• The 3rd grade shelter project
• The 4th grade animal project
• The 5th grade state report

We were talking about the best way to support students and parents with these big projects and recognizing that too often teachers assign the project (putting together a nice little document with assignment guidelines and due dates) but they don’t do much to support beyond that. Often students take the assignment home and parents and students are left to figure it out on their own. What ends up happening is that the results are all over the place.

(By the way, make sure you scroll down to get a free sample of my Grade 4 Animal Project Assignment.)

Some kids get a lot (too much?) parent support and their projects and written reports are impeccable examples of mastery.

Other kids don’t get enough support and their reports were written from their own imaginations, without any research.

I’m not sure which situation is worse because, when it comes down to it, students in either situation aren’t learning from the experience.

Just Right Support

So way back when (during my second time teaching fifth grade) I decided that the best way for students to receive the right amount of support was if I provided it. If I was the one providing the scaffolding, I could make sure that students got the help that they needed, without going overboard.

Physical Projects

Now, this is really difficult to do for those physical projects — and I confess that I haven’t yet found a way to support students with those projects myself. At my school, the 3rd grade shelter project and 4th grade animal project are physical projects that are still strongly supported by parents at home. But even with these projects, we can provide experiences that help students realize what they can do and how capable they are.

In 3rd grade, before handing out the shelter project assignment, we had a “shelter building project day” in class. We went out into the park, gathered supplies and worked to build miniature shelters with the materials we found. It was a great experience and really resonated with the message of the shelter block — that shelters are built for protection, using the materials that are on hand.

Though this was a great experience, when it came time for students to build their own shelter projects, the work happened at home, with support from parents, and we encountered some of the difficulties that this scenario creates (varying levels of parent support, varied abilities, etc.)

Years ago, one of my colleagues took on the challenge of having students build their 3rd grade shelters entirely in the classroom. It was an “at school” activity and though some parent volunteers came in, students were mostly on their own.

These days, the shelter project is such an institution at my school, I worried that some families would be sad to miss out on the experience of working on the shelter together.

Written Reports

So, though I feel like my hands are a bit tied with the physical projects, I know that I can structure the written report to create an optimal learning experience.

What I decided to do way back then (and have done for every middle grade report since) is break it down into manageable chunks and give structured assignments that combine to create the written report.

The fifth grade state report is the best example, so I’ll explain using that.

State Report Structure

The first thing I did (after students had chosen their states) was go to the library and check out a state book for every child from the same series. Choosing books from the same series meant that the structure of the resource was the same for every student and students could easily follow my structured assignment (it was right there in their book!).

I chose a state of my own. I picked one that I was pretty sure no one else was going to choose. I settled on North Dakota (no offense to all the North Dakotans out there — I’m sure it’s a lovely place.)

Then, I went through the resource and broke it down into sections. The series I chose broke down into the following:

• Introduction
• Geography and Climate
• History
• The People and Their Work
• A Tour of Your State
• Famous People
• State Facts

Then, for each section, I created an assignment with questions and clear instructions to answer the questions with complete sentences. When students did this, at the end, their sentences could be put together to create their report.

For this report, I gave the assignments in class and they turned them in at the end of the lesson (their resource books stayed in the classroom). I gave a new assignment every other day and on the in-between days they put their corrected assignments in their main lesson books. In 3rd and 4th grade, I gave the assignments as homework. Some students needed parent support to complete the assignments, but because it was chunked out so clearly, many of them could do it entirely independently.

With this clear structure, students were not left to determine their own structure or figure out what information to include. They just worked through the assignments and answered the questions.

This structured approach also helped break a multi-week project down into manageable chunks. This meant that students did not procrastinate and write the whole thing the night before it was due (a sure-fire way to prevent learning.) When I was talking with my colleague about it, she mentioned that she thought this was the most helpful thing about working in this way.

She said that her mind works so that she views projects and activities as either “now” or “not now.” The regular assignments bring a little more “now-ness” to the project.

Working Through a Sample

For the state report, as I mentioned, I did my own report on North Dakota and for each assignment, I read my responses aloud and showed the students how I found those answers. (It really was as simple as turning to the proper page in the state book resource!) I showed them that I read through the section and then put the book away before writing my answers. This helped address plagiarism, though learning how to translate the ideas of others into your own words is a complex process that takes time.

For this year’s animal project, I stumbled upon an even better way to work through an example. I gave students the animal project assignment for the week on Monday and on that same day, as part of our usual lesson, I presented an animal. The next day, for the review portion of our lesson, we worked through the animal project assignment for MY animal. This gave the students a chance to work through the assignment with support, about an animal that we learned about together, before doing it independently about their own animal. They realized how simple it was to answer the questions and almost all of them could do the work entirely independently.

Want to see an example of one of my 4th grade animal project assignments? Enter your email address below and I’ll send it to you.

Does this approach work for everyone?

I will say, this approach to report-writing works really well for students who need plenty of structure and guidance to get the work done. I have had some of my stronger students feel a little frustrated, longing to be more creative and have more freedom with their report.

In general, though, those students will ask for permission to do something differently, and, on a case-by-case basis, you can give them that permission. Still, I believe that even those students benefit from the clarity and structure of a more formal approach.

It’s that whole “between form and freedom” thing.

What are your secret strategies for supporting student project work? I’d love to read about them in the comments!

The post Waldorf Projects and Reports in the Middle Grades appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

But the truth is, those Pinterest teachers don’t always know what spoke most to my students about our lessons. And though I could certainly reverse-engineer my lessons so that those lovely Pinterest pages will appear to naturally align, that does seem a little backward. This well-trained Waldorf teacher knows that the work should respond to the needs and interests of the students — not the other way around.

So, over the years, I’ve given some intention and developed systems (goodness knows, I love a good system) that guide the creation of our main lesson pages.

The Content

The first thing is deciding on the content. The system I’ve developed for this is one of my favorite things. It was an epiphany that absolutely changed my teaching.

You see, when I first started teaching, I allowed the main lesson pages and the review content to naturally arise out of the lesson. Sometimes we would write a composition about the story. Other times we would do a guided drawing. It all just depended on what the content seemed to ask for.

The problem with that approach was that it sometimes meant that we went weeks without doing a guided drawing, or we might do three guided drawings in a week. With this inconsistent and varied approach was that I couldn’t rely on my students getting the skill-building practice that is so essential to their growth. Though allowing the work to naturally arise is probably the most holistic approach, I feel that skill-development is just too important to leave to chance.

The Solution

So a few years ago, I settled on a main lesson review content plan that guides our weekly work. Each week, we work on three main pieces of content:

• An independent composition
• A guided drawing
• A dictation

I could write an entire post about these three pieces of content, but here’s a quick overview.

Composition

I use the term composition to refer to pieces of writing that the students write independently. I prefer this term because it can apply to different types of content — summaries of imaginative stories, reports about animals, etc. It’s a much more useful term than “essay” or “story.”

Usually, we write compositions on Tuesdays (I make sure to tell a really good, image-rich story on Monday so they’ll have lots of ideas), I correct them that night and we put them in our main lesson books on Tuesdays.

Guided Drawing

This is a full page drawing that I guide to help work on drawing skills. It’s generally a fun way to remember stories together, while still having a skill-building lesson. We usually do these on Thursdays.

Dictation

I’ve written before about my dictation rhythm here and here — and it’s one of my favorite things. Here’s how it works.

• I create a piece of writing about one of the stories they’ll hear that week (or some sort of overview content). I break that writing down into daily chunks. When we first started in 3rd grade, they got one sentence each day. Now in 4th grade it depends. It’s sometimes more than one sentence.
• Each day I dictate the sentence for the day, they listen and they write it in their dictation book.
• We correct their writing together, and talk about whatever phonics or grammar rules we’re working on.
• Depending on the grade, the students receive a dictation quiz at the end of the week. Now in 4th grade, they’re getting a fill-in-the-blank quiz. I’ve chosen meaningful words for the week, they study them and the fill-in-the blank dictation quiz takes the place of a traditional spelling test. It’s a nice and satisfying way to wrap up the week. You can see a sample of our 4th grade dictation quiz here.
• At the end of the week (or sometimes on Monday of the following week) we put that dictation in our books.

Here are some of the things I love about dictation:

• It allows me to expose the students to beautiful writing. I want them to do plenty of their own independent composition (which I think Waldorf teachers don’t do enough of), but I also want them to be exposed to beautiful writing samples.
• I can naturally incorporate phonics and grammar lessons with content that is engaging and interesting, instead of boring, unrelated grammar exercises.
• Because it is such an essential part of our daily routine, I know that my students are going to practice spelling, punctuation, and grammar every single day.

Okay, so those are the three main pieces of content we work on each week. Now, of course, this is definitely flexible. For example, we often don’t do a new composition during the last week of a block, as we’re finishing things up and getting ready to turn in.

Writing Pages

So, if you’re following along, you’ll see that most weeks we have two pieces of writing that go into our books, so that’s what I’m going to address for the rest of this post.

(I’ll just say briefly, about guided drawings, I’m much less intentional about planning the specific drawing skills we’ll be working on. If I were a more skill artist, I would probably have an art curriculum that I moved through as we completed these guided drawings. Instead, I just let the stories and their images guide our work.)

So let’s talk about how to format writing pages.

First of all — come up with a system that your students will use throughout the year to set up and complete the page. The system that you use will depend on the grade, and maybe even the individual student. You want to give them a structure that will help them keep their writing clear. Here’s what I’ve done.

Grade One — Capital and Lower Case

First grade is all about learning the letters and their sounds — with lower case letters coming at the end of the year. For each letter we drew a picture that had the letter hidden within and we did a letter page that included the capital letter, the lower case letter (we hadn’t filled it in yet on this page) and a few words from the story that begin with the letter.

By the end of the year, we wrote short sentences together, but we were just beginning with that work, so I did not get too intentional about a page set-up system.

Grade Two — Sky, Earth and Water

In second grade, we did much more writing, so we needed a proper system for writing in our main lesson books. I used a page set-up that many Waldorf teachers have used through the years — sky, earth and water.

To set up the page, we used the “mama bear” side of our block crayons (I actually think we started the year with “papa bear” and switched halfway through) and drew stripes across the page in yellow (sky), green (earth) and blue (water). It did a pretty good job of helping us to form our letters properly, though occasionally kids’ lines curved on the page. I was always amazed to see that even with their curved lines, they were careful to make sure that lower case letters stayed in the earth area, while capitals reached up into the sky.

The other benefit of this format was that it gave us good imaginative language for talking about where the letters were supposed to be. Lower case y and g “dip into the water”, while h, k and l “reach up to the sky.”

One other note about second grade writing — if I had a student who really struggled with forming the letters properly, I would not hesitate to switch to traditional primary paper with dashed lines across the middle. We used this paper in our primary composition books for “kid writing” (see this post for more info about that) and I think it really helped kids to know how to form their letters. I started out the year thinking that if it was necessary, I would have kids do their final drafts on lined paper and glue them in to the main lesson books. It just happened that my students did pretty well with the sky, earth and water set-up, so I didn’t worry about it.

Grade Three — Alternating Colors

Towards the end of 2nd grade and moving into 3rd grade, my students were writing so much that things just didn’t fit when we used the sky, earth and water set-up, so we switched to using two alternating colors to create lines.

I let go of the imagination to guide their letter formation (they didn’t need reminders about letters that dipped into the water or reached into the sky) and they didn’t really need the dotted center line anymore. So I chose two of the lightest colors (light green and yellow) and we alternated them down the page to create lines.

Also, throughout this year I introduced cursive. In about November, our weekly dictation was written on the board in cursive and they copied it into their main lesson books in cursive. I waited much longer before having them translate their own writing into cursive. I did not change the page set-up when we switched to cursive (they probably could have used it, but it just didn’t seem right to come up with a completely different set-up situation for cursive pages.) Instead, I made sure that we did cursive practice on primary paper with the dashed line.

I should also mention that it was March of our 3rd grade year when we closed for COVID. At that point, I provided cursive exercise packets, but completion of that work varied.

Oh, I should also say that throughout the crayon lines years, we used the papa bear side of our crayon to create borders on the pages.

Grade Four — A Wide Liner and One-Line Border

Now we’re in fourth grade and we set up each writing page with a one-line colored pencil border and we put a liner behind the page. I did a lot of experimenting with making liners that were bold enough for students to see through. Somehow finding a liner has always been the piece of our work that has me scrambling.

I much prefer to create it on the computer — usually a Google Doc — but getting the line to be bold enough has been the challenge. I finally figured out the solution, though. If “add a drawing” to your doc, you can make the line as bold as you want. Then you have a perfectly straight, bold line that you can just print (or online students can print themselves.)

If you want your own copy of my 4th grade liner Google Doc, click here and make a copy.

Borders

Though I know that many teachers encourage students to create beautiful, ornate borders, I prefer that my students keep it simple for writing pages. A colleague once mentioned that when you allow that free-for-all creativity in the borders, kids go a little over the top and it brings out astrality. I’ve certainly observed this as students’ borders get crazy-busy with flowers, rainbows, hearts and forest animals. Of course, I give them a chance to do this kind of free-drawing on occasion, but it is with a lot of intention, and not in their main lesson books.

I’m also a firm believer of the idea that freedom comes out of form. Students need to learn how to work within the form and completely understand it before they can overthrow it with their own inspired creativity. In large part, this defines the developmental path through this period, so I look for all kinds of ways to reinforce it. In my view, the middle grades are ALL about defining the form. Strong form and learning structures help students to relax into their learning and focus on strengthening the skills that will become the tools of their future learning.

This emphasis on form is sometimes difficult for free-thinking Waldorf parents to get on board with. I could write a whole separate post about this, but the Waldorf catch-phrase “Education TOWARDS freedom,” really sums it up. We’re not free yet, and these kids won’t be there until they have a fully-developed ego. Between now and then, they’ll have plenty of time to explore form and experiment with overthrowing it.

Drawings to Fill the Page

Figuring out what to do with blank space at the bottom of the page has been a work in progress for me. Because at this point most of the writing we’re putting in our main lesson books are independent compositions, students’ pages have varying amounts of white space at the end. My students’ handwriting is also significantly varied. I have some students who are still getting a grasp of cursive writing and their letters are quite large. Other students have joined the “teeny tiny writing club” that seems to be a pretty consistent trend in fourth grade. (I actually remember going through that phase myself!)

Whenever possible, I try to account for leftover space at the bottom of the page on my own composition, so students have a model of what to do with that extra space. It doesn’t always work out, though. There are plenty of times when my example goes to the bottom of the page, when a student’s work has all kinds of extra room.

I wish I could be fine with leaving the rest of the page blank, but pages with too much white space just look incomplete to my eye. So when this happens, I tell the students to fill the bottom half of the page with a drawing that aligns with the story. We’ve done enough of them that they know what I mean, but sometimes they get a little out of hand and that astral free-for-all creeps out. Often kids are not satisfied with their own work when this happens, which is a good learning experience for them. Eventually, they’ll know to keep it simple.

The other reason I tend to latch on to this solution is that invariably the students who have extra room at the bottom of the page are those kids who fly through their work. Of course I encourage them to slow down and give more care, but many of them do perfectly lovely work quite quickly. Having them do a drawing keeps them engaged while others finish.

Grade Five and beyond — Getting Creative

Towards the end of fifth grade, we start experimenting with other types of borders. This is still a step-by-step, strongly-led process, though. I want them to have an experience of what kinds of borders tend to work best, and we still have plenty of writing pages that use the good old one-line border.

Even in sixth grade, the most successful borders are when they’ve had a model to look at, so I try to do an example for every page through sixth grade. This doesn’t always happen, though. (By the way, last time around, I figured out a good solution for making sure I have a complete book of my own at the end of the block, even if I did some of the work on the chalkboard or was just too busy to make my own page. I had one of the early-finishers do my page while others finished their work. This ended up being quite an honor and they loved working in my book. I loved having work samples from a wide variety of students.)

In my view, sixth grade is the last of the super-strong form years (6th graders need a lot of structure, even though they seem ready for more freedom), and by seventh grade they’re ready for much more independence and creativity. Last time around, I remember observing this so clearly in the first block of seventh grade — The Renaissance. I can’t think of a better block to encourage creative, artistic thinking.

At this point, main lesson book entries can be a combination of writing and drawing. Students can see how drawings can enhance their writing and vice-versa. (Interestingly, even my fourth graders are asking if they can include a sentence on a drawing page so they can tell the story a little better.)

So, that’s the evolution of writing pages in my Waldorf classroom. I can imagine this becoming a series where I go through how drawing materials, writing processes and other classroom practices change through the years.

How do your writing page routines compare to mine? Is there something you do differently that is really working? I’d love to hear it! Respond in the comments!

The post How to Create a Waldorf Main Lesson Page appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

We never thought we’d be teaching our students online, and despite the fact that we may have been the least tech-savvy teachers on the planet, we’re doing it anyway. It’s a good thing we’re pretty good at thinking outside the box.

But I know what you’re thinking. Even though you don’t have in-person classroom management to worry about, and you can teach in yoga pants without anyone knowing, I know that you’re still up at night worrying. And I know those worries are not about yourself.

Like you, every now and then, when I lift my head out of the online sea, I think about what things will look like when the pandemic is over. Because yes, it may be hard to believe, but one day it will be over.

Of course, I think about the skills we’re currently working on via Zoom and I consider the learning gaps that may be opening up as we learn in that less-than-ideal format. And I think about the healthy classroom habits that will have had a VERY long break. I think about my students’ habit of striving to do their very best, a value that I’ve worked so hard to cultivate every day in the classroom. How much of that work will need to be repeated, reinforced, and reestablished?

But ultimately, I know that the work will be waiting for us. We’ll do all of that reviewing and rehashing. And I know that when we get back in the classroom, it will all come back like riding a bicycle.

But what about those kids who just don’t stick with us long enough to get there? As I’m sure you know, independent Waldorf schools are struggling. Across the country, enrollment is down, and schools that were once thriving communities are being forced to close their doors. Of course, this means teachers, administrators and staff lose their jobs. (By the way, if you are one of those teachers, my heart goes out to you. Let me know if you’re interested in substitute teaching via Zoom!)

But schools are just macrocosms that magnify the huge challenges that individual families are enduring. Every day I’m filled with gratitude for the families that have remained a part of our school community. This mama hen is quite pleased that all of her little chicks came back to the roost for this year. But I know it is at tremendous sacrifice, and I wonder how long it will last.

I just cross my fingers that they’ll all be there on that day when we do finally return to the in-person classroom. And when we get there, of course, the catch-up work will begin, but I have no doubt that we’ll also realize the blessings that came with this remarkable experiment. Here’s what I think a few of them will be.

Parent participation and involvement.

Waldorf parents are incredibly involved and active participants in their children’s education — and I mean that in the very best way. This spring, they were so involved that they delivered the lessons that I prepared. Now that we’re meeting on Zoom and I’m doing the teaching and supervising student progress, I’ve heard from more than a few parents who are adjusting to not being as connected with their child’s learning. I mean, many of them are very glad that they have time to get their own work done, but they’re also grateful for the opportunity to understand and help guide their child’s learning. How can we hold onto this golden nugget of parental engagement and involvement when we return to school?

Growing independence.

When we returned to school this year on Zoom, I was prepared to see that my students’ skills may have taken a step backward. I was pretty sure that some pretty unfortunate habits may have developed. And though there is some of that, the more optimistic side of that coin is that they are remarkably independent. These 9-year-olds have figured out how to navigate Google Classroom so that they can find their lessons, locate Zoom links and include attachments when they turn in assignments. They’ve figured out all of the super-fun intricacies of Zoom (profile photos, virtual backgrounds, and, of course, the chat feature.) And though I am definitely a teacher who likes to guide my students with authority, I have to appreciate the benefits of this independence. How much independence is appropriate for them to maintain when we return to school? I’m curious to explore that idea.

“All education is self-education.”

I’ve heard this quote attributed to Rudolf Steiner, Charlotte Mason and even Louis L’Amour. I don’t know who really said it first, but whoever it was had the right idea. Learning doesn’t really happen unless students are actively engaged, and the truth is, it is a whole lot harder to engage when you’re learning online. At the same time, once you’re engaged, it’s a whole lot easier to create your own path and explore your own interests. I have a feeling that some of my students are developing a habit of following their curiosities and taking their education in their own hands. Just today, after I left today’s story off at a cliff-hanger, a student said, “Ms. Floyd-Preston, that’s such a cliffhanger I want to go look it up and read the rest of the story.” Gotta love that enthusiasm, even though it means I won’t always be the keeper of the magic.

There is no replacement for human connection.

I think my biggest question as an educator is about the social learning that my students are missing during the pandemic. I consider this to be a huge aspect of my work, and it is SO strange not to spend SO much time every day helping students work out their difficulties.

After so many years in the classroom, I’ve seen a whole lot of growth come about because of those social difficulties. They may be hard in the moment, but I know those struggles serve my students.

But when we finally come back, will they have become so accustomed to social harmony that they won’t see the benefit of all of that challenging togetherness? Will they long for the days when they could comfortably laze about in their bedrooms, without worrying about interacting with others?

I think not. I actually think that this is the single most important lesson that the entire world is learning as we move through this pandemic. So I’ll say it again.

There is no replacement for human connection.

I mean, think of it. Not long ago, we all felt so satisfied with our human interactions that we took them for granted. We may have even argued that our virtual interactions, on Facebook and Instagram, were a pretty decent substitute for connecting in person.

Now, after months of meetings, happy hours, and birthday parties on Zoom, I can’t think of a single person who would say that those experiences are just as good as being together in person.

And now that our kids are a part of this digital world — much earlier than we ever thought they would be, we might worry that they’ll be just as seduced as we have been. Will they be so captivated by technology that it will replace their in-person lives?

Again, I think not. All of us, but these kids especially, are getting a real tough-love lesson about the value of human connection. No one knows better than these kids that on-screen interactions just can’t compete with the real thing.

I’m honestly curious to see how this phenomenon impacts their futures. Maybe we’ll see a big downturn in social media engagement when this whole thing is over.

What does this mean for learning?

As we explore new territory and find new ways of working, it’s no surprise that many people are starting to think about the possibilities that delivering curriculum online can create. I’ve had families connect to my Zoom classes while they’re vacationing on the coast or road-tripping in the national parks. Who’s to say I couldn’t deliver my lessons to a much wider audience all over the country, or the world?

And as exciting as these ideas are, we need to recognize that teaching is very different than delivering curriculum.

Teaching is about human interaction and understanding. Teaching is an art that requires connection, give and take. We need to recognize that our teachers are not just delivering curriculum, and this is what makes Waldorf Education so remarkable.

We Waldorf teachers pride ourselves on being masters of human understanding. We may not know all the intricacies of the content (we’re teaching a new subject every year, after all), but we are experts when it comes to the individual students who are in our classes.

It is this connection that keeps our families coming back year after year. And it is this connection that makes our students such willing, lively participants. You can bet that I tap into the knowledge that I have of my students any time I tell a story or teach a new phonics lesson. This job would be SO much harder without that understanding.

So, as exciting as it is to think about all of the children out there who could benefit from a Waldorf Education if we were to make it more widely available online, I don’t think we should fool ourselves that it would be the same.

You can deliver curriculum to students you don’t know. But teaching requires connection.

And thank goodness we’re all getting an opportunity to realize just how important it truly is.

The post Personal Connection | It’s What We’re All About appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

And though I’ve had many ponderings during this time, I also just haven’t been inspired to share them here. I’m not usually one to get down in the dumps about things. I tend to take a pretty practical approach and when I start to despair, I’m pretty quick to realize that those heavy feelings just aren’t productive. I pull myself out of it, look for the silver lining and move forward.

But this week I’ve just been kind of sad. Which is a little odd because it’s also the week I finally feel like I have my feet under me and I’ve found a new rhythm with this virtual teaching. But even discovering that rhythm makes me sad. I don’t want to adjust to this new normal. I just want to get back to school.

I have a weekly Zoom call with my students on Mondays and this week I could see it in their faces, too. The novelty has worn off. Their parents are doing an amazing job, but these kids need each other. The joy, pain, delight, frustration, happiness, irritation and connection that happens all in the course of a regular school day is so essential to their well-being. That is the source of the most important learning we do at school and there is no way to deliver that through Google Classroom.

But, it is what it is (here I go with the silver lining) and really, when it comes down to it, we are darn lucky. These kids are cared for, having unique experiences at home and I’m certain we’ll pick right up in September(?) without missing a beat.

Farming Block

Okay, so what have we been doing? Believe it or not, we have been in the midst of what is traditionally the most hands-on block in the Waldorf curriculum — Farming.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I do best when I’ve got a solid structure to follow. I’m definitely one of those people who can find creative freedom only when I have a solid form to fit it into. So, when I was planning this block, I put together a format, some of which was already a regular part of our classroom routine.

During each week of this 4-week block we would study a grain and a farm animal. Starting with the grain on Monday and Tuesday, then the animal on Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s how it broke down.

• Week 1: Corn and Cows
• Week 2: Wheat and Chickens
• Week 3: Oats and Goats
• Week 4: Rice and Pigs

Review Activities

While the content of the block is certainly important, and it is the part that engages the students and captures their attention, in my view, the imaginative content should really be viewed as a medium for skill development. In some ways, this imaginative content could be anything — we just need something interesting to work with as we practice our skills.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is tremendous wisdom in the Waldorf curriculum. There are solid developmental reasons why we study farming in 3rd grade, Greece in 5th and the Renaissance in 7th — and I agree wholeheartedly with those reasons. But the content itself is not really the point. I hold no delusions that my students are going to remember the details about this farming block years from now.

So, the work that we do with the content is paramount in my mind and, as you might guess, I have a solid rhythm around that, too. For most of my teaching career, I did not plan these review activities in this way and instead I let the work unfold somewhat naturally. I would tell the story and then decide what aspect of it seemed to resonate most with my students and then choose the review activity accordingly. Some stories lent themselves better to compositions, others to guided drawings, and we just did whatever felt right.

I think that this is still a perfectly valid way to approach the work, but there are some big benefits to having a consistent rhythm.

1. A thoughtfully-planned rhythm ensures that you get around to all of those important skill-building experiences. What if one week there isn’t a story that naturally lends itself to composition? I’m sure there were plenty of weeks my students did not write. These days, it’s such an integral part of our rhythm, my 3rd graders write independently every single week.
2. Knowing what you’re going to do each week allows you to arrange the content and plan accordingly. For example, Tuesday is our composition day, so I know that I have to tell a rich, imaginative story that will really stick with them on Mondays. It’s SO much harder to write when the story just didn’t hit the mark. The same thing goes for the guided drawing we do on Thursdays. Often, when I’m telling the story on Wednesday, I do my best to paint the picture with my words and gesture (this is a WHOLE lot harder to do virtually, by the way.)

Okay, so rhythm is important. Here’s our weekly rhythm for this farming block:

• Monday: Update title page with small drawing from last week’s content (light work day, heavy story day.)
• Tuesday: Composition day.
• Wednesday: Completed composition in ML books. Additional bonus review activity (this week it was a recipe.)
• Thursday: Guided drawing
• Friday: Completed weekly dictation in ML books. (Check out this blog post to learn more about my approach to dictation.)

I LOVE this rhythm and I feel so confident that it gives my students the skill-building experience they need. We have a similar rhythm for math practice and phonics practice.

But I do want to say a word about the drawbacks of rhythm and that is that it can definitely get BORING! I try not to be a slave to the rhythm and it’s not that hard to spice things up in the classroom. I try to do this by having unique writing prompts, acting stories out before we write or letting the writing be a social experience sometimes. Though these spice-it-up activities are easy to come up with in the classroom, I am definitely struggling with it in the distance learning environment.

Distance Learning

I can’t tell you how glad I am to have this consistent rhythm worked out now that we’re doing distance learning. It’s so familiar to my students that even with everything else topsy-turvy, they know what to do. It also means that those families who are struggling to continue learning at home know when and how they can opt-in. For example, some families are doing no more than listening to Monday’s story and writing the composition on Tuesday. And honestly, if that’s what works for them, I’m in full support.

Farming Stories

Here’s a quick picture of the stories I’ve told during this block. In general, I’m providing new story content 2 days/week, Monday and Wednesday. Every now and then there is some spill-over and I’ll share something on Tuesday or Thursday. I’m recording myself telling the stories and uploading them to Google Classroom.

• Week 1: Corn — an invented story about my mother and great-grandmother on the farm in Missouri.
• Week 1: Cows — I read Blossom Comes Home from [James Herriot’s Treasury for Children.]
• Week 2: Wheat — a story about how wheat is planted, harvested and processed with focus on Cyrus McCormick’s invention of the reaper. We talked a lot about the intricacies of the wheat grain (probably too much!)
• Week 2: Chickens — There were two stories for this content. One was an interview with a class parent who keeps chickens. The other was about an egg farm.
• Week 3: Oats — Dr. Bircher Benner and the invention of Muesli.
• Week 3: Goats — A Zoom interview with [a goat farmer from Sunflower Farm Creamery]. It was an exciting day — they had a live cam and one of the mamas gave birth. They also have a YouTube channel. Check them out.

I’m still working out the details of week four, but I know it will focus on rice and pigs. I’ve got a book called One Grain of Rice, which looks pretty good. And the two interviews I did were so great, I might try to find another. (Anyone know a pig farmer?) Though I prefer to have the details of my stories worked out at the beginning of the block, at the end of the school year my summer planning has run thin and I often figure out my stories the weekend before. It sometimes feels like a scramble, but I tell myself that it keeps things fresh and interesting and it usually works out.

Next week is the last week of our farming block and then we’re moving on to a study of various professions. I’m WAY behind in my planning for this block, mostly because I’m finding it SO time-consuming to deliver my lessons virtually. I usually spend a couple of hours preparing for each main lesson, and then a couple of hours delivering it, but everything is taking twice as long with distance learning. I’m sure I’ll get faster eventually, but until then I’ll look forward to the weekends when I can get a little bit ahead.

What block are you teaching? What tips have you discovered when it comes to distance learning? When you think of it, it’s pretty inspiring that we’re all so willingly finding new and creative ways of teaching. I just wish we could connect more with our students as we did it!

The post The Show Must Go On — Our Virtual Farming Block appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Me: My faculty and I are talking about how we could teach Waldorf remotely.
Calvin (24): That’s actually hilarious.
Me: I know. Waldorf via Skype?
My sister: Oh, Skype is the worst!
Calvin: Well, with it being Waldorf, I’m surprised they’re not using AOL chat.
Me: Smoke signals?
Alice (21): Morse code?
Calvin: No! CARRIER PIGEONS! That’s what Waldorf should use. You know, because it’s animals and nature-y.

We had quite a chuckle. Oh, those were the days.

3 weeks ago. Back when distance learning was a theoretical conversation. Little did we know how quickly we would be thrust into a real-world consideration of how we could teach our students from a distance.

My school is currently on our 2-week spring break. We had just one-week of home lessons before the break and now we’re all grateful to have some time to figure out how to proceed. The timing actually worked out perfectly. We had a week of experimentation — a chance to try some things — and now we get to solidify our approach.

What I’m Doing

I have heard from so many of you — teachers who are figuring this out with me, parents who are suddenly home with your children. The questions I’ve received have been wide-ranging, and they’ve all contained a bit of desperation.

• What did your take-home packet include?
• What supplies did you send home with your students?
• Are you using Zoom with your students?
• How are you delivering new content?
• Can I use your take-home packet for my child?
• What digital tools are you using?
• What are you doing about families who don’t have access? Or what about parents who still have to work?
• Can I pay you to create lessons for my 3rd grader?
• Why don’t you have any 3rd grade curriculum guides on your site? That’s what I need!

We’re all trying to adjust to this new normal and it’s all a bit unsettling.

So, here are some answers to those questions.

What I Sent Home

Here’s a basic list of things that families took with them when they left school on Friday, March 13.

• Crayons
• Flute
• Pencils
• Main lesson book
• a reader
• a handwriting packet
• a “challenge” math packet
• a parent packet including a letter and an answer key to the math problems
• a daily lesson packet with our daily rhythm in checklist form and a times table practice page and a daily math practice page
• a reader (and instructions to read 20 minutes per day)

Technology I’m Using

Google Classroom

My plan was to send daily lesson plans to my families (to fill in the blanks on the “review” and “new content” portions of the daily rhythm checklist I sent them home with on Friday.) I knew that in a pinch I could just send it out via email, but a couple of our teachers already use Google Classroom, so I decided to check it out.

Ultimately, I thought that it was a good way to go for a couple of reasons.

• Assignments would be right there and ready for parents to access whenever they were ready, without needing to scroll back through their saved emails.
• The interface allows me to upload images and documents very easily and connect them with a specific day’s assignment.
• Parents can ask questions and “turn in” student work (including a picture, which I love!). Parents can even answer each other’s questions and connect with each other over the work.

So, though it was a big push, I set it up over the weekend and got almost everyone to sign-up by Monday. I sent assignments for Monday and Tuesday out via email as well, just to make sure everyone had what they needed.

Parents have been raving about the experience. They find the lessons to be laid out clearly and they know exactly what to do to guide their child to complete the work. Big win!

Recorded Audio

I was a little on the fence about this, but at the last minute, I decided to record myself narrating the new content for Monday’s lesson. I found that I enjoyed the process far more than I thought I would.

Our content for the week was about silk (we were in our fibers block), so though there was a true story, there was also some factual information to relay. Because of this, I didn’t just read a story. I reminded them about the other fibers we had studied, talked about how silk was the same and different, and then told a story about the discovery of silk.

Because the story took this format, it was much more conversational. I imagined my students as I talked about it and I felt like I was really talking to them. I threw in little things like, “I miss you,” and “I hope you’re being helpful at home.” Many parents shared that listening to my voice telling the story was comforting and reassuring for the whole family.

Just thinking about it brings a tear to my eye. I sure miss those kids!

Photographs

I did sample pages for all main lesson book content — including compositions and dictations, which are such habit by now that I don’t generally need to guide my students through the process. I figured that having sample pages would give a measure of security and confidence to their work.

Video

I have not yet recorded any video myself. I did, however, in my silk research, find a video of a silkworm spinning a cocoon. Ordinarily I would describe this process to them myself (which I did in the audio) but I would not share the video in class. But at the last minute, when I was putting the lesson together in Google Classroom, I decided to throw it in and let parents decide if they wanted to watch it with their children. I talked about it in my audio and tried to add a little bit of feeling to it. “If you want to watch a cute little silkworm building his cocoon, I sent your parents a video.”

I have been thinking a lot about recording video for the delivery of new content. I follow a fellow teacher friend on Instagram and she has been posting desktop videos of herself simplifying fractions. Finding a way to deliver brand new content is one of my biggest questions — especially when it comes to math — and I think that these desktop videos might be the best solution. I still have to teach long division before the end of the school year.

I sent her a message asking her to send me a picture of her set-up. This is it below. I ordered the tripod and ring light and I’m planning on figuring out how I might use them next week.

Zoom

This is a big topic of conversation at the moment at my school. We have been using Zoom to hold all of our usual meetings. Between my regular faculty, grades, section and board meetings, I’ve participated in a virtual meeting almost every day. These meetings have had varied levels of success, mostly depending on the number of participants.

My small section meeting felt good. I connected with all of those colleagues and everyone got a chance to talk. In our faculty meeting, which had over 25 participants, I just listened and didn’t contribute to the conversation at all. It also felt difficult to manage (background noise, the mute button, etc.) and did not give me the feeling that I was genuinely connecting with those colleagues.

The best meeting of the week was the Thursday night parent social that I set up. Though most parents said they didn’t really feel the need to meet and were doing just fine, when we got into the meeting, I could tell that they really craved companionship. It was actually quite sweet to see so many moms and dads, sitting side by side on the couch with glasses of wine in their hands. They’d had a hard week and deserved that relaxing social night. It was so much fun, we decided to make it a regular weekly event.

So, with all of these experiences in mind, I’ve been contemplating the role that Zoom will play in my instruction. In the end, it feels problematic.

1. With a large class, the only way to make sure instruction is effective is to limit participation. This means managing students with the mute button, which doesn’t feel great to me. Also, if you take away the participation aspect, you’re removing the primary benefit of Zoom. I might as well just record video.
2. Quite a few of my students are shy about using the phone — let alone this video platform. I know that those students would not access lessons delivered in this way.
3. Some families are very careful about screen exposure — even in this social context. I know that there are some families who would not access it for this reason.
4. Zoom is distracting. When you’re on a Zoom call, you spend a good amount of time looking at yourself. I think the self-awareness that this activity brings is not age-appropriate for 3rd graders. They would also be so distracted by looking at themselves (or each other) that they would have trouble paying attention to the content of the lesson.

As of right now, I don’t imagine Zoom being a regular part of how I will deliver content to my students. I’m pondering having a brief Zoom social time with them, but I need to give it more thought before deciding.

A couple of notes:

1. AWSNA (the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America) has been hosting Zoom calls for teachers, parents and administrators who are figuring all of this out. I attended a call dedicated to grades 1-3 and none of the attendees were planning on using Zoom for instruction. It felt good to know that I wasn’t alone in my apprehension.
2. I am feeling this way because of observation and intuition about how my students will learn best. I am not avoiding Zoom because of a dogmatic belief that all screen-time is bad. If I believed that my students would learn best with regular Zoom content, I would be on it in a heartbeat. As with all of my teaching decisions, my students’ learning is at the center. This is not about some “thou shalt not consume media” belief.

What Can I Share?

I have been hearing the call, loud and clear, to share with you some of the material I’m putting together. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell from my description above, most of what I’m creating is highly specific to my students. So I can’t simply send it out to others.

But, I do have lots of curriculum guides on my website. I encourage you to take a look through the offerings and see what might work. You might consider adjusting your block rotation so your students can take advantage of the home environment.

• Astronomy — Stay up late and observe the stars.
• Botany — Plant a garden (thank goodness it’s spring!)
• Geography — Create an itinerary for a trip to South America (next summer). Write letters to tourism departments in other states. Take a culinary tour of Asia.

Spring is a good time for those outward-facing blocks, and though your students can’t actually go anywhere, there’s plenty they can do around home.

When we return from the break, we’ll be heading into our Farming block. We’ll study the grains, do some cooking and hopefully some growing too.

And it’s true, I do not have any 3rd grade materials on my site. My rhythm is that at the end of the school year I sit down with my lesson books and re-digest the content and generalize it so it is accessible to a wider audience.

But, I’m going to do my best to put our last block — Fibers — together in a curriculum guide for you. I know that many 3rd grade teachers study fibers after spring break, and I think it is a good block for home learning, so it works out nicely that we happened to go through it before spring break. I’ll try to put all of it together asap.

Other than the actual content, my strongest recommendation is to develop a very familiar and comfortable routine. At this point in the school year, my students are at ease with our weekly and daily rhythms. They know that on Tuesday it’s likely that they are going to write a composition and that every day they are going to have a dictation. I have never been more grateful to have such a regular rhythm (I can thank my phlegmatic temperament for that one!)

Questions I Have

There is so much left to figure out about this situation. We’re being told to prepare for distance learning through the end of the school year. If this ends up being the case, there are some pretty big problems we’ll need to solve.

Accountability and Assessment

So far, all of the messages I’ve been sending parents about my lessons have been about taking it easy. I suggest that they find a good routine, but also to not stress out over it. If their child is balking about doing home lessons, let things go. Read a little, draw a little, get outside and enjoy each other. Some families appreciate clearly formed lessons with steps that their children check off as they go, but others find that stressful.

And I totally get it. In many ways, this whole situation is an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the lives that we’ve created. But, if this is going to go on until June, I feel nervous about my students not participating at all in the lessons. What is the right balance of supporting parents who never signed up to be their child’s teacher, but still making sure that skills progress?

And when the end of the school year comes around, how do I assess my students’ skill levels and write end of year reports?

Accessibility

Though all of my families are signed up for Google Classroom, they do not all have the resources to devote to completing the lessons. Many of them appreciate Waldorf’s low-tech approach and they just don’t engage much with the digital world themselves. Others are single parents or continuing to work or have older children who require more of their attention. There are a wide array of reasons why some of my students would not be able to access my lessons.

How do I support those kids? Especially the ones who were getting one-on-one support to make big strides in the home stretch of 3rd grade?

Continued Enrollment and Financial Hardship

My class is an amazingly strong community. I know that my families rely on the students and parents that have come together in this group. Parents, students and siblings are friends, companions and confidantes. Many of my families consider our school their primary social network.

For this reason, I know it would be a dire set of circumstances that would cause any of them to consider leaving the school. But, unfortunately, I have no doubt that those dire circumstances are bound to come to pass.

I’m grateful that our school is strong and we are committed to making sure that families who are experiencing hardship can continue to attend our school. I am determined that every child who left my classroom on March 13, returns, even if it’s not until September 2.

(I know that there are many causes out there worthy of our support right now, but I can’t resist inserting a link, in case anyone wants to support families who are facing hardship but wish to remain at our school.)

How are you faring through these uncertain days? After spending a few days laying low, and feeling even lower, I’ve remembered that the antidote to despair is action. I’m determined to spring into action to help however I can.

How can I help you? Reach out and let me know.

The post Remote Learning, Waldorf-Style appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I remember when my own children were going through the grades, we were all so excited when they got to 3rd grade. All of the projects — building, cooking, handwork — it all seemed like so much fun!

Now that I’m teaching 3rd grade, I’m realizing what a balancing act it truly is.

Because here’s the thing — there are two streams of development going on for the 3rd grader, and they are both super important.

Soul Development

My students’ developing souls need the nourishment of the Old Testament stories and the hands-on activities of the projects. As they navigate the tempestuous waters of the 9-year-change, they need the two reminders that these stories and experiences give them.

1. You may feel all alone in the world, but the adults around you are the authorities (like God to the Israelites.)
2. We know that as you make your way through the world you’ll feel alone and vulnerable, so here are the tools you’ll need to protect yourself from the harsh realities of the world.

In these ways, the curriculum is such a blessing for children of this age. It doesn’t make the 9-year-change a walk in the park, exactly, but it certainly helps.

Academic Development

The other side of my students’ development that I need to consider, though, is their academic development. I learned back in teacher training that the end of 3rd grade is a big turning point. By then, students’ reading and math skills should be just about at grade level.

Because we don’t begin direct phonics instruction until 1st grade, our students have received less direct instruction than their mainstream peers. For this reason, parents and teachers are usually patient with 1st and 2nd graders whose reading skills are still developing.

But by the end of 3rd grade, we like to see that their skills have caught up. And if they haven’t, 3rd grade is a great time to give a big push. Luckily, students are usually quite ready for that push and they can make big leaps really quickly.

Keeping the Balance

All of this means that the 3rd grade teacher is pulled in 87 different directions and needs to make some real “soul economy” decisions. 3rd grade is the last grade that I had never taught before (remember, I started in the middle school) and there is no doubt in my mind that it is the most challenging.

I recently sat down and categorized all of the various aspects of my work, in an attempt to create a regular rhythm around it — just to make it all more manageable. As tempted as I am to go through that long list right now, I really want to make this post all about balancing projects and academics. But as you read, know that there is so much more to balance, and that finding rhythms and structures is key to making the work happen.

I know that some teachers have really wondered about the value of all of the project learning, claiming that it doesn’t leave enough time for academic skill-building. Waldorf Inspirations puts some aspects of this work in the “sacred nothings” category. (Those are those Waldorf traditions that, when you really think about it, don’t really resonate.)

I’m all about making sure that the things we do meet the development of the child. And the best way to make sure that you’re doing that is to look at all of your practices with a questioning eye. So, with that in mind, what are some helpful considerations in blending projects and academics? Let’s see.

Be clear about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

This is generally a good idea with any teaching decision, but it’s particularly important in this situation, where balance is so difficult to achieve. As always, the key question is, “What need does this meet in my students?” You can probably come up with a need for everything you do (otherwise you probably wouldn’t have even thought to do it) but the key is to make sure you’re intentional about what needs you’re meeting when.

For example, in our recent shelters block, I needed to continually remind myself that the focus of the block should be about how the human being finds protection in the world. It was decidedly NOT a unit about the various cultures of the shelters we studied. We really focused on the shelters themselves and how the people living in them would stay warm or protected from the weather.

Use rhythm to your advantage.

Okay. I know I may sound like a broken record when it comes to rhythm, but it is even more important when you’ve got a lot of balls in the air.

Again, an example helps. Right now, I’m blocking our class play, planning a field trip for our fibers block, planning a natural dyeing session next week, trying to figure out what our project time will be this week and looking ahead to our big farm trip overnight. Holy smokes! That’s a lot to consider.

Thank goodness I’ve got an extremely regular approach to the academic work that we’re doing in main lesson. Because of this, I know that every day my students will practice reading, writing and math. It is built into our rhythm and though I need to do a little bit of prep for it on Sunday night, I would never overlook or forget this work because it is such an essential part of our rhythm. Our day almost can’t continue until we complete our daily dictation.

Now, perhaps if I’d found a good rhythm for all of that project work I would feel just as on top of it as I do the rest of it.

Blend wherever possible.

One of the best things about Waldorf Education is that just about everything you do can become fodder for academic learning. This year, almost all of our project day activities became either compositions or drawings in our Projects main lesson books. I found that one of the best main lesson pages for our project activities was to create a “how to” page. It is such a valuable experience for kids to go back and think through their actions in a linear way. This is so much harder than we think!

Ultimately, I’ve been really happy with the projects that we’ve done — though they do take a lot of preparation and patience. Those project days are definitely not school-as-usual. But finding ways to extract academic skill-building experiences from them has been so helpful.

It’s all about soul economy!

The post Weaving Projects and Academics in Waldorf Grade 3 appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.