Europaschule am Gutspark,
Falkensee, Germany
Europaschule am Gutspark
English is obligatory from Year 1 and Spanish or French in Year 3/4. We have an English, a Turkish and a Polish afternoon club. Part of our school's concept is one immersive English class per year. Therefore 150 pupils are taught bilingual at our school. This is where we have a lot of expertise doing it for 10 years already. It is very important for us to work with European partners to widen the children`s view of the world. Our students still profit from open-minded teachers and inspired classroom settings.
Thinking about Europe starts with everyone personally. First the children have to think about themselves, their own culture and history. Then they are ready to learn about others. Having new European partners help us to embed more languages and international contents into our Science and Language courses.
The Europaschule am Gutspark is the biggest of five primary schools in Falkensee, a city of about 45.000 inhabitants. More and more families are moving to Falkensee, most of the parents travelling everyday to work in Berlin or Potsdam. 35 teachers (among them head and head's assistant), 2 teaching assistants and 2 special needs teachers are caring for about 600 pupils from 6-12 years. Different teaching methods are quite common to our staff. We use collaborative learning settings as well as we practice in ICT-based lessons.
Our focus is on European education which means democratic thinking and common ideals. We follow the curriculum of Brandenburg (our political region of Germany) and therefore teach regional contents, but embed European values. Teaching different languages and sending our students on international exchanges with European partner schools opens their view towards the world.
