Englisch & Deutsch an der GISAD

Our language program is well established from kindergarten entry. The kindergarten accepts children with no knowledge of German and all children benefit from a bilingual start (German & English). All kindergarten teachers and some elementary school teachers regularly attend training sessions of the program “German for the start of school”, which are held in cooperation with the German schools in Dubai and Sharjah.

Since the beginning of the 2018/19 school year, this concept is now being implemented at GISAD. The basic material is used in the kindergarten and the primary school classes 1 and 2 mainly work with the primary level games. We regularly conduct a language assessment test at the beginning of the school year. This allows us to give feedback to the parents about the child’s language development and adjust the lessons accordingly. In grades 1 and 2, children, whose native language is German, have two hours of English per week. In grades 3 and 4 all children have 4 hours of English a week.

In the secondary level, the students are also supported by German language support. For newly introduced subjects, e.g. biology and history, the children are assigned a second teacher for language support. In addition, there are also lessons outside the subject lessons in which facts and difficult foreign words are explained to the class. In secondary school, all children usually have between 3 and 4 hours of English per week.

In order to underline these efforts, GISAD is working towards enabling pupils with previous knowledge of German to make a lateral entry. As a strategy the school envisions that students without previous knowledge of German will also be able to make a lateral entry.