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Sophia Institute online Art of Teaching Waldorf Program

Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2

Lesson 2

HELP

Waldorf Curriculum

Introduction

A curriculum could be compared to the list of ingredients for a recipe. However good the recipe, the quality of the ingredients is crucial but to make a start the components also need to be available. When they are to hand, the next question is whether the cook is skilled enough to combine and adjust flavors so that each item plays its part without overwhelming the others. An experienced cook may be able to substitute one ingredient for another, even to improvise in such a way that something new is created. But we should not forget that emotion, even love, goes into the preparation of food and this will influence how it is received. And, of course, the expectations, health and culinary experience of the diners also makes a difference.

A curriculum guides an entire learning process. It should not, like a dish into which a chef has thrown every possible taste, explode in an overwhelming, sensation-bursting blowout; it should bring to the table ingredients that are well- balanced, digestible and nutritious, that promote health and stimulate, not stupefy, the senses. Over time, as with diet, a curriculum can introduce items that may not be immediately appealing, stronger tastes or more subtle and complex ones: intellectual chillis, subjects initially sour or astringent, as well as flavors, textures and scents that help to educate the palate. A primary school curriculum, in particular, sets out ingredients for the hors d'oeuvres of lifelong learning.

Of course, many school curriculums share common ingredients, but the distinctive qualities of the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum framework are, we believe, unique:
  • The curriculum unfolds over time, is wide and richly experiential: not merely designed towards narrowly-defined 'achievement', but intended to promote capability for the art of living
  • The curriculum is really only a series of 'indications', as Steiner described them, pointers inviting interpretation and free rendering, i.e. it calls on and encourages the creativity ( or artistry) of teachers
  • The importance of content is fully recognized (young people need certain skills and useful knowledge), but as a creative framework, the Steiner- Waldorf curriculum is embedded within a developing practice and method. The curriculum outline takes its cue from the development of the child: subject, or content, provides a medium for a meeting and collaboration of teacher and learner. Thus, since meaning and knowledge are built over  time, this is co-constructive learning in which understanding unfolds as a process of learning to learn encompassing both students and teacher
  • Subject content and necessary competence are always relative to the child: the curriculum is midwife to the emerging individuality, rather than suit of clothes into which the child must be made to fit
  • The shaping principles of the curriculum are extraordinarily robust and resilient. Many independent educators recognize this fundamental coherence, which has stood the test of time and many generations of children
  • The creative freedom within the Waldorf curriculum framework enables it to be successfully adapted for a variety of settings, languages and cultures. Schools founded on the principles and example of the first Waldorf School (Stuttgart 1919), can be found around the world, including every inhabited continent. What started as a central European curriculum has been modified by applying its essential principles to the education of children in -the Americas, many parts of Africa, the Middle East, India and the Far East, as well as most of the rest of Europe.

Course Outline

Sophia Institute Waldorf Courses: The Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2
Lesson 1 / Waldorf Curriculum / Introduction
Lesson 2 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 1 - 3 (Part 1)
Lesson 3 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 1 - 3 (Part 2)
Lesson 4 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Introduction
Lesson 5 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Reading / Grade 2
Lesson 6 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Math / Grade 2
Lesson 7 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Chemistry / Introduction
Lesson 8 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Physics / Introduction
Lesson 9 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Life Sciences / Introduction
Lesson 10 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Introduction
Lesson 11 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Grades 1 - 8
Lesson 12 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Gardening and Sustainable Living
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Tasks and Assignments for Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2 /AoT22

Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.

Summarize the study material in your own words and add comments and questions relating to grade 2. Use the following format:

A. Class 2/Developmental Profile
B. Class 2/Aims and Objectives


Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.

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Study Material for this Lesson

The Lower School: Classes 1 to 3

Class 1 (age six to seven) 

Developmental profile
 
The seventh year sees the commencement of 'formal' schooling in the Steiner-Waldorf method. During the first seven years, the young child learns to be at home in the physical body,  developing an orientation in space and acquiring  the initial, fundamental developmental capacities  of uprightness, speech and thought. The content  of the child's whole environment is the learning  context; the child 'imitates' the people and the  agencies that are in his/her environment. This  imitating gesture serves to imprint on the child's  will the content and the quality of what is learnt.  In the nursery or kindergarten, experiential  learning, discovery through creative play and  intensive social interaction with peers and  teachers constitute the main educational themes.  Awareness of the complexities of the mother  tongue and number is acquired through informal  play and social interaction. These is not taught  didactically. Around the seventh year the child completes  the process of forming the second dentition  sufficiently for forces that have been concentrated  on growth and physical upbuilding to become  active in developing the facility for independent,  representational, pictorial thinking. 'Formal'  methods of teaching - in literacy, numeracy and  other disciplines - are introduced. The child is  still in a mood of dreamy wholeness, more able to  bring broad awareness than focused concentration  to learning settings. Much learning is continued  through activity and imitation through which  the child receives an image, internalises it, recalls  it, and generalises it into a concept which can be  applied, e.g. the letter 'R' or times 'x' What was  experienced practically, though not conceptually,  in the pre-school years, is raised to a feeling  relationship through mental picturing. The child's  holistic experience of the world is nourished by  archetypal pictures such as those reflected in fairy  tales and well thought out nature stories. 

Aims and objectives 
In this year the children make the important  transition from the kindergarten to school where  they begin formal learning. The children are led  by their teacher to a first experience of the forms,  sounds and sequencing of letters and number  symbols by using pictures, rhymes and stories. The children learn to recognise and memorise  these with lots of practice involving movement,  verses, drawing and writing. During this first year  the class acquires the good habits of classroom  life and work, which will form the basis of their  time together in the Lower School and indeed  for all subsequent learning at school. Cultivating  reverence for nature, care for the environment,  respect for others, interest in the world and a  feeling of confidence in their teachers - these  are the moral aims for Class 1 and the following  classes. The teachers aim to lead the children into  becoming a socially cohesive group who care for  and listen to each other. 


Class 2 (age seven to eight) 

Developmental profile 
The eight-year-old child continues to reside in a  largely self-created psychological landscape, which  derives from the child's faculty for developing  individualised thought-pictures from the realms  of their inner life. The events and experiences of  the outside world are filtered through the child's  imagination and rearranged to accord with the  child's homogenous world-picture. Children  show greater alertness in noting what happens  around them at this age. The mood of wholeness  differentiates into contrasts such as a deeper, more conscious feeling for the religious element  alongside a tempting awareness of the mischievous. The curriculum content for this age serves  to cultivate in the child a sense for the breadth  and richness of the language of the feelings and  emotions. Cognitively the child continues to be at home  in a learning context where pictorial thought  content is to the fore. Concepts are best understood  meaningfully when they are mobile and organic  in quality. The pupils continue to familiarise  themselves with the fundamentals of numeracy  and literacy, while in gross and fine motor  movements - whether through skipping, catching  and throwing a ball, or knitting, crocheting or  flute-playing - they develop a repertoire of skills  and competencies that were initially introduced  in Class 1. Thus the intellect is allowed to awaken  through the artistic approach. In Class 2 pupils, the adult teeth continue to  push through, laterality and dominance are firmly  established and it is during this year that specific  learning needs and difficulties are observable. The  range of abilities within a class becomes clearly  discernible. Much of the confidence and sense of  belonging which Class 2 pupils exude is clearly  due to the fact that the child is building on the  foundations laid in Class 1. 


Aims and objectives 
The initial experiences of the first year are deepened  and enhanced in Class 2. This time is used  primarily for practising and developing all the new  skills from the previous year. Whereas in Class 1  a lot of energy goes into forming the class into a  social cohesive group where children are supported  by the wholeness that they experience, in Class 2  a mood of contrast or polarisation often surfaces, which can be observed in the way children relate  to each other. To help the children go through this  stage they are told stories where contrasting human  qualities and characteristics are found portrayed by  holy people and saints in legends and by animals in  the fables. This class needs strong leadership from  the teachers through consistency of approach and  through the power of imagination. The children  derive direction and form from the images they are  given. 


Class 3 (age eight to nine) 

Developmental profile 

Class 3 in the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum is the  equivalent point of entry into Key Stage Two in  the English National Curriculum guidelines. In  Class 3 the pupils enter their tenth year. At this  point, noticeable physiological, psychological  and cognitive changes take place in the child.  These changes, referred to as the ninth/tenth-year  threshold, may begin as early as 8.5 years or as  late as 9.5 years and may last from between six  months and one year. The child develops a firmer, more balanced  gait; speech sounds are increasingly formed in the  middle of the mouth and articulated more directly  and the child focuses on the 'middle distance: The  child's constitution is noticeably stronger. The  heart increases in size and is capable of receiving  a larger volume of blood and a new breath/blood  pulse ratio is established in the region of one breath  to four pulses. Growth begins to focus more on  the limbs and metabolism and there is a growth  in the breadth of the trunk. In some children this  developmental phase is marked by symptoms  including weariness, tummy and head pains, nausea, dizziness, a variable appetite, asthma,  eczema and disturbed sleep patterns. Steiner talks about a metamorphosis in the  child's feeling life. At seven years, there is a  metamorphosis in the child's thinking. In Class 3,  the child experiences a duality in perceiving the  world, in his or her feeling. A process begins  to unfold through which the child experiences  with increasing strength, a sense of objectivity,  alongside growing subjectivity. Subjective inner  experience and objective world reality stand at  odds within the child's soul. Questioning, doubt,  aloneness and a dawning tendency to criticise  are emergent features in the child's psychological  landscape. Sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little  later, but for most children a very significant  step in self-awareness occurs during this year. It  is experienced as an awareness of being separate  from the surroundings both human and physical,  and of a distinction between an inner and an  outer world. Contrasting emotions of the sense  of loss of the previous unity with the world and a  sense of wonder at seeing the world in a new way  often lead to confusion and insecurity. These can  be expressed in marked changes of behaviour that  vary considerably according to temperament and  personality. The images of the Old Testament, its laws and  guidance foster inner security during the unsettled  period and the main-lesson blocks on farming,  building, etc. help the children to engage in a new  relationship with their surroundings. 

Aims and objectives 
As the Class 3 children become more aware of  themselves and the physical environment in which  they live, a new interest in the practical, material world emerges. After practising their literacy and  numeracy skills in Class 2 they can now apply  these in a wide range of everyday situations which  require measuring or weighing, solving simple  problems and the writing of simple formal letters. By involving the whole class in the experience  of working together in building, farming and other  examples of work projects, the class teacher helps  to transform the initial feeling of separateness from  the physical world into a feeling of responsibility for  it. It is important for the teachers to lay down clear  guidelines for behaviour and to give the children  confidence in the authority of the teachers, not  only the class teacher. The children should have  a strong sense of the social unity of the class, an  experience of 'we.'
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