New
New
Year 8

Narrate a new experience: perfect tense with 'haben'

Learning outcomes

I can use the perfect tense with 'haben' to understand and narrate a short sequence of past events.

I can confidently pronounce the umlaut letters [ä] [ö] [ü], distinguishing them clearly from [a], [o], [u].

New
New
Year 8

Narrate a new experience: perfect tense with 'haben'

Learning outcomes

I can use the perfect tense with 'haben' to understand and narrate a short sequence of past events.

I can confidently pronounce the umlaut letters [ä] [ö] [ü], distinguishing them clearly from [a], [o], [u].

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

Lesson details

Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons

Key learning points

  1. The German alphabet has 26 standard letters, like English, and four additional characters [ä], [ö], [ü] and ß.
  2. The umlaut letters [ä], [ö], [ü] sound very different from [a], [o] and [u] and require practice.
  3. Sentence building is the process of creating meaningful sentences using knowledge of both vocabulary and grammar.
  4. The perfect tense with most verbs uses the present tense of the verb ‘haben’ together with a past participle.
  5. For strong past participles, ge- and –en sandwich the stem; the stem may have a vowel change, too.

Keywords

  • Umlaut - pair of dots ( ¨ ) placed over the vowels a, o, u in German to indicate a change in pronunciation

  • Sentence building - creating meaningful sentences using knowledge of both vocabulary and grammar

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

Common misconception

If a verb is 'strong', its past participle always has a vowel change.

In German, a strong verb has a stem change in one or more tenses. Some strong verbs have a stem change in the present tense but not in the perfect tense, e.g., 'sehen' - 'er, sie, es sieht' - 'hat gesehen'.


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

It is always helpful to encourage pupils to challenge themselves to complete speaking and writing tasks from memory, checking their notes only when they need to, and making a note of the trickier words they haven't yet mastered.
Teacher tip

Equipment

Licence

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

Loading...

Some of our videos, including non-English language videos, do not have captions.

Prior knowledge starter quiz

Download quiz pdf

6 Questions

Q1.
What is the German word for 'vegetables'?

Obst
Correct answer: Gemüse
Fleisch
Keks

Q2.
Match each English word to the correct German translation.

Correct Answer:art,Kunst

Kunst

Correct Answer:garden,Garten

Garten

Correct Answer:school,Schule

Schule

Correct Answer:hour / lesson,Stunde

Stunde

Q3.
Put the words below in the correct order to make a past tense sentence. Start with 'ich'.

1 - ich
2 - habe
3 - im Garten
4 - gespielt

Q4.
Look at the following German sentence and decide what tense it is, before translating it into English: 'Die Sängerin hat gesungen.'

Correct Answer: the singer sang, the singer has sung, the female singer sang, the female singer has sung

Q5.
Match the subjects to the correct form of 'haben'.

Correct Answer:ich,habe

habe

Correct Answer:du,hast

hast

Correct Answer:er/sie/es/man,hat

hat

Q6.
Complete the following sentence by writing the correct past participle of the verb 'zeigen' (to show): 'Sie hat die Karte .'

Correct Answer: gezeigt

Assessment exit quiz

Download quiz pdf

5 Questions

Q1.
Match each German letter to how it is usually pronounced.

Correct Answer:ä,a bit like a in 'bear'

a bit like a in 'bear'

Correct Answer:ö,a bit like i in 'bird'

a bit like i in 'bird'

Correct Answer:ü,a bit like u in "music"

a bit like u in "music"

Correct Answer:ß,sounds like ss

sounds like ss

Q2.
Which of these is a correct perfect tense sentence using a weak verb?

Ich habe die Karte zeigen.
Correct answer: Ich habe das Gemüse gekocht.
Ich habe den Hund gefunden.
Ich habe im Klassenzimmer fallen.

Q3.
Complete the following sentence with the correct strong past participle of 'finden': 'Du hast den Keks .'

Correct Answer: gefunden

Q4.
Put the words below in the correct order to say: 'He has cooked a delicious meal.'.

1 - er
2 - hat
3 - ein
4 - leckeres
5 - Essen
6 - gekocht

Q5.
Complete the following sentence with the correct past participle of the verb 'sehen' ('to see'): 'Ich habe den strengen Naturwissenschaftlehrer .'

Correct Answer: gesehen

Additional material

Download additional material