Finding the right place for Frankfurt International School’s new sports centre

A joint announcement was made at the Rathaus in Oberursel yesterday, and you could tell how important it was by of the number of people present.  Representatives of 5 political parties, the school, the town, local residents, and even the mayor got together to announce a compromise had been reached on the location for the new FIS sports hall.

Frankfurt International School

The project started two years ago when Frankfurt International School (FIS) in Oberursel held a competition to design a new sports hall.  The winning entry would have probably been the easiest to build, as it was outside the current campus and would have been located diagonally opposite the main entrance at the Waldlust, next to the Hans-Rother-Steg.

Except that this location had its opponents.  For a start there were the local residents in that road who already have to contend with the traffic that the school generates.  They collected over 900 signatures against the plan.

But there were also a number of groups who were opposed to the forest being cut down to make space for the building.

This particular area of forest is called a Schutzwald, ie. a forest that enjoys a certain level of protection because it performs a specific function, such as preventing landslides or for water management.

And so it was, that in the past months all of these groups, along with the parties from the town’s parliament, have sat down at a so-called “round table” to discuss the options available.

A number of options were on the table, and the school evaluated each of them on criteria such as security for the campus, accessibility, but also for their environmental impact and whether they could also reduce the daily traffic load that the roads around the school have cope with. [Read more…]

First impressions of a Waldorf School

School blackboard - ©iStockphoto.com/kyoshinoLast week our local Waldorf school held an open day – an “open classroom day” to be precise.  The Waldorf education method differs from the normal state education in Germany, even though it was developed here in the first half of the 20th Century.

Now admittedly this was not my first contact the method, having previously had conversations with teachers at both this and other Waldorf schools and learnt, for example, that the teachers are expected to prepare the lessons themselves – in most cases without the use of text books.  But it was a chance to experience the lessons first hand, as the classroom was opened up for parents of the children and anyone else interested to sit in on them and watch.

I spent the morning observing year 5, [Read more…]

English language teaching in German primary schools

Do you speak English? - ©iStockphoto.com/atakanWhen my daughter started school in Germany, I wondered how long it would be before she learnt something in her English lessons, that I did not agree with.  A piece of grammar maybe, or a translation.

Regular readers of this site may recall that she is being taught “school English”, which was defined as spelling “colour” with a “u”.  Whilst not exactly the words “British English” that I would like it to be defined as, I am at least happy that I do not yet have to explain that other countries leave that “u” out and in some cases even use other words for the same things.

It was whilst I was helping her revise for a vocabulary test a few days ago, that I suspected the time may already have come, and further inspection of her vocabulary book confirmed my suspicion.  In some cases, I found the translations to be unusual, but in some to be down right wrong.

And since there were some entries from her teacher in the book, I am assuming that she has seen the offending words and that this is not just a mistake that took place copying them from the blackboard. [Read more…]

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