Germany:

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I. Description of school:

The Grundschule Baiersdorf is a primary school from grade 1 to 4 with 24 teachers and about 300 pupils aged between 6 and 10 years.
Baiersdorf (7600 inhabitants) is situated in nothern Bavaria about 30km to the north of Nürnberg.
The school was built in 1959 and was totally renovated between 2005 and 2007, transforming it into a very low energy building.
In 2008 a new sports hall was built, in 2009 the school yard and the outdoor facilities were completely renewed.
We believe school should be a living space as well as a learning space, so our main focus is on the pupils’ individual needs. We encourage and challenge children according to their skills and try to develop their self- and achievement motivation as much as possible. In grade 3 and 4 pupils attend once a week special training courses in literacy and numeracy. Optional working groups are offered to the pupils in the afternoon such as computer, theatre, choir, basketball, ballet, badminton, self-defence, gardening and ice scating.
Our school day begins at 8.15 and ends at 13.15. Pupils can attend the after school care club until 16.30.

II. Role in the project:

The school is a partner school in the project. In addition to exchanging methods and good practices, the school is responsible for establishing and administrating the projects website.

III. National Summary:

Mobility in Denmark, September 2010

The German team recognized during the workshops, discussions and personal meetings a lot of interesting pedagogical issues, teaching and learning methods and educational topics that would be very interesting to focus on. We decided to choose cooperative learning as our main topic to work on at our school. Cooperative learning: 1. We recognized:

• pupils are used to it
• a lot of verbal activities
  
• earning by discovering
  
• any links to activities in reality
  
• clear and well structured way of learning
  
• great methods
  
• pupils help pupils: teacher is free for other things (for example observation, ...)
• visualisation of the rules / the way of working at the classrooms’ wall is very good

2. We discussed:

• Working methods are at least as important as the learning outcome!
• Perhaps Danish curriculum gives the teacher more freedom than German curriculum
  
• There is often more than one teacher in class:
  
  • easier teaching for teachers
  • pupils work in a better learning climate
  • Danish teachers seemed to be not as stressed as German teachers are

3. Our questions / our ideas

• We should collect material about cooperative learning existing in Germany.
• Should we contact EWF (our pedagogical university)?
  
• Which methods are already used in our classes?
  
• We should discuss in team: Which learning/teaching methods should we adopt for grade 1 to 4?
  
• Producing list of methods, that teachers should teach / pupils should learn.
  
• We will present some elements of “cooperative learning” we saw in Denmark to our collegues.
  

Mobility in Slovenia, Februar 2011

What we saw, recognized, discovered, discussed and learned:

• 1st class mathematics: working with cards, well prepared material, a clever self control system, 2 teachers in the classroom, well organized partnerwork, pupils had already the ability to formulate own numeracy stories
• 3rd class mathematics/physical educaton: well organized group-work, effective work with diagrams, the combination of two subjects was clever choosen and clear for the pupils. German team discussed other possibilities of combinations between two subjects.
• 6th class geography: work with a computer program, teacher there only for support, well interested pupils
• 6th class Slovenian language, formative monitoring: a very gifted pupil was presenting a book, giving a self prepared working paper to other pupils, helping other pupils by answering the questions, finally filling in a self-evaluation-formula: a very good method, german team discussed how to transform this method, to use it also for pupils with average knowledge.
• Slovenian teachers prepared a summary/handout of their lessons’ aims in English. Great!
• Tests: we discussed advantages and disadvantages, when pupils get as much time as they need to write a test.
• Homework forgotten: pupils write their names in a list, that is located on the classrooms’ wall. We discussed possibilities to enlarge pupils’ self-responsibilities in using this method and developed ideas how pupils could use this list to document the next day, when homework was done.

Ideas for the schools’ work until the next workshop:

• Developing support system in knowledge-homogene learning groups: working on maths (test in April “Sachaufgaben”) and reading (test end of February “ELFE” or “Orientierungsarbeiten”) an presenting the results at Comenius meeting in May 2011
• documentation of our testing: “Känguru, OA2, VERA3”
• working on cooperative learning, going on to install cooperating learning methods in all classes at Grundschule Baiersdorf

Mobility in Romania, September 2011

What we saw:

• a big variety of methods of cooperative learning – some were well known, others were new
• discipline in the classroom
• correctness in writing down mathematical terms
• taking care of a precise handwriting
• high standard of reading abilities
• we didn’t see the work with concrete material during the lessons
• we didn’t see much individual support and additional material for gifted pupils
• it was a good help for all of us to follow the content of the lessons with the lessons plan
• hospitality was especially great
• Romanian food was delicious

What we will take home with us:

• new methods like starbursting, gallery method and snowball method , but it is important to combine a special pedagogical content with the right method
• we enjoyed TAVIs workshop and the theoretical informations very much: we will discuss about it!
• many impressions, emotions and feelings
• some extra kilos

Mobility in Norway, May 2012

Workshops – what we saw / what we now know:

• We really enjoyed the welcoming ceremony
• two classes and four teachers were working within rotating stations in four rooms: Now we are very well informed about that
• the children are used to work with the computer
• team-teaching
• every teacher feels responsible for all the other children
• a very quiet and relaxed atmosphere in the classroom
• inclusion is not taking place in every school in Norway
• the children are getting used to disabled children through every days contacts
• adults relational competences: important at Morkved skole, but also already the fundamental basis of everydays work at our school in Germany
• LP-model: the example how to deal with problems is a good and systematic way
• Open classroom-doors and an intensive corporation between the teachers
• Early years literacy program: books for pupils according to their reading competence
• Cooperation between the parents and the teachers (we do that too)

We will take with us:

• We try to improve the cooperation between the teachers
• We will search for books for pupils according to their reading competence

That was especially great:

• All the pupils, teachers and parents are conscious of belonging together
• Great impression on the national day
• We thank you very much for all your engagement, for all the lessons we saw, for all the organization, taxi services, provided food, the nice prepared tables and rooms

IV. Local Activities:

V. Contact:

Grundschule Baiersdorf, Bodenschatzstraße 9, D – 91083 Baiersdorf
Mr Markus Hahn, headmaster and contact person
Telephone: +49 91 33 32 41
Fax: +49 91 33 60 39 48
Email: schulleitung@grundschule-baiersdorf.de
Website: www.grundschule-baiersdorf.de

school building with school yard (pic 1/2), /span>large cornet of cardboard filled with sweets and presents given to children on their first day at school (pic3)

     
above: pupils working during literacy week in summer 2010 (pic 1/2), flea market to buy, sell and change books (pic 3)
below: new classroom books for pupils (pic 1), winners of the reading competition in 2nd grade (pic 2)