KS3 · German · Year 8
In Berlin: present and past, 1st person singular and plural, 'von' + dative
Berlin: numbers and time
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/11
Your learning goal
I can use present and perfect tenses to talk about what we do and did on the last day in Berlin.
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In Berlin: present and past, 1st person singular and plural, 'von' + dative: slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can use present and perfect tenses to talk about what we do and did on the last day in Berlin.
Key learning points
- German [ch] is two sounds, hard and soft, depending on the preceding vowel. [ch] and [ck] are different sounds.
- ‘So’, ‘wirklich’ and ‘also’ can make our use of German more natural, adding emphasis or acting as conversation fillers.
- The preposition ‘von’ means ‘from’ and ‘of’ and is followed by the dative case.
- The ‘we’ form of the past (perfect) tense in German is ‘wir haben' + past participle, e.g., 'wir haben Karten gespielt'.
Words to know
- [ch]
- sound-symbol correspondence pronounced hard [ch] as in ‘Buch’ and soft [ch] as in ‘ich’
- intensifier
- word that adds emphasis, e.g., 'so', 'really'
- von
- preposition meaning ‘from’ and ‘of’
- dative
- form(s) used after a dative preposition, e.g., 'von' or 'mit'
- past participle
- verb form that forms the past (perfect) tense, together with the auxiliary verb ‘haben’
Common mistakes
All past participles have the pattern 'ge-' + stem + '-t', e.g., 'gemacht'.
While most weak verbs form past participles like this, most strong verbs have the pattern ge- + stem + -en, e.g., 'gelesen', some with vowel changes, e.g., 'gesungen'. Verbs beginning with be-, er- or ver- don’t add ge-, e.g., 'erlebt', 'verbracht'.
For parents, carers and teachers
- If pupils practise one tense extensively in isolation, they may lose their grasp on others. Structured referential activities that contrast two tenses, such as the final speaking in this lesson, strengthen pupils’ knowledge of two tenses and develop their confidence in moving between them.