grades
A CLOSER LOOK: Grades One, Two & Three in a Waldorf School
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The First Grade
The morning begins for the first graders with the group recitation of a poem. After the morning exercises, the children go on to what is known as the main lesson period, which occupies the first two hours of the morning, and is devoted to a single subject for two to four weeks. The first main lesson subject is painting and drawing until the children have a facility in handling crayons, paints, and paint-brush, as writing, reading, numbers, nature study and handwork are all taught in ways involving color and design.
Letter writing is presented in a lively pictorial way with the help of fairy stories. “S: may be a fairy tale snake sinuously slithering through the grass on some secret errand; the motion of the sounds becomes dynamic. The teacher shows on the blackboard drawing how the letter is embedded in the picture, how perhaps the W is hiding in the drawing of the waves. The children draw the letter in the air with their hands and on the floor as a large pattern to move on with their feet; their whole being participates in the writing experience. Then the children make their own pictures of waves, and then W’s, creating an illustrated book as each letter is presented.
When the children have mastered the sounds and can name and write them, they are ready for their first reading experience. The episodes of a story are illustrated by a series of pictures drawn on the blackboard by the teacher and in notebooks by the children. The class composes short descriptive sentences to accompany each picture. The wording is then copied from the teacher’s model. Through these activities the children learn word and sentence structure without conscious effort and have the joy of creating their own illustrated books for reading material.
Exploration of numbers begins with solving riddles such as, “What is one thing in the world that there can never be more than one of†(Me!) So the characteristics of one, two, three, etc. are explored in the children’s inner experience and in nature. Children take delight in counting, especially when the strong, rhythmic choral-speaking of the numbers is accompanied by stepping and clapping. Through activities the children befriend themselves with the form and movement of the number element, and then begin to practice the four arithmetical processes, always proceeding from wholes to parts.
Nature study takes the form of an experience of hearing the world speak, talking of life and its adventures. The child learns the true facts of nature, but always in vivid, dramatic, story form.
Handwork serves several important purposes. Knitting is an indispensable first-grade activity as there exists a close relationship between finger movement, speech and thinking. Modeling is done with honey-fragrant beeswax. Music periods are devoted to singing and playing the pentatonic recorder flute, which also helps develop finger dexterity.
The imitative genius of early childhood is still active in the first-grade child making this an ideal time to learn through hearing and speaking two foreign languages, chosen for the appropriateness to the time and the school’s location.
Eurhythmy, an art of movement developed by Dr. Steiner, is taught by specially trained teachers. Exercises affect the children’s grace of movement, sensitize hands and fingers, heighten drawing and modeling ability, relieve strain and tension, and stimulate musical, poetic and dramatic senses.
Grades Curriculum
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Each subject studied should contribute to the development of a well-balanced individual.
In the Waldorf grades, the school day begins with a long, uninterrupted lesson. One subject is the focus; the class deals with it in-depth each morning for several weeks at a time. This long main lesson—which may well run for two hours—allows the teacher to develop a wide variety of activities around the subject at hand. In the younger grades, lively rhythmic activities get the circulation going and bring children together as a group; they recite poems connected with the main lesson, practice tongue twisters to limber up speech, and work with concentration exercises using body movements.
After the day's lesson, which includes a review of earlier learning, students record what they learned in their lesson books. Following recess, teachers present shorter "run-through" lessons with a strongly recitational character. Foreign languages are customarily taught from first grade on, and these lend themselves well to these later morning periods. Afternoons are devoted to lessons in which the whole child is active: eurythmy (artistically guided movement to music and speech), handwork, or gym, for example. Thus the day has a rhythm that helps overcome fatigue and enhances balanced learning.
The curriculum at a Waldorf school can be seen as an ascending spiral: the long lessons that begin each day, the concentrated blocks of study that focus on one subject for several weeks. Physics, for example, is introduced in the sixth grade and continued each year as a main lesson block until graduation.
As the students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject. It is as though each year they come to a window on the ascending spiral that looks out into the world through the lens of a particular subject. Through the main-lesson spiral curriculum, teachers lay the groundwork for a gradual vertical integration that deepens and widens each subject experience and, at the same time, keeps it moving with the other aspects of knowledge.
Foreign Language at an Early Age
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Waldorf schools offer foreign language instruction beginning in 1st grade. Prairie Moon will do so as well. In the early years, foreign language teachers teach children nursery rhymes and songs to get them to be familiar with the sounds of the language - speaking/singing then.
Here is what a recent report in the Lawrence Journal World had to say about teaching foreign languages.
Foreign Languages Education Would Strengthen US
