Latest News

Early Years has been broadening their knowledge about animals and nature. The children have been learning about the different types of animals living on Earth, such as zoo animals, wild animals, pets and farm animals.
To expand their understanding, the children visited the Kaiserslautern Zoo, where they saw various animals and even had the opportunity to touch some of them, such as rabbits, guinea pigs, lizards, turtles, and snakes. Seeing and feeling these animals helped accentuate the learn...

Last Friday we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Simone Schmidt from the local newspaper, “RHEINPFALZ” to our school in order to have a better understanding of what differentiates our school from the state system. Dr. Schmidt had a chance to meet many of our students during her tour and to sit in on our Year Two German lesson as well as a science lesson with our Year Seven’s.
She was fascinated by the focus of our SBW pedagogic concept – a self-reliant and target orientated learning, ...

Our Learning Partners in Lower Secondary have been studying poetry in their English classes over the past few weeks. This study culminated with the learners celebrating World Poetry Day by reading their poems aloud to an assembled audience of their classmates.
For this event, Students spent the week prior learning about types of poetry, then practicing writing some of their own. Some poems were written in native languages and translated, which was a great exercise in language choice. The focu...

ISW’s first Open Day in it’s wonderful new historical location in Landstuhl proved hugely popular. The level of interest in our Open Day prior to the event already showed a strong level of enthusiasm, with 16 families registered to attend. On the day, these were joined by an additional 11 families. The afternoon timeslot proving popular with families, meaning that their own children were also able to attend.
Our teachers and own Learning Partners put on a wonderful display of interactive ...

Here are a number of examples of our Learning Partners’ art work from the last few weeks. At ISW we give focus to different skills, depending on the ability and age of our students.

Art plays an important role here at ISW as not only does it teach our Learning Partners about art appreciation, but furthermore plays an important role in the development of ta range of skills, whether this be motor skills, language skills, social skills, decision-making, risk-taking or inventiveness.
Dav...

As part of our Wednesday Programme, we spend time with our students developing their “Approaches to Learning” techniques.
Teaching secondary students how to learn with a focus on understanding the learning process is important because it helps them develop their ability to think about their own way of thinking. In educational circles we use the term metacognition, which refers to the process of thinking about one's own cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, and problem-solving. B...

Our Year two’s have been giving focus to STEM subjects over the last few weeks. STEM is a general term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
At ISW we are approaching these areas through different “fun and inspiring” means. In science we are exploring human organs and had two guest speakers, Dr Rory and Dr Sarah, to share their knowledge and to answer all of our questions from our inquisitive learning ...

On Wednesday 8th March, we celebrated International Women’s Day at ISW. International Women's Day is celebrated to commemorate and honour women's accomplishments, raise awareness about gender disparities and discrimination, as well as promote global support for women. This year the theme of International Women’s Day was #EmbraceEquity as shown on the official “International Womens’ Day” website https://www.internati...

Any learner who has ever been in the “Approaches to Learning” tutorials for our Secondary school students here at ISW will be aware of the philosophical idea of “enlightened self-interest.”
Enlightened self-interest is a powerful concept that can help learners understand the importance of making decisions that are both beneficial to themselves and society as a whole. This concept suggests that personal and societal benefits can be aligned, and that individuals can make decisions that ...

For the past couple months, the Year 4 class has been Buddy Reading twice a week to each of the Early Years programs. The benefits of this buddy reading program are profound.
Reading Buddies allow our younger learning partners to see what being fluent looks like as they have a peer model demonstrating reading skills; they can also acquire a positive role model with some intentional pairing. The older learning partners develop social and emotional skills like patience and empathy as they work ...