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Sophia Institute online Art of Teaching Waldorf Program

Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 6

Lesson 3

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 6
Lesson 1 / Waldorf Curriculum / Introduction
Lesson 2 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 4 - 6 (Part 1)
Lesson 3 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 4 - 6 (Part 2)
Lesson 4 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Introduction
Lesson 5 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Reading / Grade 6
Lesson 6 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Math / Grade 6
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 6 /AoT63

Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Use additional study material as wanted/needed. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.

Summarize the study material in your own words and add comments and questions. Create 1 week of (main lesson) curriculum for class 6, using the following format:

A. Class 6/Developmental Profile
B. Class 6/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 4 to 6​

Curriculum in Classes 4 to 6 

In Classes 4 and 5, when the pupils are ten and  eleven years old, they enter a period that can  justifiably be called the heart of childhood. They  have left early childhood behind them but have  not yet entered puberty. The intensification of  self-consciousness, which began during the  ninth year, continues into Class 4 and the teacher  increasingly experiences the power of the group  of young individualities emerging in the class.  Each child appears as a strong personality with  distinctive gifts, talents and challenges but this  is still essentially childlike in its manifestation.  The children still respond well to imaginative stories and well-formed rhythms in teaching. The  teaching needs to be challenging and lively if it is  to engage the strengthening will of the children.  Physiologically the self-activity of the child strives  to bring about a harmonisation of the relationship  of the breathing to the blood circulation. 

At the latest by Class 4 the children enter into a  psychological situation that differs from that of the  preceding three years. Their relationship to nature  and to their fellow human beings has become more  distant. The 'world of which they are a part' has  become 'the world that is around them'. As Steiner  put it: 

The time after the completed ninth year  is particularly important because it is a  Significant turning point in the children's  lives. Questions dart into their consciousness,  you could say whole heaps of questions, all  of which relate to differentiating on the  feeling level between themselves and their  environment, also between themselves and  their teacher ... These questions need not  necessarily be expressed, but they are there.  In their feeling life the children question  whether the teacher is skilful in the way he  leads his life, above all whether the teacher  has a firm foothold in life, whether he knows  what he wants; above all they have a sure  sense of the overall situation of the teacher's  soul.' 

Having lived hitherto in a totality of space and  time, the children now want to begin to structure  this totality in their thinking. They do this by  differentiating both in space and in time. 'Before'  and 'after' are more strongly felt and also related  to one another and this reflects the child's growing  ability to form independent mental images and recall them at will. Cognitively, the children are  more able to understand questions and phenomena  in a realistic and reasoning way, though the pictorial  element in thinking remains important. Combined  with greater capacity for empathetic feeling, this  new clarity of thinking enables the cultivation of  notions of personal responsibility and reasoned  sense of right and wrong. 

Around the age of eleven, the child attains a  certain ease and grace of movement which is co-ordinated, balanced and harmonious. By Class 6  (age eleven to twelve) the children begin to undergo  significant physical change commensurate with the  onset of puberty. Growth usually begins to express  itself in the skeleton, which becomes longer and  heavier, leading to a tendency to awkward and  angular movements. 

These important physical changes are  accompanied by a growing interest in the factual  and sense perceptible world on the one hand and  a psychological turbulence on the other. By about  the twelfth year (Class 6) the moment will have  arrived when the children no longer merely ask  about causes, but actively look for them or actually  create them in order to observe what effect they  have. This applies equally to social relationships. 

The trust shown up until now by children  towards their teachers is now put to the test  through challenging, silly and sometimes sharply  critical behaviour. Peer values become increasingly  significant in children's development, leading  often to clearly distinguishable roles within the  group, including leaders, bullies, victims, jokers,  those who are deemed 'cool' and those who are  marginalised. 

The teachers must establish a new relationship  to the class, one which can deal with the mood  swings of the children and which can assert a new  'lawful' authority. Rules and parameters with clear consequences are essential at this age, though the  teacher will also need to be able to defuse tension  with humour. 

In language lessons (both mother tongue and  foreign) a new consciousness needs to be awakened  for different linguistic qualities. 

Before their ninth year children have an  entirely emotional relationship to language.  However, they would be unable to develop an  awareness of themselves if we did not bring  an element of thought into language. That is  why it is so important to bring in the thought  element by means of grammatical rules,  sensibly taught, mainly in the mother tongue  but then also perhaps in a foreign language.  However, the language must be learnt before  the rules are introduced.' 

For foreign languages, writing and reading in  those languages must precede this. 

The verb tenses bring an experience and  understanding of how time is expressed in  language. In English lessons the children learn  about how the various parts of speech express  different qualities and this responds to their  increasing variety of inner experience. Declension,  sentence structure, punctuation, prepositions etc.  help articulate different standpoints and varying  relationships, while distinguishing between  direct and indirect speech or active and passive  modes defines the speaker's own position (Class  5). In Class 6 comes the added facet of reality to  be gained through using the subjunctive mode to  indicate the difference between wish, intention and  fact. Exercises in writing business letters brings in  a further aspect of the real world and cultivates a  sense for appropriate use of language in different  contexts. The corresponding phase in foreign languages involves conversation exercises on  situations in everyday life. 

Music lessons now also involve the 'grammar  of music: Linked to what is going on in arithmetic  lessons in which fractions are introduced in Class 4,  note lengths and time value are now added to the  notation begun in Class 3. The intrinsic laws of  music are not studied theoretically but by playing  music. The relationship of the subsidiary keys to  the main key leads to the discovery of the cadenza.  In keeping with the need to link everything to the  level of the children's emotional development the  difference between major and minor is practised  by using the major and minor third (this refers  particularly to Class 6). In keeping with this,  singing and playing in unison now leads to rounds  in several parts and then to simple polyphony. 

Eurythmy lessons must be seen in connection  with language and music. In speech eurythmy the  various grammatical forms are practised while  in tone eurythmy the scales and (in Class 6) the  major and minor moods are worked on. Stepping  in different rhythms and beats links to arithmetic  through the values of the notes, while moving in  geometrical forms supports the introduction of  geometry that begins in Classes 5 and 6. 

In the arithmetic lessons of Class 1 the unit  was taken as the basis from which to experience  the different numbers. Now, in Class 4, a similar  principle comes into play again. The unit, the  totality, splits up, but the parts have a regulated  relationship with the whole through fractions. In  the music lessons analogous discoveries are made.  Fractions not only depict a 'spatial' differentiation  but can also be comprehended in a dynamic and  temporal way. Via decimals (Class 5) the path leads  towards a preparation for logical, causal thinking,  to percentages and thus to the first mathematical  discovery of causes.

Form drawing now gains a strongly constructive  component in intertwining, interlacing ribbon  motifs, particularly in Celtic knotwork and patterns.  Beauty now combines with accuracy. Attentiveness  and alertness are required. In Class 5 form drawing  includes freehand geometrical drawing, initially  without compasses or ruler. Having done form  drawing for four years, the children have gained  a thorough sense of the circle, the straight line  and the angle. These components are now taken  separately and drawn as accurately as possible.  Only once hand and eye have had enough practice  is compass geometry introduced in Class 5 to draw  shapes and in Class 6 to construct geometric forms. 

Cause and effect can be experienced in the  observation of the play of light and shadow in  chiaroscuro or black-and-white shaded drawing.  In Class 6 this subject complements painting with  watercolours. As with free-hand geometry, the  children search for and feel exactly how a shadow  falls before shading it in charcoal. 

Thus geometry emerges out of form drawing,  and drawing with charcoal emerges from painting  with watercolours. In each case the process is one of  continuity. In the same way the practical experience  of nature and human work in farming and building  lessons is now extended and differentiated both  spatially and temporally. Local studies lead on to  geography and history on the one hand, and to  nature studies on the other. From Class 6 onwards  the latter also involves the practical aspect of  gardening. 

In local studies (Class 4) the children learn  about the geography and above all the economic  situation of their immediate surroundings. They  discover how much depends on the type of soil and  the lie of the land and learn what influences have  been brought to bear during the course of history.  The children also learn to make the transition from pictorial drawing to symbolic representation in  map-making. When regional geography begins  in Class 5, the whole country is studied, including  its geographical and economic relationships with  other countries. Finally a brief view of the whole  world is given. Even at this age it is very important  to go into the social aspects of geography both with  regard to how the different peoples live together  and with regard to caring responsibly for the  environment. 

Astronomy also appears on the horizon! At this  stage the approach is phenomenological, i.e. the  children study what they can actually observe with  their own eyes, especially the relationship between  the earth and sun but also including the phases  of the lunar cycle and visible constellations. Now  the children come to understand that what they  observe in the sky has a direct influence on the  climate and vegetation all over the earth. 

In the language lessons, mother tongue and  foreign, the children have been writing business  letters in the former and practising conversation  in the latter. The same principle is brought to  bear in geography, where, on the one hand, they  study how human beings live together and, on  the other, experience how we are all economically  interdependent. In English the children learn how  to write accurate descriptions of what they observe,  as well as imaginative accounts of historical  episodes they have heard about. In both the mother  tongue and foreign languages there is an emphasis  on accuracy of meaning through the correct use of  words and declensions. 

In nature study the animal kingdom is taken  first because of its closeness to the human being.  This aspect is emphasised through a comparison  between the human being and various animal  types. From an anatomical point of view, the  human being is generalised and unspecialised, whereas each animal species has specific, one-  sided anatomically based skills that have often  developed at the cost of others, e.g. one particular  sense, specialised locomotion and so on, involving  specific organs (eyes, nose, teeth, limbs, etc.), The  children learn about animals grouped by their chief  characteristics in this regard, such as species with  powerful metabolic systems (herbivores), animals  that hunt and use their claws, strength and teeth  (carnivores such as the big cats), animals with  highly developed visual abilities (birds of prey)  and so on. Human beings potentially have all these  capacities, but each remains in balance with all the  others, so that they can be seen as both synthesis  and archetype of the whole animal kingdom. The  children discover that humans have what animals  are. We have technology and culture whereas they  have specialised anatomy. 

In plant studies the evolutionary path from  lower to higher plants relates to the developmental  stages of the child and young person. The sequence  of plant forms growing ever more differentiated  and expressive provides a visible image of the  children's psychological development as more and  more capacities develop. The children are shown  how plants relate to the earth and sun, how they  change during the course of the year and, in broad  outlines, how they are distributed over the whole  globe. In a manner comprehensible to children  (but not in a childish manner!) the two important  themes of evolution and ecology are thus present as  an inner thread running through biology from the  start. In nature studies in Class 6 the children enter  for the first time the world of mineralogy in a block  period devoted to this subject. 

In the history lessons the children step out of  the immediate present and imagine time processes  in a concrete way with the help of vivid images  from the past. The time for this falls between the eleventh and twelfth years. Psychologically the  children are ready to move from myth and legend  to history and biography. In Class 5, history  involves giving the children historical images  of Asian and Middle Eastern peoples i.e. the  culture of Ancient India, China, Ancient Persia,  Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. The culture of  these early civilisations is characterised through  story material. With Greece myth becomes  history. In Class 6 they are introduced to Roman  history and the Middle Ages. They learn about  cultural changes throughout history, e.g. what  changes were brought about for Europe through  contact with Islam. Here again the aspect of  causality is taken into account. Europe lagged far  behind the Orient. Then, thanks in part to contact  with Islam and the East, new technological and  industrial progress developed in European towns,  particularly in Italy. The monastic settlements and  the growth of urban cultures as well as the early  influence of technology such as water wheels,  building techniques, advancements in navigation  and shipbuilding are important themes. The end  of feudalism can, for example, be graphically  characterised by events such as the Battle of  Agincourt, which revealed a microcosm of social  change. 

Physics also begins in Class 6, and with it comes  an experience of causality. The lessons are not yet  concerned with the theories and hypotheses of  physics: rather the children are helped to experience  the basic phenomena of acoustics, optics, heat,  magnetism and static electricity. Mechanics is held  over for Class 7. Two of the reasons for this are as  follows. Mechanics requires the study of gravity  (unless you remain entirely in the neutral realm  of theory), and it provides opportunities for the  children to experience this force consciously. As  the pupils enter puberty, they become 'ready for the earth: 5 The growth associated with puberty  has the effect of literally burdening the youngster  with a new sense of physical weight. They have a  need to explore the new strength that comes with  this muscle and bone growth though they often  lack an orientation both in their movements and  in their emotional instability. They can be helped  by discovering how the force of gravity can be  employed in mechanics and made serviceable in  life. 

The second reason that mechanics is deferred  until age thirteen is that it provides examples for  the application of physical law to technology, the  consequences of which one can see most clearly in  the industrial developments during the nineteenth  century. Practical applications of mechanical  principles are the central theme. It is impossible  to stress too strongly the importance of letting  experience precede knowledge. 

The practical subjects within the curriculum are  now also expanded and differentiated. Gardening  enables the child to encounter the consequences of  work in a practical and necessary sphere of life. By  providing opportunities to observe plant growth,  gardening affords experiences of how time relates  to space. 

Three-dimensional space is now explored in  handwork. The children knit gloves and socks on  five needles and sew stuffed animals that require  them to have a clear idea of the animal's shape  when they design and cut out the pattern (the  cause and effect aspect can also be seen here). The  skills learned in cross-stitch are developed further  to include the embroidery of interlacing ribbon  motifs, such as those learned in form drawing. 

'Soft' handwork is now joined by 'hard' craftwork,  which is pursued by boys and girls alike. Working  with wood provides a wonderful experience of  what 'expertise' really means. Together, wood and tool are a unit when handled expertly. The skills of  sawing, carving, rasping and filing are practised. In  textile handwork, with the exception of leather, the  resistance offered by the material is slight. Wood  provides a considerably greater challenge so that  form can be created by the practical activity of  exercising expertise. 

Gym lessons provide a similar theme. The  movement games are now replaced by various  kinds of running game, such as relay races, which  have a specific aim. Achieving this is the challenge.  The same goes for apparatus work, which begins  now, as well as athletics and swimming. In each  case the children have to learn to move using the  appropriate technique in the given medium. 

The themes chosen for the narrative content  of the lessons during these three years help the  children experience their own psychological and  spiritual steps in development, through examples  which span the transition from myth and legend  to history. 

Summary of Classes 4 to 6 

During this period of development, in which the  children begin to distance themselves from their  surroundings, it is extremely important that their  connection with the world be strengthened and  renewed by means of direct and differentiated  experience supported by understanding. To work  in the world means to understand the world. The  new subjects introduced during this phase make  this possible. In working out of an understanding  that has a moral foundation, the children learn to  work in service for the sake of the world. Turning  towards the world in this way can also be described  as loving it in an active and concrete way. Class 6  marks an important transition in the class teacher  period. With the onset of puberty the children are ready to develop a causal understanding of  the world, yet given the emotional and subjective  nature of their experience, it is important that  this causal aspect be clothed in imaginative and  pictorial language. 
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