Bilinguale Schulbildung an der DSM

How does our German-English bilingual education work?

At the heart of the bilingual education is the ‘one teacher-one language’ approach in which classes are conducted in the teacher’s native language - which is either German or English. In the Foundation Year, we start with a share of 80% lessons in German and 20% lessons in English to really immerse these young learners into the German language. The share of German then slowly decreases until we reach a 50%/50% split from Year 3 onwards. During the early primary school years, we work a lot with routines, repetitions, gestures and singing/dancing to teach children the German language in a playful, immersive way. New families are often surprised by how quickly their children pick up the German language even without any prior German knowledge or connection to Germany. We use German learning materials in the German-speaking classes. 

Bilingual Teaching Approaches

At Deutsche Schule Melbourne, children are learning in two languages – English and German. To help them become truly bilingual, we use three main teaching approaches. All three approaches work together at DSM to help your child become confident and capable in English and German — not just in conversation but also in academic learning.:

1. Immersion – learning through being surrounded by the language

In the immersion model, students learns a subject (like maths or science) completely in the second language – for example, in German. The idea is that children pick up the language naturally by hearing it every day in meaningful situations. It’s similar to how young children learn their first language at home: they hear it, they use it, and over time, they understand and speak it without needing to study grammar first.

🟢 Main goal: Understand the subject while naturally picking up the language
🟢 How it feels for the child: “I’m learning about numbers – and I happen to be doing it in German.”

In the German language, the term ‘immersion’ is used as well.

2. CLIL – learning the subject and the language at the same time

CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It also means learning a subject in another language, but here the teacher deliberately focuses on both the subject (like history or science) and the language your child needs to talk and write about it. In a CLIL lesson, the teacher will help with specific words or sentence structures, explain how to describe things, or give your child tools to express their thinking in German. It’s a more structured way of learning the language alongside the topic.

🟢 Main goal: Learn both the subject and how to speak/write about it in the second language
🟢 How it feels for the child: “I’m learning about volcanoes – and I’m being helped with the German I need to talk about them.”

In the German language, this concept is called Sprachsensibler Fachunterricht (DFU).

In short:

• Immersion = "Learn the subject through the language" (like being surrounded by it)
• CLIL = "Learn the subject and the language at the same time" (with more support for using the language)
  

3. Explicit foreign language teaching

This approach complements immersion and CLIL by explicitly focusing on grammar, vocabulary, and communication skills for students in the late entry-program with no or limited prior German knowledge. This structured language instruction helps students refine their linguistic accuracy and build confidence in speaking, reading, and writing.

In the German language, this is called Deutsch als Fremdsprache/Zweitsprache (DaF, DaZ).