I can see that repeating a year, and potentially the exact same exercises and projects, would be extremely boring, though.

It's a ganztagschule so he's at school from 8-4. It makes it quite tough to do extracurricular stuff as he's so tired after school. I suppose we could do Saturdays but dh and I both work and weekends are really our family time and I can't bear the thought of adding more structure to them. I also think he may mutiny if I tried to pack him off to something on Saturday morning. all the babysitters we use speak German, and he has a tutor who comes once a week. Hmm. Maybe I need to ask her to pop over more often. He often doesn't want to go out to a club on Saturday morning but may not mind an hour at home.

ps. thank you so much for talking it through with me. Its really useful to have things clear in my head before I go see the school

My son is a year younger than yours - born May 07 and in the German system would have started grunschule this year - so your son in the German system should be year 2 - so his peer group in terms of social development / physical development would theoretically be there.

He may well be better off repeating year 2 now with a bigger focus on doing everything possible in German - playdates/clubs/tv/radio/reading etc.

My DC1 was 4 when we moved to DE and took a while before he spoke German confidently in Kita - we've actually moved into the International system due to a number of issues so the German is less of a problem - but after 5years here DC1&2 are in the native german stream for german lessons.

It did take longer than we expected for them to speak - though their understanding came quicker - but there are no issues now.

yes I do think he's being knocked about a bit by being in with bigger boys. He tends to get bossed aorund quite a bit. And he's not great at stuff like swimming or riding a bike (our fault for living in central London and not taking him out enough for that stuff) and I think he feels a bit inhibited. I also wonder if an easy year may be good for him. We've moved countries. I was very ill last year and he worried a lot about that. I wonder if repeating a year, learning to swim, skate, bike and ski, and generally have fun may be good.

That's a long school day. The idea of an easy year focussing on outdoor things like bike riding, swimming and skiing sounds pretty good to me - might boost his stamina and give him extra self-confidence.

Mulling things over is the point of MN, I feel. I thought one of the others from the German thread with real experience of Grundschule might have discovered this thread by now, but if I've helped a bit then that's great!

Repeating a year is VERY common in Germany - many (if not most) will do it at some point - with that in mind your DS effectively has 2years in hand.... so let him do Yr2 again - forge some strong friendships and really get settled.

Where abouts are you in DE? We're in NRW and very much enjoying our little adventure.

Hi oranges, are you in Berlin? If so what school? My DC are/were in a bilingual gebundene Ganztagsschule similar to what you describe.

The reason I can't give you a clear answer about ages in each school year is because the school age is different in each federal state - so a 5 yo might be schulpflichtig in Berlin but would wait another year in Bavaria, for example. Berlin currently has the youngest school starting age in Germany. Confusingly, the school year runs from August to June, but the age cutoff is December 31st - so in Berlin I think a 3rd grader would generally be born in 2005, not 2006 (I've just tried to calculate back from my 6th grader). In other Bundesländer it will be different - and it also means that April might be old or young in the school year, depending on the cut-off date in that state.

My experience of kids in a bilingual Grundschule was that:
A. English-only speakers ended up being asked to repeat more than German kids - I suspect because German kids who were struggling would just leave the school and go to a German-only school, whereas English families would tend to persevere in the international system.
B. If children were asked to repeat a year, it would most commonly be repeating Year 2. In DD2's class I think 3 kids out of 26 repeated, all young in the school year, all English-speakers.

Sadly, we did find that they were occasionally English families who moved to Berlin for work purposes, and the DC simply failed to thrive in the German school system, even those who were doing excellently in an English school. The transition is more difficult for some kids than others.

A Ganztagsschule IS exhausting for younger children - we've always tried to minimise extra activities, and in the holidays we always plan in 'chill out' time where they just enjoy getting up late and doing nowt.

"But the thought of him being tested for Gymnasium next year is also terrifying! No way is he ready."
OK, this makes it clear that you're not in Berlin, where there is a 6-year Grundschule. In that case, I think it really is important that you do consider keeping him in the 2nd grade. Is there a bilingual Gymnasium in your town or would the bilingual kids then transfer into the standard German system?

"year 3 maths is taught in German, and the teacher is concerned that soon he will fall behind, just because he's not understanding" - maths does often seem to be a real problem when English kids are learning in German, even more so than German, ironically enough. There's something very fundamentally different about the numbers being the 'wrong way round' - my two are completely bilingual but they still sometimes wrote the numbers back to front in German. If you have the money, I would recommend some low key one-to-one tutoring, preferably someone who is bilingual or a student who studies maths and English, so the Nachhilfelehrer can explain the material in both languages. You can either find a Nachhilfelehrer from one fo the organisations like Schülerhhilfe (but that's not one-to-one, and you have to go there), or advertise for a student to come to you. We just found someone to help with maths via Studenten für Schüler.

having personal experience of a bilingual school, it does all the subjects (except the language bit) in both languages, so children get to do Maths and Science and History etc in both language, learning the vocabulary in both languages.

Hi runningmad, sorry, that might be your experience, but it's by no means the case throughout Germany. Education differs so greatly between the Bundesländer that each state can decide its own policy on what is taught in which language in bilingual schools. In Berlin maths is always taught from grade 1 in German and then later physics and chemistry, but history, geography and biology are always taught in English. The OP has already said that where she is based, maths is taught in German from grade 3 onwards. Are you thinking of a bilingual school somewhere in Germany or elsewhere?

Tha;t really interesting about learning maths "the wrong way round." We are in Berlin - I was referring to another poster who said that most GErman schools decide on gymnasium at grade 4/ That is too soon - I'll be relieved if that's not the case in Berlin.
In this school lessons are streamed by language in year 1 and 2, then from year 3, maths and science in German, and the rest in English, roughly.
The school has a bilingual secondary as well, so he can just stay in that stream and work towards an International IB, if we stay longer. It now looks as though we will be here for a good few years - we were not sure at the start.
I had worried that he would be behind if we move back to the UK, as I think then he will just go inthe age appropriate year. But thinking about it, he's bright, we can teach him if need be, and the thing I really want him to get out of being here is to be confident, happy, posibly bit sportier and to have picked up a decent level of German. I just had dire warning ringing in my years of the dangers of letting children get bored at school and I slightly worry he may if goes back to year 2. But its all so different and new he may not notice!

oranges sounds as if it would be better on your ds if he could repeat year 2. Do you think the school will agree to change his year? If he only joined the school in february he really didn't have long to settle and learn much German as they broke up for summer some time in June didn't they? Lots of dc repeat a year here. Ds aged 15, is in year 10 in a class with dc aged from 15 to 18 years old!

My dc went to primary school in Berlin and the Ganztagschule dc were very tired after such long days. Mine were in the only class that got to go home at 2pm. That was long enough!

Good luck talking to the school.

Hi oranges, OK, now with my detective hat on I know which school you must be talking about (not too difficult, there are only two junior/senior school combos in Berlin, and only one of those has 8 to 4 lessons!). Congrats, it's not easy getting a place there nowadays! Do you count as 'highly mobile' or were you just immensely lucky?

I didn't know that school has maths in both languages for the first two years, that's an interesting policy. I think it's because the school has so many 'highly mobile' families so there are a higher percentage of English-only families entering the school (whereas the Europe schools for instance have a majority of bilingual children).

Actually you're in a really good position there. The secondary school is a Gesamtschule, which means there is less pressure in the 6th grade to get that magical 'Gymnasialempfehlung'. OK, I think the sec. school does practise streaming, but it's far more flexible than being pushed off into a Sekundarschule and having to work your way back into the Abitur system (quite apart from anything else, there is only one Sekundarschule in Berlin with a bilingual class, and last year it had 7 pupils!).

The teachers at your school DO have a fair bit of experience in knowing which kids are struggling with the German-language components, and if they recommend repeating, TBH I would tend to trust them. It's unlikely your DS will be bored, because he will have to put so much extra mental work into learning German and doing maths in a foreign language that a few dreamy hours in English and Topic won't harm him at all.

What really puzzles me - I mentioned upthread about the way that ages are calculated in Berlin schools. If I've calculated correctly, the correct year group for grade 3 should be born January to December 2005. There is a slight complication with 'Kannkinder' and 'Musskinder' - for a child born between January and March each year, the parents can decide if the child should be in moved up to the year before or stay in their proper year group (ie a Jan to March 2006 child would have the chance to be in the 3rd grade, they are Kannkinder because they 'can' be in wither year group) - but this option is not open to a child born in April 2006 (they 'must' be in a particular year group). So actually, your DS really should be in grade 2 after all, according to the Berlin rules (and the age in Berlin really is younger than average for Germany). This might be why you find the others in the class older - because they are! One way you can find out: we generally have a class contact list prepared by the parent reps and sent around by e-mail. Often the children's DOB is given on that list so you can see how old the others in the class are. Or send a mail to your class rep. If your DS is among the youngest, I would certainly consider him repeating the 2nd grade.

Sorry for all the waffle - feel free to PM me if you want any more gossip info. And welcome to Berlin!

Hello Oranges. I'm a native English speaker who moved into year 2 in a German speaking school with absolutely no prior German. I wanted to say two things that might be useful (or not!).

First, even with total immersion in German (no one spoke English) it took me a good 6-8 months to learn to understand and speak it. There was a huge lag phase where I would say it probably looked like there wasn't much progress. Then one day it was like a light switch, I remember the exact moment when I realised I could speak German. It was the similar for my brother in Y3.

Second, even though after that I could speak German, I never did very well on written work (even maths etc). I am actually very academic but no one realised until I left Germany because of this. Looking back, I think the problem was that understanding spoken German is subtly different to reading German instructions. For e.g. the teacher might say "what is the difference between x and y", but on paper it would read "explain how x differs from y". And if you don't know the difference between "explain/determine/state/etc" then you can't answer properly. My suggestion would be to get a native speaker to sit down with him and go through some written questions one to one. And try to identify what in particular he isn't understanding in each question. Test papers are good for this.

I'm a former Berliner (so so so of you and Nullius) and think I know the school too :) What Nullius said about everything, especially the age. Apr 2006 'should' be Y2, even in Berlin - the youngest Y3 I know in Berlin, a friend's daughter, has Jan 2006 birthday and is very advanced physically and cognitively for her age. My dc1 (May 2005) is Y3. We are in Thüringen, where the cut-off is June or July, so he is one of the youngest in year by that measure. I would guess, as Nullius says, that there will be very little disadvantage to him in repeating Y2.

Another Berliner checking in here. I would repeat the year - but I would explain carefully to your son why this is the case. The fact that he is probably too young for his year group is a reason which he should be able to understand. I know of plenty of children who have stayed back a year particularly in the first two years - the whole idea of the flexible "Schulanfangsphase" in non-bilingual schools in Berlin was to allow this as a norm - you have a phase of between two and three years depending on what the child needs in the light of their language abilities (for non-German speaking children in mono German schools). But, I also know that in reality a lot of the children do feel that it means they were somehow not good enough. I think you need to explain carefully.

We have had exactly the same problem mentioned earlier in the thread with switching round the numbers for English children learning maths in German (probably the same vice versa). The "tens" column and the "units" column as I learnt them at primary school are one of the most important concepts to allow children to add and subtract easily (we´ve not got to long multiplication or division yet thankfully!). If the children have to learn to switch constantly the order in which they say, read and write the columns, depending upon which adult they are speaking to, it makes maths so much harder than for any other primary school children. Primary maths is not always easy for children as it is, and the switching of the tens´ and units´ columns makes it an absolute nightmare!

yes we are very 'highly mobile' but also hugely lucky to have got a place. I'm pretty sure we got one as a few German speakers dropped out, finding the school overwhelming. i have no real idea why he was even moved up to year 3 as we knew there was a chance he would stay behind in year 2. i just went with it as it happened automatically. but now he may have to move back down, which may be tricky, but he may also not really care.
thank you so much for talking about the differences in learning and how long it takes for it to click. I feel we are very nearly there. one more season and it should happen. I love Germany, and am very happy here generally.