School report: mid-year

I had intended to report on the kids school experience more regularly, but it has become such an integrated and normal part of our life here that I haven't thought about blogging much.  However, both kids have just finished their mid-year exams (Schulaufgaben) which had brought on a little extra stress, so I thought it high time I recorded a bit of this major part of our life here.

Julia has six major academic subjects (Hauptfäche):

German

English 

Math

Physics

Social studies

French

Mixed into these during the week are also: art, music, sport, and academic subjects which involve smaller tests but no major exams -- history, geography, biology, ethics, chemistry lab, physics lab, and "SOG" which seems to be a mixture of health and community awareness.

Julia's classroom:  just today they had a substitute who came late, so
they took out their iPod's (which is not allowed, usually) and Julia took
a picture of two of her good friends:  Caro and Paula.
[Apparently every classroom has a mural: theirs was painted by
 5th graders a few years perviously...]

Julia has become more and more independent at doing her homework.  Thomas still helps her regularly with understanding some of her class notes and homework, especially history (due to the very difficult language in her text) and physics (not so much due to language...  I think they're learning in 8th grade what our system teaches later).  I help her with French, since this is the 3rd year of French language for her class and she only had one year at home -- language instruction here is much more intensive than we have!

She had exams in all her major subjects these past couple weeks, and these are taken very seriously here.  Even though Julia is registered as a "guest student" all her teachers treat her exactly like the rest of the girls and grade her the same way (which is very severe, by North American standards).  The grading scale here goes from 1 (best) to 6 (fail) but it is not unusual for the average to be in the 3's or 4's.  No grade inflation here!

      Julia has received the whole gamut of possible grades:  a 1 in Math to a 6 in German (there is no slack for her as a non-native speaker, nor any extra language help... imagine sticking a new immigrant into Gr. 8 English class at home!)  The 5 on her last German test showed a good trend from the 6 on her first exam.  Impressive, actually.  She got a 4 on the Social studies exam, which is much better than I would have done -- I couldn't even understand the questions when I saw the exam.  English class is "boring" (even though I think she's learning some English grammar rules) but "amusing to watch Frau Wittmer speak English".  I was hoping they'd take her out and give her extra German help, but no such thing at her school.  Overall, she's doing great though, and has some good friends.  

A class photo during Oktoberfest, so the back row are wearing Dirndl's, the Bavarian traditional dress.
Julia is third from right in the back row.

Benjamin is also doing great in school.  He's in a Gymnasium where the first "foreign language" is Latin.  (English starts in the 2nd year.)  We had thought that might be a nightmare, learning Latin in German but it's his favorite subject!

Learning Latin vocabulary, with the very organized index card system.
(After writing a card -- Latin one side, German and English on the other --
it gets studied at least 5 times by being moved into the card-box's next
section, depending on whether it has been "learned" or not...)

In this 5th class year, there are only four major academic subjects:

German

Latin

Math

Music (in the case of this school, where music is a specialty)

He also has art, sport, violin lessons (during school, no extra $!) and the academic subjects that are tested at this stage with smaller quizzes:  geography, biology, ethics.   His exams this past week or so didn't seem to stress him as much as his sister.  He's been getting 1's in Math, which he finds easy - partly because we put him in 5th grade again here (he'll start back with 7th at home) and partly because it seems that the math is a bit easier here at this stage than at home, somewhat to my surprise.  We're not worried about how he does on the German Language/Lit. exams, just happy that he seems to be understanding and participating in the class.  He is a bit more concerned about how he did in the Latin exam (which hasn't come back yet) because he likes the Latin teacher so much and hopes to maintain what I think is a very good standing in her eyes.  

Benjamin is in the musical class of his school, which is great, but it's maybe not surprising that of the 31 kids in his class only a few are boys (and he's still ignoring girls for the most part).   He does have one good friend, Jona, and a few others with whom he runs around in the playground.  This is a so-called "all-day" school, from 8 am to 4:15pm, which means they get a half-hour lunch break (with required hot lunch, which we pay for monthly), and then an hour and a half break in the afternoon where they sometimes organize soccer, or play in the game room across the street.  After that is a study hall time for doing homework, so he rarely brings home work to do, other than learning Latin vocabulary.

One last quick note here re school:  the kids are also real pro's at getting around on their own on the (wonderful) public transportation system.  Julia was independent from day two in getting to and from school (mostly, due to the embarrassment of having your parents turn up with you) but I rode the S-Bahn or bus with Benjamin for the first couple moths.  Now, he is completely fine with coming and going by himself on S-Bahn, U-Bahn, or bus. There are lots of parents who are perfectly happy to let their 10-year olds take public transport by themselves here, so why not? 

So, there is lots more I could say about the German school system, but for us here and now, it is working out just great.