Newsletter 21.02.2025

From 17 to 21 February 2025, we had the pleasure of welcoming potential scholarship holders to our school for trial days as part of the Excellence Scholarship Programme. These days were an enriching and exciting experience for both our guests and our students. After intensive testing, the GISA assessment team came to a positive conclusion in many cases. From 10 March 2025, we will therefore be able to welcome some new talents to the programme. We are delighted about the growth of our school community and would like to congratulate the successful scholarship holders!

At the school management conference in Berlin, Headmaster Rainer Kropp-Kurta had an important exchange of experiences with the heads of the other 135 German schools abroad, as well as a personal discussion with Ralf Beste, Head of Culture and Society at the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany. The German International School Accra and its educational and cultural work with numerous co-operations and social commitment is therefore perceived very positively.

On tomorrow's Pedagogical Day, nursery and secondary school teachers will be working on a language concept for German and multilingualism from nursery to secondary school. Many thanks for this commitment on a Saturday!

On 27 February 2025 from 3 pm, our Ghana Family Festival will take place on the lawn in front of the Swiss Club and invites you to an afternoon full of fun, culture and culinary delights. In addition to the exhibition of current art projects from the Ghana project period, there will be rousing performances from the student body.

Participation is expressly encouraged: you can try your hand at traditional fufu pounding. Culinary highlights such as grilled tilapia with banku, local drinks and much more will introduce you to the flavours of Ghana. Pottery and batik workshops are offered for a small participation fee. We look forward to an eventful afternoon with you!

Carnival is just around the corner and with it some parties! We want to start next Friday with our children's carnival at the school. Together with the kindergarten and school, there will first be a small party and then a shared breakfast, the lists for which are displayed next to the groups (for the kindergarten) or next to the library (for the school). Fancy dress is expressly encouraged!

Of course, party-loving parents should not miss out either. The party continues on 28 February from 7pm with a carnival event at Roots & Soul (in the Goethe Institute) to which everyone is cordially invited. And if you still haven't had enough partying, you are welcome to come to the afterparty of the ‘Ghanavalszoch’ with Cologne music at the Swiss Club on 8 March from around 6 pm. If you are interested or have any further questions, please contact Nadja Ulrich.

The three new interns Jean Wätzig and Rieke Götz and Theo Mostert introduce themselves, and from 10 March 2025 the trio will become a quartet with Sophie Kulen.

Jean is studying to become a teacher of English and religion at the University of Leipzig. In her free time, she is interested in art and enjoys swimming. She is very much looking forward to working as a trainee in various classes, subjects and projects until the end of the school year.

Theo is 21 years old and comes from Kassel, Germany. He will be completing a two-month internship at the school as part of his studies. His subjects are sport, politics and economics (PoWi) and physics. In his free time, Theo enjoys playing sports, especially volleyball with friends.

Rieke is studying maths, English and biology to become a secondary school teacher. She grew up in East Frisia and then moved to Oldenburg for her studies. As part of her English degree, she studied for a semester at the University of Ghana in Legon from September 2023 to March 2024. She spends a lot of her free time dancing, both in Germany and in Ghana.

This week we say goodbye to our colleague, Esther Kowatzschetz, who has enriched our school for almost three years with her commitment, warmth and expertise. Whilst we are reluctant to let her go, we are also delighted with the wonderful new chapter in her life that lies ahead. Esther is expecting her first child soon and will be moving to Germany. Dear Esther, we thank you for your valuable work, your patience with the children and us and the wonderful moments we shared together. We wish you and your family all the best, good luck and good health for the future!

Kindergarten and nursery:

This week, we've been playing with shapes and colours in the nursery. With the colours and shapes puzzle, the children trained their fine motor skills and at the same time expanded their understanding of different shapes and colours. They enjoyed putting the matching pieces together. The children were able to get creative when stamping shapes! They used colourful stamps to create different shapes on paper, developing not only their artistic skills but also their hand-eye coordination. It was great to see how proud they were of their creations.

There were lots of different things on our agenda at nursery this week. We talked at length about our experiences at the weekend, learnt what a national anthem is, listened to various national anthems and in particular practised the Ghanaian anthem for our Ghana Family Festival. We were also artistically active this week, the children painted with threads and created colourful pictures and diligently created a farewell book for Esther.

During learning time this week, we finished our ‘farm’ topic with a suitable film and the national anthems were also a topic here. We also practised some songs and dances for carnival.

In English Club this week, the beginners listened to a story about a dog who experienced something new every day. There were also picture cards with new vocabulary that the children had to match to the story.

This week, the advanced children learnt to recognise and name digraphs (wr, gn, kn, th, sh, ph, ch). There was a matching worksheet where the children had to circle the correct answer to a particular picture.

Then on Friday we had our sports day. We tried out various ball sports in the school playground, ran, jumped and practised our skills with the Hoolahoop tyres. Unfortunately, we also had to say goodbye to our lovely nursery teacher Esther today. Together with the crèche and a substitute from Year 1 & 2, we gave Esther some kind words and wishes, presented her with our gift and said goodbye to her with a group hug and breakfast together.

Primary school:

Class 1/2 had a lot of visitors this week. Children had their Try-Out-Days and got a taste of our everyday school life. In science lessons, we looked at living and non-living things. Pupils recognised the differences, listed examples and had fun with a group activity at the end of the lesson. In maths, the children reflected on the types of problems they were currently working on and presented them to their classmates. Florentine and Lola have recently started taking the children home at the weekend. There is then a notebook in which they write down what they experienced together. Photos from the weekend can be sent via WhatsApp and then printed out and included in the booklet. Some children have worked on vocabulary this week and created a verb-noun memory. Which pairs belong together? The zebra class also experimented with a story telling tool and worked creatively with it. Have fun with it!

Class 4 German with Laura Lützeler wrote a spelling test this week. Class 3 wrote their own superhero story and wrote messages. Maths continues to focus on multiplication and division in the new number range. Please review multiplication tables with your child. This week, our English class kicked off on understanding myths and legends and by also exploring their unique features and storytelling elements. The students were fascinated by the rich history and cultural significance of these stories.
As a result, they are now super excited and engaged in using their creativity to write their own myths and legends. It’s wonderful to see them embracing their imagination and crafting tales. Encourage your child to share their story ideas with you at home!In Art, our Lion King project is slowly coming to an end. Science continued with human (baby) life during pregnancy, when learners learnt about the different stages of pregnancy and the life of an unborn baby in the womb. Learners again understood how an unborn baby feeds and excretes in the womb. The different stages of pregnancy differ at each stage. We found three colleagues who volunteered to show the learners the different stages of pregnancy. Finally, we learnt about the different types of twinning in unborn babies and the difference between identical twins and conjoined twins. We also saw the complete human life cycle from birth to death. We also carried out our first hands-on experiment to make slime, where the learners got stuck in and thoroughly enjoyed the lesson. Now we are looking forward to our class party.

Secondary school:

 Report class 5/6 to follow

Year 7 continued with electricity and forces. The pupils learnt the difference between direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) and how they flow in electric circuits. We also saw how electrical circuits are arranged in both series and parallel form. The learners were given a task and their feedback was really impressed. The learners will be writing their mock assignment on Tuesday 25/02/25 to access what they have learnt so far. There is also a field trip next week on Wednesday to see salt mining in Ghana. This week, the seventh graders put in a final spurt of practice for their German work today on the topic of ‘factual texts’. In maths, the topic: ‘Terms’ is coming to an end and will be followed by the topic: ‘Equations’. In PE we started with basketball and this week we looked at the difference between dribbling low and dribbling high. We wish everyone a great weekend and good luck to the teachers on their pedagogical day.

Outlook:

Thu, 27.02.2025                       Family festival ‘Made in Ghana’

Fri, 28.02.2025                         School carnival

Mon, 03.03.2025 -
Fri, 07.03.2025                         Spring holidays

Mon, 10.03.2025                      first day of school after the spring holidays - according to plan

Wed., 12.03.2025                     GISA Cup Kids Edition

Sat., 15.03.2025                        GISA Cup

Tue, 22/04/2025 -
Fri, 25/02/2025                        Easter camp ‘Jungle Adventure’

Thu, 22/05/2025                     Musical ‘Hercules’ at the Goethe-Institute