Our School as a Focus School

Grundschule Wirges is a focus school. This means that children with and without special educational needs learn together at our school and shape their school day together. The individual development of each child is at the center of everything we do.

A focus school creates conditions in which children with different learning requirements can be taught and supported together. The goal is to provide each child with the support they need for their personal and academic development. Different abilities, learning speeds, and needs are understood as a natural part of learning together.

Further information about focus schools and how inclusion is handled in Rhineland-Palatinate can be found on the website of the Ministry of Education: https://bildung.rlp.de/inklusion/

Learning Together – Growing Individually

In keeping with our school motto, we as a focus school understand diversity as an enrichment. Our goal is to recognize each child with their individual abilities and needs, to support them appropriately, and to give them the opportunity to learn at their own pace, discover their own strengths, and experience learning success.

Close cooperation between children, parents, teachers, and the entire educational team is particularly important to us. Together, we create the conditions for each child to follow their own learning path and develop to the best of their ability.

Learning and Being Supported Individually

At Grundschule Wirges, every child should have the opportunity to learn at their individual performance level and at their own learning pace. Different support services, materials, and learning tools are available for this purpose. This way, learning content can be conveyed in different ways and access to learning can be individually adapted.

Children with special educational needs are taught at our school both inclusively/integratively in the classroom and additionally in small groups. In these groups, learning content can be worked through and deepened at a slower pace and in various ways. This is not just about providing extra time for learning, but also about giving children the opportunity to experience success and build confidence in their own abilities through calm, patience, and appropriate methods.

The class teachers work closely with the school's educational team. Through this cooperation, the individual strengths, needs, and developmental steps of the children can be considered together, and appropriate support services can be developed.

Support Planning as a Shared Process

For each child with special educational needs, an individual support plan is created. This documents the respective support needs, goals, and content of the support. Support planning is not a one-time document, but rather a continuous and flexible process.

Support measures are regularly discussed in the educational team and reviewed in terms of their goals, content, and implementation. The further support is always based on the abilities and skills that the child has already acquired, as well as on their further individual development. Support plans are regularly updated and discussed together with parents.

In this way, we want to ensure that support does not adhere to a rigid concept, but rather is based on the actual learning progress and needs of each individual child.

Individual Performance Assessment

Performance assessment also takes into account the special learning requirements of children with special educational needs. Particularly in the subjects German and Mathematics, feedback on achieved learning goals is generally provided in verbal form. This allows individual learning progress to be described and appreciated in a more differentiated way.

In subjects such as Physical Education, Music, and Art, where the child with special educational needs has the same learning goals as the other students, performance assessment can also take the form of grades.

A child with special educational needs does not repeat a grade due to achieving or not achieving certain learning goals, but continues to learn together with their learning group and remains in their class. Individual support continues to be provided according to their development.

Transition to Other Schools

After primary school, children with special educational needs have different paths available to them. Depending on their individual developmental and learning level, further education can continue, for example, at a secondary school with a focus school section or at a special school.

Possible secondary schools include, for example, the Anne-Frank-Realschule plus in Montabaur as a focus school or the Katharina-Kasper-Schule Wirges and Berggartenschule in Siershahn as special schools.

To prepare transitions to these schools well, Grundschule Wirges maintains close partnerships. Mutual classroom visits and joint events and invitations allow children and educational professionals to get to know the other school. This builds trust, makes the decision about the further educational path easier, and can support a later school change.