By dennismombauer Last updated: January 6, 2023

8 Exemplary German Worksheets to Use as Teaching Materials

It’s 2023, and you are teaching German. What could be easier than making your own worksheet at home?

Start up the laptop, spend an hour with Word and print the result—voilà. Or you could even use a program or webpage specifically for creating worksheets or fill-in-the-blank handouts.

And yet, sometimes it can become a chore and a burden. Luckily, there are already a lot of awesome pre-made German worksheets online!

1. Verb Crossword Puzzle
2. What’s so Special About Specialists?
3. Jobs and Job Descriptions
4. Applied Geography
5. A German House
6. A Day in the Life
7. Going into Space
8. Days of the Week

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

8 German Worksheets for Fun and Memorable Lessons

1. Verb Crossword Puzzle

The design is clear, no instructions needed. It works just like any old newspaper crossword puzzle, but it is loaded with teaching goodness.

For each of the 38 across and down answers, your students will need to know the Präteritum form of the given verb and how to adjust it to the given person. You can find the complete crossword puzzle and its solution key as a free download online.

2. What’s so Special About Specialists?

This worksheet is a bit tricky, but quite fun.

Its main text is based on a newspaper column and has to be read out aloud two times, telling the story of a customer and two salespeople at an electronics store.

Following the two readouts, you hand out the actual worksheet with questions your students might have some difficulties with. But if they can answer them (either all together or in groups), you can congratulate them on their impressive grasp of the language as well as situational analysis.

3. Jobs and Job Descriptions

What better way to understand German daily life than by understanding what Germans do?

This worksheet seems minimalist at first, but it packs a punch. On the left side, it lists some of the most common jobs in Germany, from teacher to waiter and from mailman to doctor.

The students are required (I would suggest in group work) to fill in two things: where these people work (e.g. the doctor works in the hospital or a medical office), and what they do there (e.g. the doctor diagnoses patients and gives prescriptions).

4. Applied Geography

If you want to give your students an overview of the heartland of the German language, you can’t do much better than this worksheet.

It includes not only Germany but also Austria and Switzerland, and it comes complete with four pages of additional information, research tasks and questions as well as the solution to all of these.

Since some of the tasks can be quite extensive and since there are a lot of them, this is something for groups of students or even the entire classroom.

Before you start this, you could offer your students a primer on German geography with a worksheet on the sixteen federal states and their capitals.

5. A German House

Teaching and learning don’t always have to be heavy. Try some lighter and more entertaining activities that nonetheless demand your students’ attention.

This one centers around a colorful image of a German house in which a lot is happening. And best of all, it comes complete with a 17-question quiz that your students will only be able to answer if they look closely, work together and focus on their vocabulary.

6. A Day in the Life

In teaching a language, it is always good to be immersive–and what could be more immersive than experiencing the daily life of a German (well, Austrian) student?

This worksheet provides the complete daily routine of a boy called Robert, then asks several questions to see if your students have paid attention and understood everything.

You can have your students read out the story in turns (one sentence per student), then give them some time to answer the questions. Have them each provide one answer to the whole classroom and discuss the results.

7. Going into Space

German astronaut Alexander Gerst went aboard the International Space Station, and this worksheet is a great opener to talk about that.

First, you have seven scrambled astronaut words your students have to put into the right order; then, they need to find the same seven words in a word grid.

And if that’s not enough, they can also put them into a fill-in-the-blanks text and learn about life on the International Space Station!

8. Days of the Week

It is always good when a worksheet has a clear teaching purpose. This one couldn’t be simpler—it’s about memorizing the German days of the week.

It might seem repetitive at first, but have your students answer every single question on their own before you discuss the result with the whole classroom.

I guarantee that after a session of this, they will always get their weekdays straight!

Interactive materials such as printable worksheets will get your students more engaged while encouraging them to apply what they’ve learned.

You can even add in digital tools. For example, FluentU features German videos for learners, with interactive subtitles that link to a dictionary and ready-made quizzes.

As you can see, there are fantastic resources out there—now it’s up to you to put them to good use!