Rosie and Moussa argue.

"You're scared," the boy calls out.

"No, I haven't," replies the girl.

The children in the textor school slip into the roles of the two heroes from the children's book and enthusiastically reenact the scene.

They dress up in checked shirts and striped scarves and enter an imaginary stage in the classroom.

A theater teacher and a German teacher make sure that the sentence structure and the prepositions are correct during the performance.

Rainer Schulz

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Learning grammar while playing is one of the aims of the "German Summer".

The language support project of the Polytechnic Society Foundation will be offered at ten primary schools in Frankfurt during the first three weeks of vacation.

For the first time, children from three intensive classes who have not lived in Germany for long are also taking part.

Like Kenzo, 9, from Cameroon, Pawle, 9, from Serbia and Nieva, 8, from India.

They speak English, French and Serbian at home – and are now also learning German.

Nieva finds it “not difficult”, as she says.

Kenzo learned the word hip today.

And the navel is now also part of the vocabulary of the three children.

“It should be playful and feel like a holiday”

The German summer, this combination of language lessons and drama, gives the children a lot of fun.

Two years ago, the foundation asked the participants for an evaluation: 88 percent of the students surveyed stated that the German summer had helped them to improve their language skills.

Such feedback pleases Roland Kaehlbrandt, the chairman of the board of the foundation: "We want to give the children a boost and compensate for language deficits."

Oliver Beddies, who heads the education department, adds: "It should be playful and feel like a vacation." That's why the children don't sit in the classroom all day, but go on trips to the zoo, play and do handicrafts.

Each small group is supervised by three teachers: a teacher, a theater teacher and a social worker.

That has its price.

The foundation invests 2000 euros in each place, the parents pay a personal contribution of 50 euros.

The German Summer has been around since 2007. The language support project is one of the oldest offerings from the Polytechnic Society Foundation in Frankfurt.

Around 2,500 children have taken part so far.

In the meantime, the project has long since left the city limits behind: This year, the German summer will be offered in 20 cities throughout Hesse, with a total of 753 primary school children taking part, 168 of them in Frankfurt.

The focus is on learning in small groups of 15 children each.

The project is aimed at primary school children from the third grade who are to be prepared for the transition to secondary school.

Ten schools are taking part in Frankfurt.

This year there are also three locations in the Main metropolis for 45 children from intensive classes who have only recently been living in Germany, including children who have fled from the Ukraine.

Two of these groups are funded by the Department of Education.

Head of department Sylvia Weber (SPD) is very grateful to the foundation for having added an additional group to the two previous intensive class groups from her own resources.

“A lot of children, especially of primary school age, have come to us from the Ukraine, and the need is huge.

The German Summer helps these children get off to a good start at school.”

In order to improve the children's media skills, tablets are also used as learning aids in the Frankfurt groups.

At the textor school, for example, to capture and photograph noises.

Since 2018, the German Summer has also been part of the coalition agreement of the Hessian state government.

"The corona pandemic has made it considerably more difficult to teach basic skills such as reading and writing," says Minister of Education Alexander Lorz (CDU).

With the German summer, children who have the greatest need for support would be prepared for the fourth grade, which is so crucial for the transition to secondary school.

In recent years, the German Summer has developed into a real success story.

It is just one of numerous holiday learning programs in the country for which a total of 15,000 students have registered - from learning camps and swimming courses to language training.

"The coming school year will also be all about catching up on missed learning material," expects Lorz.

The idea for the German summer originally came from Bremen.

The Polytechnic Society Foundation was so impressed by the model project that they brought it to Frankfurt and expanded the concept.