We organize it every year – our project on »Writing Seminar Papers«. It is a rather ambitious attempt to introduce our 12th-form students to methods and techniques of writing scholarly and scientific seminar papers. Skills to be learnt include outlining, library and data bank research, word processing techniques and layout principles.

The basis of the project is the Seminar Paper Manual compiled and regularly updated by FSG staff. Now the model of a seminar paper for Mathematics and the Natural Sciences has been uploaded to complement the manual. We hope it will be of help to those of our students who have never before held a seminar paper in their hands.

A drizzle now and then did not keep FSG students and staff from congregating in our school yard on Monday, January 8, to celebrate the beginning of our centenary year. In one of the dry spells, a giant photograph of pupils and teachers was taken.

100 FSG mascots were also part of the event. The GRP figurines were accompanied by students in yellow t-shirts grouped in a way to form the figure »100«. Needless to say that the mascots are each 100 centimetres tall.

All 100 mascots were sold off to sponsors within less than two months. Each mascot will be painted individually by pupils according to sponsors’ wishes.

Two Steini mascots had already been painted.

Boys and girls of forms 7 a und b created these highly expressive »singing clay heads« in Herr Varga’s Arts lessons.

The exhibition was shown until the end of December. Too bad you couldn’t come – but you can still have a look here.

While you’re at it: Have a look at the new pages of our Arts Department.

Mathematics teacher Ms Ulla Schmidt reports:

The second round took place on Saturday, November 18, in nearby Unna.Pupils from all over the county met to solve the intricate maths problems.

On Monday, December 4, the winners among the more than 150 participants were given their diplomas Among them were fifth-grader Carolin Kröger, sixth-grader Jan Mittag, seventh-grader Alexander Coers and tenth-grader Leo Ostrovski. Jonas Dickel of Form 6d made third place. Prizes included diplomas and book vouchers.Congrats to all participants – it is quite a feat to get that far!

17 teams participated in this year’s recreational tournament for alumni on December 2, 2006. That was the second-largest turnout in the history of the event. It was prepared and organized by Herr Stemmerich, who also wrote the report to commemorate it.

… when on Friday, December 1, Mr and Mrs Willems, our cafeteria owners, put in their last day of work after fifteen years at FSG. Innumerable the sandwiches, rolls, meat balls, potato salads, soups and waffles they had made in that decade and a half, uncountable the legions of bottles of soft drinks they had handed over the counter of their little shop and cafeteria in the basement of our historic main building.

With all-day schooling coming up in the near future, a new, larger cafeteria had become necessary. Mr and Mrs Willems took the opportunity to bow out – to the regret of pupils and teachers and non-teaching staff. But after fifteen years, who was there to niggle?

And all the cafeteria customers of the last fifteen years lined up to say thank you and good-bye…

When on Monday, December 4, the new FSG cafeteria opened under the direction of Mr Barry Mohomed, Mrs Willems was there during the first week to help out with her long experience.

Good luck, Mr and Mrs Willems, we hope you will not miss FSG too much!

Everybody and his brother, almost. We are always surprised at the number of visitors and the many different places in the world they come from. In November, there were 2571 visitors, an average of almost 86 per day.

Thanks for coming by.

On Friday, November 24, our »FSG Book Recommendation Lottery« ended. 121 reading suggestions by boys and girls from 5th to 13th grade had been handed in until then. One of them came from Yasemin Sezgin, Form 8c.

Yasemin recommended the novel Timu’s Long Flight by Paul Kustermans

because it tells us about Egypt’s culture, history and tradition. But Timu’s Long Flight is not a non-fiction book. It is a story about a boy who is hit on the head and loses his memory as a consequence. When he wakes up, the first thing he sees is a crocodile that is about to kill him. More or less by chance, the boy is saved by a man named Kafran.They begin to travel on the Nile.Timu – as the man calls the boy he has saved – repeatedly escapes death by no more than a hair’s breadth. Soon the two, who have become good friends, find out that the »accidents« do not occur by chance.They flee. Their escape also takes them to Babylon. There Timu gets to know the girl Anuk – and falls in love with her. Soon the three resume their journey. But the attempts on Timu’s life do not end, and he still does not know his real name. Finally the three arrive in Thebes, and suddenly Timu knows who he is: He is Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But who is the man currently on the throne, and does Timu really want to live as pharaoh and give up his life of adventure, his friendship with Kafran and his love for Anuk in exchange for the throne?

It’s fascinating to see that in October our school website attracted visitors from Europe, North America, Asia and Australia:

Speaking for the other boys and girls in his former Computer Science Elective Course, Kai Mowinkel (now of Form 10c) writes, »What you see on the right is the index page of our joint html project last term. It was intended as an add-on to our official school website. We are a bit proud of the fact that we did not use an html editor but rather wrote everything in raw html code.«

To access the pages, click on the picture!

At the beginning of November FSG presented »Steini«, our school mascot of the last 15-plus years, to the public.

»Steini« was designed by FSG students Fiete Stegers and Björn Odendahl in the late 1980’s for the then FSG student magazine. »Steini« soon endeared himself with FSG’s students at large and with parents and teachers, too.

For our Centennial, Johannes Loer, son of Herr Loer, our teacher for Religious Education and Educational Science, transformed the drawings into a sculpture that is now to be cast in an edition of 100 copies that will be sold off to friends and sponsors of FSG at 300 Euros apiece – extra donations on top are welcome!

The casts will be made of a high-grade plastic material and will be painted individually according to the wishes of the future owners.

More information and more pictures are available at our special Centennial website.

See our list of sponsors and donors!

19 boys and girls qualified for the regional round of the 46th »Mathematics Olympics« 2007 on November 18 in nearby Unna:

Patrick Brandt (Form 5a) Carolin Kröger (Form 5a) Julian Weischenberg (Form 5a) Tarik Ayana (Form 5b) Vanessa Fritsche (Form 5b) Moritz Meeh (Form 5b) Lena Dufentester (Form 5c) Vivien Liedtke (Form 5) Lina Ladicha (Form 5d) Stefan Schütte (Form 5d)

Robin Krawutschke (Form 5d) Jan Mittag (Form 6a) Jonas Dickel (Form 6d) Paul Dorn (Form 6c) Patrick Strauch (Form 6c) Alexander Coers (Form 7a) Hannah Mittag (Form 8b) Leo Ostrovski (Form 10a) Christoph Schröder (Honours Course, Grade 13)

We all wish them good luck for the next round.

On Friday, November 3, our Jubilee Lottery on behalf of our 100th school anniversary 2007 ended after two weeks. The idea of the lottery was to collect stamped envelopes in which to send the invitations to our three thousand alumni. 1600 envelopes were handed in. Anybody who handed in one or more envelopes took part in the lottery and had a chance to win many prizes, among which

• a professional photo shooting
• a weekend trip to »Disneyland Paris« for two
• an iPod »nano«

stood out. The prizes had been donated by sponsors in Lünen.

On Friday, October 27, the boys and girls of forms 5c and 5d had a special guest in their Biology lessons: Fritzi, a border terrier bitch of three and a half years of age. Biology teacher Ms Hecker had organized Fritzi’s appearance as part of a teaching unit on quadrupeds.

Fritzi did not mind all the attention and willingly showed her fangs, her paws, her fur, her tail and her teats. Towards the end of the second lesson, however, she would have preferred to play another round of her favourite ball game.

41 alumni came together on June 9, 2006 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their »Abitur«, Germany’s final exam allowing »Gymnasium« graduates to take up studies at university. Several alumni had returned to Luenen from distant cities or even from abroad, two alumni living in the USA were unable to come. Now, one of the FSG graduates has sent in a report of the reunion party.

In August, Célia Baudin and Christina Mittag, Constance Vaast and Larissa Schwedes, Anne-Solveig Touzé and Carina Reinke (from left to right) spent a lot of time with each other because the French girls were taking part in a homestay programme initiated by French teacher Ms Haverkamp. Célia and Anne-Solveig spent three weeks in Luenen, Constance two weeks. On the last August weekend they returned home.

What need one know about riding a bus? Everything, if one is a new girl or boy at FSG.

It all begins with safe waiting procedures at bus stops and goes well beyond that. On Wednesday, August 23, two flesh-and-blood police constables from Dortmund’s Accident Prevention Squad showed our new boys and girls how to use municipal buses safely.

For that purpose, a 20-ton articulated bus took two fifth forms to a large car park near Cappenberg Pond, on Luenen’s northern outskirts.

There, our fifth-formers were told that a bus has got enough dead angles to hide two dozen of their kind from the bus driver.

An awkward silence and some rather sheepish faces proved that the point of the demonstration had not been lost on the boys and girls.

Stephanie Van Sant and Kathryn Mahl are among the students from Webster Groves, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, who are currently reciprocating the visit by 18 »Stein« students to »Webster Groves High School« last autumn.

FSG parents contributed greatly to our new schoolbook management system. On the first Wednesday, Thursday and Friday after the summer holidays they stuck hundreds of bar code labels on schoolbooks, entered the individual book codes into a computer input mask and handed out the books to classes.

Under the new system, a book can easily be traced back to the pupil who was loaned it. Also, it will be much easier and quicker now at the end of the school year to return the books to the inventory.

The boys and girls of our new fifth forms used their first Friday at school to get to know the school grounds. Take Form 5d, for example: They oscillated between their classroom, the school hall, their science rooms, the gymnasium, our cafeteria, and, well, the toilets, too. Their »guardian angels« Karolina and Katharina (in the photograph on the extreme right and left) led the boys and girls around. But before that, a photograph under our circle of plane trees was mandatory.

... our 119 new boys and girls were introduced to FSG on Thursday, August 10.

Shortly after 8 a.m. there was a brief service. At 10 o’clock our school hall was packed to the last seat when Head Teacher Dr Czischke and Herr Graas, the organizer of our Trial Forms 5 and 6, welcomed the new boys and girls and their parents…

… and introduced to them their new form teachers. Music and dance performances livened up the event.

From the third period onwards, the new boys and girls came together with their form teachers to be given their new schedules, to learn about our fancy »FSG binder« (in Dr Czischke’s hands, see photograph) and to meet their »guardian angels«, i.e. girls from our eighth forms who will stand by the new boys and girls during their first months at FSG.

On the first day of the school year, Head Teacher Dr Czischke welcomed a group of students from Webster Groves (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) and the teachers accompanying them, Ms Jenny Wilson and Ms Karuna Huening (extreme left and right). The boys and girls, who had been hosts to FSG students in the autumn of 2005, had already visited Heidelberg and Neuschwanstein Castle and began their exchange programme in Lünen that day. The programme of events in Lünen was drawn up by Ms Thomale and our former teaching trainee Herr Knauf.

…when on Wednesday, August 9, at ten a.m. school started:

• for the school’s managment team, who had to allot forms and courses and to prepare a timetable, in mid-July
• for a number of teachers on Thursday, August 3, with preparations for pupils’ move-up re-examinations (written examinations on Monday, August 7, and oral exams on Tuesday, August 8)
• for all teachers with a staff meeting on Tuesday, August 8.