Newsletter 13.03.2026

This week’s newsletter comes to you from Cologne: Kindergarten Director Olivia Habtezghi and Head of School Rainer Kropp-Kurta are currently representing the German International School Accra at didacta, Europe’s largest education fair.

At the joint stand of the German Schools Abroad in Africa, schools from Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Ghana present their work and exchange ideas on current developments in international education. For the German International School Accra, participation means not only visibility but also valuable encounters, new inspiration and important contacts – especially for the recruitment of new teachers.

During the trip, a meeting also took place in Düsseldorf with Gerald Asamoah and the Managing Director of the Gerald Asamoah Foundation, Jens Conrad. The discussion focused on the next steps of the joint football initiative in Accra. In addition, Haitham Albeiruty has been recruited as a new expatriate teacher (ADLK) for the German International School Accra – an important milestone, as this is the first time that an ADLK has been placed at the school outside of the school leadership. We are very much looking forward to welcoming him and his family to Accra in the coming school year.

The start of our school musical: Encanto – Anigyeɛ (Joy)

This year our school musical takes us into the magical world of Anigyeɛ / Encanto – a word from Akan meaning joy. Inspired by the story of the Madrigal family, the students explore themes such as family, identity, teamwork and believing in their own unique gifts. Just like in the story, every child plays an important role in bringing the magic to life.

To make this possible, students work in different teams. In doing so, they not only prepare the performance but also develop many valuable skills.

The acting team learns how to express emotions, speak clearly on stage and work together to tell the story. Students practice character development, stage presence and confidence.

The singing and music team rehearses the songs from Encanto, focusing on rhythm, melody and singing together as a group. Students learn how music strengthens emotions and storytelling.

The dance and choreography team works on movement, rhythm and coordination. Students learn how to express stories and emotions through their bodies while developing discipline and focus.

The stage and decoration team designs and builds the magical village where the story takes place. Creativity, planning and visual storytelling are essential in bringing the musical world to life.

The technical team works with graphic design (for example using Canva), lighting, sound and visual effects. Students learn how technology supports a performance and helps create a magical atmosphere.

The organization and catering team prepares posters, invitations, tickets and communication with parents. They also ensure that the teams are well supported with healthy snacks during rehearsals.

Through this project, students discover that a musical is much more than performing on stage. It is a collaboration where every talent matters and where everyone contributes to creating something truly special. And besides all the work, everyone is having a wonderful time.

A visit from linguistics

On Thursday morning, the German International School Accra welcomed a special guest: Prof. Dr. Natascha Naujok, linguist from the Protestant University of Applied Sciences Berlin, visited the school to gain insights into language teaching at GISA.

During her visit she observed different classroom situations and was able to see how language support is integrated into everyday school life.

The visit also provided an opportunity for conversations with teachers about methods of language support, multilingualism and working with linguistic diversity in the classroom.

The German International School Accra is very pleased about the interest in its work and warmly thanks Prof. Dr. Natascha Naujok for her visit and the inspiring exchange.

German Evangelical Church in Accra – Spring Program 2026

German Evangelical Church in Accra has announced its spring program. Military chaplain Rüdiger Scholz, whom many already know from last year, will support the community until Easter.

His visit makes it possible for the community to celebrate church services on four consecutive weekends. Further dates will be announced soon.

The next service will take place on:

Sunday, 15 March 2026 – 10:30 am
German-language church service with Pastor Scholz

Location: Ridge Church (next to the Kempinski Hotel)
1st floor – barrier-free access

The community looks forward to welcoming both new and familiar faces. People of all denominations are warmly welcome. No registration is required.

For further information please contact:
Doris Bloniarz – 0544 336 181 (WhatsApp)

Public Holidays in Ghana – 20 and 23 March 2026

The Ministry of the Interior of Ghana has officially declared Friday, 20 March 2026 (Eid-ul-Fitr) and Monday, 23 March 2026 as public holidays.

On these days, there will be no classes at the German International School Accra. School will resume as usual on Tuesday, 24 March 2026.

Easter Camp 

The German International School Accra invites children and young people to an exciting Easter Camp. From 30 March to 2 April 2026, participants can look forward to a colorful daily program from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm filled with movement, creativity, and shared experiences.

Under the motto “GISA Hunters,” children will set off on a journey of discovery together. Games, sports, creative workshops, and team activities ensure that there is never a dull moment. A special highlight will be the planned swimming day, offering refreshing fun and an extra dose of excitement.

The camp is open to children aged 5 to 15 and offers a wonderful opportunity to make new friends, stay active, and spend the holidays in an engaging and joyful way. Whether through creative activities, adventurous games, or simply laughing together, the focus is on fun, community, and unforgettable holiday moments.

The Easter Camp will take place on the campus of the German International School Accra and will be supervised by a dedicated team ensuring a varied and safe holiday program.

Dates: Monday, 30 March 2026 to Thursday, 2 April 2026
Time: daily from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm
Age: 5–15 years
Participation fee: 900 Cedi

Registration and further information:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel.: +233 59 755 6847

We look forward to welcoming many young adventurers for four joyful holiday days full of games, movement, and creativity! 🌈🐣

Germany vs Ghana – Public Viewing 

On Monday, 30 March 2026, Germany will play Ghana in Stuttgart (kick-off 19:45 Ghana time).

On this occasion, the residence of the German Ambassador in Accra will host a public viewing of the match. In addition, during the afternoon there will be a small fan zone with interactive activities for children aged 10 to 14 organized by several institutions.

Further information will follow.

Save the date: Koningsdag

On 25 April 2026 from 15:00 to 19:00, the German International School Accra and the Dutch International School will jointly celebrate the Dutch Koningsdag on the campus of the German International School Accra.

The program will include a children’s flea market, games and activities, food stands, drinks to celebrate together, music and a colorful program for the whole family.

The schools look forward to welcoming many visitors.

Sustainability at the German International School Accra

The German International School Accra continues to expand its sustainability initiatives. In addition to the existing recycling options for plastic and paper, white glass can now also be collected on campus.

The collection container is located behind the entrance on the right side next to the large paper recycling container. The glass will be collected by the Ghana Glass Manufaktur and turned into new products.

Thank you very much for your support.

Activities of the week

Skating with Coach Nana (Thursday)
Students are having a great time learning how to skate with Coach Nana. They practice balance, coordination and safe movement on wheels. Through playful exercises and games they build confidence and perseverance, and it is wonderful to see how their skills improve step by step.

Basketball for kindergarten with Coach Sarah (Tuesday)
Our kindergarten children are discovering the joy of basketball with Coach Sarah. They practice simple ball skills such as bouncing, throwing and catching. Through playful activities they also learn teamwork and listening skills. The many smiling faces show how much fun movement and learning together can be.

Nursery and Kindergarten

⚽ On Monday, the children enthusiastically cheered for the players during the GISA Cup. It was a great opportunity for them to experience team spirit and a sense of community.

🥁🎶 This week we also learned a Ghanaian song together, sang it, danced to it and accompanied it rhythmically with drums. Music and movement support language development, a sense of rhythm and cultural openness.

🗺️🧵 To conclude our theme “Ghana”, the children created a map of Ghana using colorful fabrics. This creative activity strengthened their fine motor skills, creativity and curiosity about our diverse world. 🌍

🌷🐣 This week we also started our spring and Easter theme. The children crafted tulips and designed rabbits using handmade stamps, practicing both their creativity and their fine motor skills.

This week in kindergarten continued to focus on Easter and spring 🐣🌸. We learned new songs, worked with word cards and practiced the numbers up to 20 🔢🎶. We also became creative by decorating a printed tree with real leaves from the garden 🍃🌳.

We danced to the Super-Duper-Good-Mood Song and practiced a short rhyme and rhythm activity 😄🎵.

Thanks to the beautiful weather, we spent a lot of time in the garden ☀️. The children played, climbed and curiously observed a small gecko and some worms 🦎🪱.

Primary School

Grade 1/2

In Grade 1/2, mathematics lessons are currently focusing on the topic of geometry. The children are learning about different three-dimensional shapes and surfaces and are working with the terms corner, edge, and face. They are also building cube constructions and practicing how to read and create building plans. The interactive exercises with the Active Floor are particularly popular and bring a lot of enjoyment.

Next week, Grade 1 will begin learning addition across ten. It is important that the children learn to break numbers apart strategically and become confident with the “number bonds to ten.” You can support your child at home by asking about these combinations and including small practice moments in everyday situations.

In German lessons, we are currently working with mixed reading exercises and practicing how to answer comprehension questions about texts. It is wonderful to observe how the reading speed of many children continues to improve. Some children have also rediscovered their love for creative writing. As a result, imaginative stories have already been written – for example about stolen cows and castle lords from Thun.

In English lessons, we continued working on phonetics and focused especially on the sound combinations /ee/, /ea/, /ie/, and /e-e/. Practicing these sound patterns helps the children improve their spelling, reading, and pronunciation. In partner work, the students practiced important vocabulary and also played a game about compound nouns. Using pictures, they combined two words to create a new term. Feel free to ask your child at home about some of the compound words they have learned.

In ethics lessons, the class talked about how compliments make at least two people happy: the person who gives the compliment and the person who receives it. To go along with this idea, kind messages were hidden around the school campus. Perhaps you have already discovered one.

This week the class discussed the idea of having “thick skin.” The children reflected on how to stay calm in difficult situations, not react to every remark, and avoid getting upset too quickly. The goal is to develop inner strength and learn to let some things simply bounce off.

In science lessons, the children continued exploring the human senses. Last week the focus was on the tongue. The children learned that we can taste sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, and explored which parts of the tongue are responsible for different tastes.

This week the focus was on the skin. The children learned that the skin is the largest organ of the body and helps us perceive touch, temperature, and many other sensations. They also learned how the skin sends information to the brain and how it reacts to different influences.

Playful activities and suitable worksheets helped deepen their understanding and allowed the children to explore the topics using all their senses.

Grade 3/4

Contribution to follow.

Intensive German as a Foreign Language (DaF) Class

Over the past two weeks, the intensive DaF class has been working on the topics from lessons 4 and 5: meeting places and school. The motivated learners from both the primary and secondary levels collected questions from these lessons and incorporated them into their own surveys. Based on this, they conducted interviews with various educators and teachers. They worked in pairs: one student conducted the interview while the other drew a portrait of the interviewed person.

In grammar lessons, the learners encountered the dative case for the first time while working with the questions “where to?” and “where?”. They also practiced distinguishing the dative from the accusative case.

During a visit from the DaF learners of Grades 7/8, the intensive DaF group practiced their first skills in arguing and giving reasons while playing the game “The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow.”

In their team-building activities, the learners explored the topics of teasing and bullying. Through exercises and examples, they discussed the issues and worked together in groups to develop ideas and strategies for dealing with such situations.

Over the course of the two weeks, the intensive DaF group also completed a vocabulary test as well as an assessment covering the weekly topics and the grammar they had learned.

Secondary School

Grade 5

This week in German class we reviewed direct speech and practiced using it in different texts. We also wrote our second letters to our pen pals from the Willy-Brandt-School in Norderstedt and are already very excited to receive their replies. The class also had the idea of exchanging interviews or video messages in order to get to know each other even better.

Alongside the lessons, we also had a creative break. During this time, the students played concentration games, worked on puzzles, or played different card games. We also rearranged our adjoining classroom slightly so that the students could move around and play table tennis from time to time.

In mathematics, we explored rotational symmetry as the final part of our topic “Circles and Angles.” At the beginning of the week, the students created mandalas by folding a square sheet of paper diagonally several times and then cutting out patterns. Most of these mandalas could be rotated by 90 or 180 degrees and still look the same. The week concluded with a short test, and at the students’ request we also played a Kahoot quiz that included additional symmetry concepts.

In biology we began a new topic: reptiles. The students first explored the basic characteristics of these animals, including their anatomy and movement, their survival strategies, and their habitats. One highlight of the unit was a group research project followed by presentations. Students became experts on different reptile species and explained how their habitats relate to their physical adaptations. We also compared reptiles and amphibians by examining their skin, life cycles, and eggs, identifying important similarities and differences.

In English class, students worked on subject–verb agreement. They learned how verbs change depending on whether the subject is singular or plural and practiced these rules using different example sentences. In partner work, they identified patterns with different nouns and later presented their findings to the class, strengthening both their understanding and their confidence in writing correct sentences.

In French, we worked on action verbs that describe everyday activities such as eating, sleeping, and drinking. The students also practiced how to conjugate these verbs in the present tense.

In art class (Grades 5/6), we carried out a cross-curricular project with mathematics. In small groups, the students built geometric shapes from nets of three-dimensional figures, which they then transformed into creative robots. Assembling the different parts required patience, skill, and teamwork. Afterwards, the groups presented their creations in a robot “model walk,” introducing their robots with special features and short descriptions while receiving applause and curious questions from their classmates.

We have also started preparing for our Easter egg hunt. Using old Tetra Pak cartons, the students are creating small Easter nests. This activity combines creativity with the themes of recycling and sustainability.

Grade 6

This week in Grade 6 was once again varied and productive.

In English class, we worked on different punctuation marks and language topics. In groups, students prepared presentations on topics such as commas, full stops, exclamation marks, quantifiers, and other aspects of language, and then presented them to the class. The presentations were evaluated based on content, slide design, how well classmates were involved, and teamwork. This form of peer learning proved very effective: students were able to build confidence, learn from one another, and engage with the English language in a motivating way.

In mathematics, we worked intensively on new concepts. We practiced adding and subtracting fractions, including fractions with the same denominator, fractions with different denominators, and mixed numbers. To support our understanding, we also represented fractions visually and illustrated them in diagrams. This helped students better follow and understand the calculation processes.

Community and responsibility were central themes in ethics class. Together we discussed cooperation within our class and the importance of class duties for maintaining a positive environment both in the classroom and in the school. In addition, our card system was expanded with an orange card. It is intended to help reduce forgetfulness while strengthening students’ memory and sense of responsibility.

In German class, we worked with language and its building blocks. We reviewed different parts of speech and practiced the comparison of adjectives using examples of animals from fables and real life.

A special highlight of the week was the joint German lesson of the DaM and DaF students. During this session, the students presented their self-written stories and introduced the comics they had created. The creative results showed how diverse the ideas in our class are and brought a lot of enjoyment to everyone listening and watching.

Grade 7/8

In mathematics (Grade 8), we started a new topic: linear functions. As an introduction, we explored filling-level graphs. Erlenmeyer flasks and cylinders were filled with water while the corresponding function graphs were drawn. We discussed how the shape of the container influences the shape of the graph. We also clarified what a proportional function is. The students learned how to read data from diagrams, create value tables, and draw function graphs. To make the topic more vivid and practice reading graphs, we also carried out an activity called “walking the graph.” One student represented a function by moving in relation to the distance from a chair and time, while the other students checked whether the movement matched the graph shown.

In mathematics, Grade 7 worked on proportional and inversely proportional relationships. While proportional relationships were already familiar from an experiment with Grade 8 in which water was poured into different containers, inversely proportional relationships were explored through stories and calculations. This topic will continue to occupy us for at least another week.

In English class 7/8, students completed their poetry work on haikus and imagist poems by presenting their own pieces. They learned that poetry is not only about writing but also about performing with an engaging tone and creating the right mood for the audience. Wonderful work was presented and even shared with Grade 5 for feedback. Some of the poems will also be printed so that other students can enjoy reading them during break time.

In ethics class, we explored the topic “escaping into addiction.” In particular, we discussed examples from the virtual world as well as alcohol consumption and reflected on why people sometimes try to escape from problems or stressful situations in this way.

In social studies, we explored the question: What is globalization? Together we examined how globalization appears in our everyday lives, for example through products from different parts of the world or through global connections.

In biology, we focused on the respiratory system and the circulatory system, with particular attention to the heart. As part of the topic on respiration, we conducted a small experiment in which students tested from how far away they could still blow out a candle. This allowed us to experience practically how strong the airflow is when we exhale. In another activity, students measured their resting pulse and then their pulse after physical activity. This helped illustrate why the pulse increases during exercise and what role the heart plays.

In physical education, we completed an endurance run accompanied by music, allowing students to train their stamina.

In geography, students are currently planning their own small city trip. In addition to thinking about sights and activities, they are also considering how such a trip could be organized in a sustainable way.

For personal reasons, our intern Nele Thierfelder has said goodbye to us. Thank you very much for your dedication and support over the past weeks. We wish you all the best for your future path.

DaF Classes

This week we started a new topic in class: “My Neighborhood.” The students explored the area around where they live. First, they used the internet to find a section of a city map showing their own neighborhood. Afterwards, they explored what can be found nearby – for example a market or supermarket, a hotel, a church, or a mosque.

It was exciting to observe how their awareness of their surroundings grew and how they began to look at their neighborhood with new eyes.

Afterwards, the students collected information about the residents of a fictional neighborhood. They then introduced these characters to one another through short “expert interviews,” which led to lively conversations and exchanges.

The selection of the German King or German Queen also took place particularly quickly this week. The students quickly agreed on Philip from the DaF class 5/6 and Rudatu from the DaF class 7/8, who showed outstanding engagement in DaF lessons this week and truly went above and beyond. Congratulations!

Next week we will turn our attention to vehicles and transportation in the city and explore together how people move around in their neighborhood. 🚲🚌🚗

Dates & Outlook

⛪ Sunday, 15 March 2026, 10:30 am
German-language church service of the German Protestant Community Accra with Pastor Rüdiger Scholz
Location: Ridge Church (1st floor, barrier-free access)

🌙 Friday, 20 March 2026
Eid-ul-Fitr – Public Holiday in Ghana
No classes at the German International School Accra

🌙 Monday, 23 March 2026
Additional Public Holiday in Ghana
No classes at the German International School Accra

⚽ Monday, 30 March 2026, 19:45 (Ghana time)
Germany 🇩🇪 vs. Ghana 🇬🇭
International friendly match
Location: Stuttgart

🏖️ Monday, 30 March – Friday, 10 April 2026
Easter Holidays

🎒 Monday, 30 March – Thursday, 02 April 2026
Easter Camp at the German International School Accra
Holiday program for children aged 5–15 (8:00 am – 2:00 pm)

📚 Monday, 13 April 2026
First day of school after the Easter holidays

🇳🇱 Saturday, 25 April 2026, 15:00–19:00
Koningsdag at the German International School Accra
Joint celebration with the Dutch International School

🏫 Wednesday, 07 May 2026
General Assembly of the German International School Accra
Invitation will follow

🎭 Wednesday & Thursday, 04–05 June 2026, 18:00
Encanto Anigyεc – School Musical
The German International School Accra becomes a stage 🎶