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Sophia Institute online Art of Teaching Waldorf Program

Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2

Lesson 8

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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    Submission Form for AoT28

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Tasks and Assignments for Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2 /AoT28

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

1. Study the material provided and look up other resources as needed and appropriate.
2. Create examples of curriculum that addresses the learning method and content appropriate for the young child in grade 2. Curriculum examples should include outlines and goals, activities, circle/games, stories, and illustrations/drawings: Create 2 examples for grade 2.
3. Additionally submit comments and questions, if any.

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

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Study Material for this Lesson

​Physics/Introduction/Kindergarten/Lower Grades

The main aim of science teaching is to grasp the  core of science that is relevant to the human being  as well as presenting it in an imaginative way to  appeal to the emotions. This means developing a  faculty of observation for the real gestures of nature.  Indeed science lessons begin at the age when the  child gains an ability to see the world causally  and they must serve to cultivate this thinking  faculty. Indeed this can occur in such a way that  a qualitative thinking is developed that continually  considers the changing connection between the  human being and the world. 

Through the limiting of science to size, number  and weight (as Galileo did), that is, to the purely  quantitative, the question of the being of natural  phenomena has been lost. During the rise of the  modern age, man began to ask how he could  control nature, and finally to see this control as  what is essential. This trend has been connected  with the development of causal and theoretical  model views, because it is only possible to have  absolute mastery over natural processes when you  can explain them causally. If this is not initially  possible, phenomena are reduced conceptually to  explainable processes. 

The danger is that these concepts of imposed  quantitative and particle-like models of nature are taken up by pupils as objective reality. From this  experience for example a curriculum formulated in  1977 already has this warning: 

It is essential to use models which are not too  perfect when beginning teaching. There must  be elementary phenomena which cannot  be explained by the models used. Only by  this means do the pupils altogether gain the  insight into the principle of the insufficiency  of models.

What is more valuable from a pedagogical point  of view are however the following principles: 

* 1. In place of models which cannot be  experienced, should be thought processes  which have their basis in real perception. 
* 2. Initially an emotional connection to the  phenomena must be awakened in the child.  This must then be raised from the subjective  level in order that the intrinsic qualities can be  grasped in cognitive activity. 
* 3. Thereby science teaching in the Waldorf  school takes its departure from the sense  qualities. Indeed it can in this respect even be  described as an extremely sense-orientated  method. This plays an important role and has a hygienic-pedagogical aspect. The lively joy  in cognition is healing for the student aged  between twelve and fourteen years, and can  even possibly lighten the tendency towards all-  too-strong self-pre-occupation. 

The phenomenological world view, the creative  forming of thought connections with natural  events requires, however, even more. It should  not only be done out of an honest pedagogical  endeavour towards a human-centred acquisition  of knowledge. Rather it involves a epistemological  discussion of the basic ideas of the empirical  method of science. 

The active participation of the individual person  in the world characterises Rudolf Steiner's theory  of knowledge. In his basic books on this subject  A Theory of Knowledge and The Philosophy of  Freedom', Rudolf Steiner described the connection  between sense impression and thinking. 

Our whole being functions in such a way,  that it flows in reality towards the elements of  each thing observed from two sides; from the  side of perception and from that of thinking. 

Science teaching in the Waldorf school seeks to  do justice to this basic rule.

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