KS3 · German · Year 8
Party plans: separable verbs, placement and position verbs, 'während'
A party: separable verbs
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I can use separable and placement verbs to understand and talk about party plans.
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Party plans: separable verbs, placement and position verbs, 'während': 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 separable and placement verbs to understand and talk about party plans.
Key learning points
- Separable verbs are made up of a prefix and a main verb, e.g., 'stattfinden' - 'to take place'.
- We must remember the separable prefix, especially when English equivalents are single verbs, e.g. 'anfangen' - to start.
- Three placement verbs - 'stellen', 'setzen', 'legen' - describe putting something somewhere, and take the accusative.
- When items are already in position, we use equivalent position verbs 'stehen', 'sitzen' and 'liegen'.
- The word order 3 conjunction ‘während’ (while) is useful for referring to two things happening at the same time.
Words to know
- separable verb
- two-part verb with a prefix and a main verb, e.g., ‘stattfinden'
- placement verb
- verb that describes putting something somewhere, and takes the accusative case
- während
- conjunction 'while' that triggers word order 3 (WO3), sending the verb to the end of the clause or sentence
Common mistakes
German has one general verb meaning 'to put, putting'.
German has three placement verbs that translate into English as 'to put, putting'. 'Stellen' - to make something stand (vertically), 'setzen' - to make something sit, 'legen' - to make something lay down (horizontally).
For parents, carers and teachers
- Demonstrating placement verbs with physical objects helps to clarify and fix this new knowledge. Teachers might like to use toys or any classroom items to act out placing, lying, or standing actions as they introduce the verbs and/or revisit them subsequently.

