Our school has made great efforts in recent years to reduce the number of students who leave school early and to increase the academic success rate of our students.

For several years, our institution has been providing individual support to our students and has taken many different measures to ensure their greatest possible success at school.

Precourses and preliminary classes, which are specially designed to combat difficulties in the core subjects German, English and mathematics, can be attended at our school before entering the 11th grade. In addition, several additional courses have been organized outside of class especially for the preparation for the final exams, which were held unpaid by teachers.

In order to improve the competence of our teachers with regard to the individual support of our students in class, Professor Diethelm Wahl, co-founder of SOL (Self Organized Learning) from the University of Weingarten, was invited twice to present student-activating teaching methods such as partner interview, advanced organizer, traffic light method and learning pace at our school. This year a mentoring program for students is organized for the first time. This program will try to support students who have particular difficulties in setting goals and structuring their lives. In order to get individual feedback from students during the lessons, we have held several training sessions on the use of Googleforms and on Plickers, a software that can also be used very easily to get an opinion or feedback from students or to conduct a survey.

Furthermore, our school participated last years in the research and model project BekoAkt of the Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg on the cognitive activation and enhancement of mental performance of students through movement.

Currently our school is implementing in a KA1 project about new methodologies and individual support in the classroom.

a) "How we avoid dropouts in school - the way of Finland in Joensuu

With partly unusual methods and also a lot of creativity, the Finnish school system has developed into one of the best school systems in Europe. Especially the problem of individual support for students with difficulties at school has been solved in an excellent way. Therefore, this visit will offer concrete ideas and advice on how we can support our students even more effectively and reduce the drop-out rate at our school as well as in the partner schools.

b) Gamification and Game-Based Learning in Corfu

Game-Based Learning provides with various software programs innovative ways to improve skills such as multitasking, critical thinking, risk taking and other 21st century skills.

Our experience with the problem of early school leaving and the insights and our knowledge about innovative student-activating teaching methods will contribute to this project.

The key persons involved in this project have contributed significantly to the school development process at our school:

Christian Altmann (teacher of Math and Physics) is head of the working group „Individual Support“ at our Fachoberschule, which tries to optimize the individual support of students. He has attended several training courses on this topic, including trainings about cooperative learning and self-organized learning from Professor Diethelm Wahl from the University of Weingarten.

Martina Thienemann (teacher of English and Spanish) participated last year at a training about student-activating teaching methods at the Erasmusplus-Project „Europe – Let’s stay together“.

Maria Obermeier (teacher of Math and Economy) is member of the working group „Individual Support“ with a lot of creative ideas - teacher training "How we avoid dropouts in school - the way of Finland in Joensuu.