Sophia Institute
  • Home
  • Info
    • About Rudolf Steiner
    • Blog
    • Enrollment
    • Faculty/Staff
    • FAQ
    • Feedback
    • History
    • Newsletter
    • Promotions
    • Support
    • Tuition Info
  • Courses
    • online Foundation Studies Program
    • online Waldorf Certificate Program
    • Local Facilitated Group Courses Program
    • Group Leader/Mentor Certification Program
    • online Biography Program
    • online Anthroposophy Courses
    • online Art Courses
    • Waldorf/Steiner Community Courses and Programs
    • Waldorf Teacher Training Individual Courses
    • Waldorf Teacher Training Art of Teaching Courses
  • Publications
    • Germans are Funny
    • A Maypole Dream
    • Holy Nights Journal
    • The Threefold Diary
    • Three Tales
    • Foundation Courses in Anthroposophy
    • Meditation and Initiation
    • The Ultimate Meeting Notebook
    • In The Garden
    • A Child's Seasonal Treasury
  • Contact

Sophia Institute online Waldorf Certificate Studies Program

HELP

Waldorf Curriculum 1

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 Outlines

Waldorf Curriculum 1
Lesson 1: Introduction
Lesson 2: Preschool and Kindergarten
Lesson 3: Grades 1 - 3 (Part 1)
Lesson 4:
Grades 1 - 3 (Part 2)
Lesson 5:
Grades 4 - 6 (Part 1)

Waldorf Curriculum 2
Lesson 1:
Grades 4 - 6 (Part 2)
Lesson 2: Grades 7 and 8 (Part 1)

Lesson 3: Grades 7 and 8 (Part 2)
Lesson 4: Grades 9 - 12 (Part 1)
Lesson 5: Grades 9 - 12 (Part 2)
​
Lesson 6: Evaluations and End of Year Reports
Picture

    Submission Form for Waldorf Curriculum 15

    Compose or insert your completed assignments here
    Max file size: 20MB
Submit

Tasks and Assignments for Waldorf Curriculum 1.5.

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. Use the following format:

1.A. Class 4/Developmental Profile
1.B. Class 4/Aims and Objectives


2.A. Class 5/Developmental Profile
2.B. Class 5/Aims and Objectives

3.A. Class 6/Developmental Profile
3.B. Class 6/Aims and Objectives

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

Picture

Study Material for Waldorf Curriculum 1.5.

The Lower School: Classes 4 to 6

Class 4 (age nine to ten)

Developmental profile
In Classes 4 and 5 when the pupils are ten and  eleven years old, the mid-way point of the class  teacher years is reached. The transition from early  childhood is complete, the transition towards  puberty has not yet begun. This centre-point of the  class teaching period coincides with the middle of  the second seven-year period of life, and is referred to in Steiner-Waldorf pedagogy as the 'heart of  childhood: The self-activity of the child brings about a  harmonising of the relationship of the breathing to  the blood circulation. Confidence in their new state is expressed  in a quality of vigour and an eagerness to look  at and learn about the world. A start is made on  natural science with a phenomenological study  of the animal kingdom in relation to the human  being from a morphological point of view. Also  a thorough study of the local surrounding and  developing the process of map-making.

Aims and objectives

The aim of Class 4 is first and foremost to channel  positively the powerful energy which ten year-  olds bring to the classroom. Pupils need to be  challenged and stretched in every possible aspect  of their work. 'Work, work and lots of it' is the best  motto for Class 4. The teachers aim to meet, through imaginatively  presented lessons, the growing interest of the  children in more concrete areas of knowledge  and to provide them with opportunities for more  independence in their work. Individually the  children need to find a new relationship to their  work, to their peers and teachers. The narrative  content of the lessons aims to respond by offering  stories in which a multiplicity of personalities  contributes to the social whole (e.g. stories of  the Norse Gods) and in which darkness and evil  become more concrete. The children should begin  to identify individual 'badness' in contrast to social  or communal 'goodness: The children should  form a sense of where they are in relation to their  environment, in both a social and geographical  sense.


Class 5 (age ten to eleven)

Developmental profile
At this age the child attains a certain ease and grace  of movement intrinsic to the age. Movement that is  co-ordinated, balanced and harmonious is a key-  note of the developmental phase. Psychologically,  the T Iworld differentiation develops, the individual  'will' element begins to grow, the awareness of 'self'  strengthens and socially, a powerful group dynamic  can surface within a class, although the individual  ego is very much a fledgling. Cognitively, children  are more able to understand questions and  phenomena in a realistic and reasoning manner.  The pictorial element in thought processes remains  an important element in the child's consciousness,  although the understanding and formulation  of concepts are beginning to depend less on the  development of individualised images and thought  pictures and more on the development of a faculty  for comprehending clear, matter-of-fact, sense-free  concepts. Out of the growing memory powers, the sense  for time has developed. Memory allows for looking  back and planning the future and, combined with  deepening feeling, for the emergence of conscience  and responsibility. This age is a time of rapidly flowering capacities. The child experiences a growth in length; sustained  physical effort is within his or her group. Musically,  a child has the capacity to master a musical  instrument. In the basic skills of numeracy, literacy  and linguistics pupils exhibit the emergence of  independent creativity founded on a confident  group of the basic rules, processes and structures.
Intellectually and morally the child is ready for  new challenges. Foundations for the basic skills  in numeracy and literacy have been set down by the tenth year. Elementary notions of personal  responsibility and a faculty for understanding  'right and wrong' in a 'reasoning' spirit may be  grasped from this age. This year marks the pivotal point between  childhood and puberty and for a short moment  each child is poised at the crest of the wave,  marking the end of the first part of their school  years. They reach standards of work hitherto never  dreamed of. They identify totally with their work,  they spend time embellishing it, bringing it closer  to perfection. They are often proud of their work,  whereas in Class 4 they could easily be dismissive  about it. Towards the end of this year the teacher will begin  to experience her pupils' emergent intellectual  faculties, ready to be used more consciously. They  bring with them a new detachment and their  accompanying critical standpoint. The harmony  is lost, to be found again at the end of the Upper  School years.

Aims and objectives

In this year the aim is to make the transition  from myth to history and its emphasis on the  individual. The children should develop a greater  consciousness of the interrelatedness of life and  environment - particularly through the study of  botany. There will be an emphasis on the original  Olympian ideal in which group distinctions are  subservient to the greater whole and in which  qualities such as beauty are as valued as speed and  distance. The children should be encouraged to  strengthen their memory by learning such things  as vocabulary and by visualising spaces through  the use of maps.


Class 6 (age eleven to twelve)

Developmental profile
Class 6 in the Steiner-Waldorf school is the  equivalent point of entry into Key Stage Three in  the English National Curriculum guidelines. In  the mainstream this age constitutes the first year  in secondary education. There is a clear difference  in methodology between the Steiner-Waldorf  curriculum and the English National Curriculum  as regards the age that it is appropriate for pupils  to be introduced to the conscious development of  deductive thinking, logical thought processes and  analytical-critical faculties. In Steiner's pedagogical  indications there is common ground with the  work of Piaget, Vygotsky and others, in the  understanding that abstract thinking, or 'formal  operations', begins around the thirteenth year, and  not in Key Stage One. Generally, the child's growth begins to express  itself in the skeleton. The limbs begin to lengthen;  the child develops a tendency for awkward, angular  movements. The twelve year old experiences  the strength of gravity through the skeleton.  The physical change is accompanied by the first  experience of causation in the thinking realm,  while psychologically, the child enters a phase  which may be characterised as the 'changeling'  period. The twelve year old witnesses what may be  described as the death of childhood and the birth-  pangs of the individual. In the final third of the second seven-year  period, the child begins to anticipate adolescence.  In the various curriculum topics indicated -  sequential, recorded history, the geography  of Europe, formal geometry, business maths,  phenomenological science, gardening, woodwork  and organised games - the child's changing physical, psychological and cognitive make-up is  acknowledged and tended.

Aims and objectives
At this age the teacher aims to work with the  children's growing orientation towards the outer  world. Their dawning critical faculties should be  directed towards observing the natural world from  a scientific standpoint and their increasing interest  in social relationships should provide many  opportunities for the children to take responsibility  for their own class community. The aim is to forge  a new social relationship between each other and  their teacher. As new capacities for thinking emerge,  the children can be led to understand causal  relationships at work in the world. The children's  awareness should be directed towards the world  they will live and work in as adults. The pupils  should be challenged and are capable of high  standards in their school work.
Copyright by Sophia Institute