Oscar Foerster

I lived in Germany (Berlin specifically!) for the first 15 years of my life and grew up speaking both English and German. I've spent 2 years teaching at the German Saturday School in Bristol (DSS Bristol), but relocated to York for University. During my time at DSS Bristol I taught various groups of children, ranging in amount of students, age, proficiency etc. My main takeaway was that if you force someone to learn in a way that they don't want to, it'll be awful for everyone!

Working with such a large variety in students means I have become very adaptable and am good at reframing learning to make it appeal to any given student. Over my time at DSS Bristol, I planned lessons, designed activities and delivered content, always with the first priority, that the student is enjoying their learning!

As a very small example, consider a lesson being taught about animals:
-> 12 y.o. learners - we might write a story (alone, in pairs, as a group) and then swap with another group/take turns reading it out loud. maybe we could discuss fables and what the different animals mean and what the story is supposed to show. That builds in reading, writing and speaking practice, as well as introducing a bit of German culture (i.e. the fables) and encourages some critical thinking!
-> 6 y.o. learners - we might listen to recordings of animals noises and draw what we think the animal might be, talking a little bit about the sounds of the words and the difference to English, especially in regards to spelling (e.g. Fox - Fuchs, sound similar, but the 'x' is replaced by the hard 'chs'). Then maybe we could label the different animals and learn about some of their parts (i.e. 'die Pfote' etc.). That way we do something creative, while still practicing phonetics and spelling differences between English and German and the learner end's up with a cool diagram!

It's a really lengthy example, but even that is brief! I enjoy tailoring learning experiences to the learner/s, preferably in person, but also very happily online and - due to attending university - have a very flexible schedule!