New
New
Year 8

A new experience: perfect tense with 'haben' and 'sein', 'in' and 'auf'

I can use the perfect tense to understand and write about recent experiences.

New
New
Year 8

A new experience: perfect tense with 'haben' and 'sein', 'in' and 'auf'

I can use the perfect tense to understand and write about recent experiences.

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Lesson details

Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons

Key learning points

  1. Strong past participles are formed by 'ge-' and '–en' surrounding the stem; the stem may have a vowel change, too.
  2. With certain verbs, often verbs of movement to a destination, the perfect tense is formed with ‘sein’, not 'haben'.
  3. With movement, prepositions 'in' and 'auf' mean 'into' and 'onto', and are followed by the accusative case.
  4. When starting sentences with time adverbs to sequence narration, we use word order 2 so that the verb remains second.

Keywords

  • Perfect tense - 2-verb tense that describes completed actions in the past, e.g., 'I said', 'she played'

  • Strong past participle - past participle that sandwiches the stem with 'ge-' and ‘-en’ and often changes the stem vowel, e.g., 'geschrieben'

  • Word order 2 (WO2) - sentence order in which an element other than the subject starts the sentence; verb and subject invert so that the verb remains the second idea

Common misconception

It is only the verb in a sentence that can tell us whether the action of the verb implies movement towards a destination or a static location.

The case (form of the article 'the' or 'a') used after prepositions 'in' and 'auf' tells us whether movement or location are implied, e.g., when the article is in the accusative case ('in den', 'in die', 'ins') it means 'into' and indicates movement.


To help you plan your year 8 German lesson on: A new experience: perfect tense with 'haben' and 'sein', 'in' and 'auf', download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

For the final writing task, pupils can pick any new experience, but it might useful to steer some pupils towards the three experiences that have featured in this unit's lessons: a first day at a new school, a trip somewhere, or a time they helped out or did volunteer work somewhere.
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This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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Prior knowledge starter quiz

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6 Questions

Q1.
'Ich habe __________ Unterricht.'. Choose the correct missing word.

auf
denn
in
Correct answer: jetzt
mit

Q2.
Match the German and English.

Correct Answer:ankommen,to arrive, arriving

to arrive, arriving

Correct Answer:arbeiten,to work, working

to work, working

Correct Answer:fallen,to fall, falling

to fall, falling

Correct Answer:geben,to give, giving

to give, giving

Correct Answer:schwimmen,to swim, swimming

to swim, swimming

Correct Answer:zuhören,to listen (to)

to listen (to)

Q3.
Match the German and English.

Correct Answer:Eis (nt),ice, ice cream

ice, ice cream

Correct Answer:Fleisch (m),meat

meat

Correct Answer:Gemüse (nt),vegetables

vegetables

Correct Answer:Keks (m),biscuit

biscuit

Correct Answer:Naturwissenschaft (f),science

science

Correct Answer:Stunde (f),lesson, hour

lesson, hour

Q4.
Order the words to say: 'The choir sang the song in the classroom.'

1 - der
2 - Chor
3 - hat
4 - das
5 - Lied
6 - im Klassenzimmer
7 - gesungen

Q5.
Write in English: 'das Essen war gut'.

Correct Answer: the food was good, the meal was good

Q6.
Write in German: 'my favourite subject is art'.

Correct Answer: mein Lieblingsfach ist Kunst

Assessment exit quiz

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5 Questions

Q1.
Which of these are strong past participles?

Correct answer: gefunden
geputzt
Correct answer: geschrieben
gesucht
gezeigt

Q2.
Which of these phrases imply movement?

Correct answer: in die Stadt
in der Kantine
Correct answer: in den Garten
Correct answer: auf das Konzert
auf dem Markt

Q3.
Order the words to say: 'After school I ate fruit.'

1 - nach
2 - der
3 - Schule
4 - habe
5 - ich
6 - Obst
7 - gegessen

Q4.
'Ich bin Klassenzimmer.'. Write the correct word(s) for 'in the'.

Correct Answer: im, in dem

Q5.
Write in German: 'I went to Berlin'.

Correct Answer: ich bin nach Berlin gefahren

Additional material

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