This year, it wasn’t looking like I was going to teach, but due to a last-minute staffing change, I got slotted in to teach mostly geography classes in the upper grades.

Now, ordinarily, geography would not be my first choice of topics to teach summer training teachers. Here’s why.

Teaching geography is complicated.

First, Steiner gave decent indications about geography for fourth grade, but there’s not much for the rest of the grades (other than the statement that geography is the “most important subject”).

Everyone is just figuring it out.

Second, because there is so little to go on, teachers are left to figure it out, and there isn’t general consensus among Waldorf curriculum developers (i.e., teachers) about what should be done in the different grades. This means that if I prepare to talk to seventh-grade teachers about teaching Asian Geography that year, there’s a chance someone will have already done it in sixth grade. What you do each year is highly dependent on what you did the previous year and what you’re going to do next year. So, my message to the poor sixth-grade teachers was to decide now what you’re going to cover in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. I tried giving them a crash course in 6th-8th grade child development to guide their decision-making, but it’s definitely not ideal.

Teaching geography has changed.

Back when I first started teaching, we quite naturally taught the geography of Africa in connection with our study of the Age of Exploration, calling it “economy of soul”. The very idea of teaching this rich culture through the lens of colonialism is inconceivable to me now. I can’t just pull out those notes and recommend that teachers take that approach. And anyway. . .

My notes are sketchy.

Here’s the thing. Geography is a big outbreath subject, so it’s best taught at the ends of the year—either fall or spring. Almost always, I taught geography in the spring, often as the last block of the year. And you know I try to be diligent about my lesson planning and record-keeping, but spring has its way with the best of us.

Spring is a time when lessons get bumped for plays, field trips, assemblies, and so many other things. And despite my best efforts, often those geography blocks were not my best examples of imaginative, content-rich curricula.

There. I said it.

So, all this to say, though I was excited to talk to teachers about geography, I knew it was going to be work! In the end, the extra prep time was worth it, the classes went great, and I’m happy to share some of what we explored with you.

And I’ll say right off what I told every class I taught this year—geography is a high-prep subject. You don’t get to open the book of Norse Myths and start telling stories. And there’s no linear progression to follow (like with history). In fact, one of the things we talked about was making an effort to remove the geography block from history. Of course, trying to tell stories that transcend time is an exercise in frustration, so ultimately, my best recommendation was to bounce around through history. Tell indigenous and early settler stories from long ago AND from the modern day.

So, to get us ready for that work, here’s a quick peek at what we DO know.

Waldorf Fourth Grade Geography

Rumor has it that this is the grade that Steiner gave the most information about. And it’s true, in my experience, there is some general consensus about what should be taught in fourth-grade geography. The challenge, of course, is that it’s local geography, so still, every teacher is creating content about their local area. So even the fourth-grade teachers aren’t off the hook from doing the big work.

Fourth grade is the year when you start as close to the student as possible and then move out in expanding concentric circles. So, starting with the desk, the classroom, the school, the route from home to school, and eventually covering the town/city and state. There’s a big map-making component to this block that is suddenly age-appropriate for the shifted gaze of the fourth grader. Whereas previously, they were only able to view the world through their own perspective, the fourth grader can now shift and comprehend the bird’s eye view.

Throughout the block, you tell stories that are meaningful for your area, through both an indigenous and early settler lens. Tell stories from various times throughout history, without pigeonholing the indigenous perspective as “historical.”

I happened to start our fourth-grade year with this block, so I’ve got great notes, and I even put together a curriculum guide. It’s, of course, local to my area (Portland, OR), so I offer it at a pretty steep discount. It might give you an idea of what you can put together for your own area.

Waldorf Fifth Grade Geography

This year continues the expanding circles of fourth grade to include the home continent. We don’t, however, need to limit ourselves to the rigid structure of expanding circles. Basically, at the beginning of the first block, give an overview of the continent, and then explore various regions in a way that makes sense to you.

Steiner’s indications for fifth grade include:

• The relationship between the land and the economy, and how they were shaped by each other.
• Artificial rivers, dams, and canals

That’s it. The rest you get to figure out.

And though I’ve talked a lot about trying to separate geography from history, fifth grade is one place where we can take inspiration from the history curriculum to form our content. Fifth-grade history, which studies human evolution through the cultural epochs of India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, tells the story of how human beings gradually made the earth their home. This seems in keeping with Steiner’s indications for geography above.

So, after giving an overview of the continent (I love to use the story of Paul Bunyan for this), go through the different regions telling stories about how people lived on the land, creating different kinds of maps, and observing climate patterns along the way.

I’ve got a (pretty great, if I do say so myself) North American Geography Curriculum Guide that breaks down how I taught it one year, including great instructions for guiding your students through a state report. But here are a few ideas of stories, just to get your wheels turning.

• The Erie Canal
• Tall Tales and Legends (Old Stormalong)
• The Hudson Bay Beaver Trade
• The Iroquois League
• Steamboats on the Mississippi
• National Parks (great tie in with Botany!)
• The California Gold Rush

By the way, this is a great time to connect with those teachers you meet at summer conferences. Find out what they taught for local geography in fourth grade, and bring those lessons into your regional explorations in fifth grade.

Okay, with fourth and fifth grade outlined a bit, we can start thinking about sixth through eighth. I’m really excited about what we came up with as an approach for these grades, but I’ll cover all that in another post.

The post Geography in the Waldorf School appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, shining ship. It had golden sails topped with high-flying multi-colored pennants. The rich burgundy wood of the deck was so polished it glimmered in the sun.

But this wasn’t just any ship. This ship held the magical powers of transformation. When everyone on board worked hard and shared a common vision, the ship could become whatever they needed, allowing them to travel wherever they wanted. It could transform into a packet boat that could navigate the waters of smooth-as-glass canals. It could become a kayak that leapt through the rapids of swift rivers. Or it could become a large canoe that traveled down the waters of the Great River thanks to the coordinated paddling of the entire clan.

On this ship, anything was possible with hard work and a common vision.

One day some incredibly fortunate young adventurers boarded this ship with their captain (who, it turned out, was the most fortunate of them all). They got to know each other, packed their bags (with the help of some devoted land-lubbers), made some agreements, and set sail.

As the journey began, those adventurers listened to their captain and followed her every command. They worked together caring for the ship, swabbing the decks, hoisting the sails, and cleaning the galley.

They cared for each other, picking up extra work when someone needed rest, working through disagreements as they arose, making sure everyone had what they needed to continue the adventure.

They quickly found that the magic of the ship was real. When they worked hard and built a common vision, they could go anywhere! On board that ship they traveled to the frigid waters of the North, where rugged Norsemen lived passionate lives and died triumphant deaths. They journeyed to a mysterious land where yellow sands parted to make way for a meandering, life-giving river. They met powerful kings, wise rishis, charismatic monkeys, tempestuous princesses, ladder-climbing fish, humble queens, opinionated gods, clever goddesses, and living, talking trees that shared their wisdom with those quiet enough to listen. (The adventurers quickly learned the importance of listening.)

At times, the ship would pull into port and some adventurers would disembark — waving and smiling and blowing kisses through tears as they continued their journey on another ship. Sometimes new adventurers would join the crew, ready to share stories and enjoy new experiences.

Their adventures brought laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, delight and heartache. And the adventurers may not have realized it, but the ship wasn’t the only thing transforming.

After five glorious years of adventure, the ship came in to port once again, but this time it wasn’t to find new crew members. After many hugs, tears, and well-wishes, the captain herself stepped off the ship, clearing the way for a new leader, who would guide the ship on even greater adventures.

With her feet on solid ground, the captain turned and looked at the wonder that they had created together. Those young adventurers taught just as much as they learned, and now someone new would gain the benefit of their teaching.

She reflected on the beginning of their journey, thinking of her younger self, and that sun-drenched day when she unknowingly stepped onboard for the wildest, most adventurous experience of her life. She had no idea what awaited her.

Then she thought again of that new captain who would soon stand at the helm, taking their own leap into the unknown.

With a nostalgic tremble in her voice she whispered to herself, “They don’t know how lucky they are.”

The post The Adventure Continues appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I can think of so many times with my last class when I presented the class with a challenge, matched them up in groups, and let them start figuring things out. The productive hum that fell over the class told me that there was some good working and thinking going on.

Most teachers have some of those positive experiences of middle school group work and many of us are looking for ways to create that happy, social, and hard-working environment in our classrooms.

Unfortunately, we also have those experiences when group work didn’t quite work out. Because as great as social group work is, it can go horribly awry, as well. There are some pretty big challenges to overcome when creating a healthy group work environment. Let’s talk about some of those challenges and how the teacher can face them.

Are you up for it?

As satisfying as a group learning experience can be, it takes work to manage. And it’s loud. And, honestly, sometimes I just don’t have the patience for it.

And you know what? That’s okay! Far better for me to be honest with myself about my patience level and save the group activity for another day, than to set some great activity in motion, only to find myself annoyed and grumpy with my students (who are just doing what I asked them to do.)

I’ve definitely had days when I didn’t ask myself this question before getting rolling with the activity and I had to pep talk myself through it. I’ll find myself getting irritated with the noise and feeling ready to pump the brakes and tell everyone to just be quiet. When I have the wherewithal to do it, I try to stop myself and look around. Invariably, everyone is engaged and working productively. They’re just making a lot of noise while they do it. I try to take a deep breath and let it go.

Is everyone learning?

This was a big hangup for me for a long time. I mean, if they’re working in small groups, how do I know that everyone in the group really gets it? There are bound to be some kids who will happily sit back and let others do most of the work.

I worry about this most when we’re working on a hard skill — like a math concept. Everyone is responsible for understanding the concept, and it’s my job to make sure they do.

But having all students participate in the group is important no matter what the project is. The last thing I want is for one of my students to come away with the understanding that it’s just fine to sit back and let others do the hard work while they relax.

For awhile I rationalized it by thinking that the positive experiences they were getting by working together out-weighed the potential for missing out on that individual skill-building. I’m no longer so satisfied with this, though. Instead, I’m thinking that it IS possible for students to be individually responsible AND work in a group.

This is the question I’m currently grappling with as I put together a possible group project for my fifth graders. They’re a little young to be able to handle the responsibility of making sure they all participate equally, so I’m thinking about what kind of structure I can build into the project to make sure everyone participates.

I’m thinking I could have defined roles with clearly structured tasks. I know that this might frustrate some kids, who would be more than happy to complete all of the tasks themselves, so I guess it’s a good learning experience all around.

How much are we working and how much are we socializing?

When I was a new teacher, I remember getting my students ready for a group project and at the mere mention of the word “group” they were already looking at each other like, “Woohoo! Par-tay!” I hadn’t learned the importance of setting them up for success and making sure that those group project times were WORKING times. They just couldn’t help themselves and they got carried away with the social aspect of the experience.

In those days, when I stopped to look around to check that everyone was working, they definitely weren’t! And I didn’t really know what to do about it. (Oh how grateful I am to have some experience under my belt!)

Now, as I prepare my current students for their first real group project (possibly, this is still in the planning stage) I’m thinking about the ways I can build in checkpoints so I can be sure that they’re striking a good balance between socializing and working.

• We’ll start with a short group work session and build up to longer periods over time.
• At the end of each session, each group and each individual student will reflect and share what they accomplished.
• We’re starting when they’re young enough that pleasing the teacher and following instructions still wins out over having fun with classmates.

I’m hoping that by starting out with these things in mind, my students will establish some good habits about group work and we’ll have many successful years of group projects ahead of us.

Are you teaching middle school? You might consider checking out some of my curriculum guides. Many of them include instructions for projects that can be done in small groups, including my 6th/7th Grade Astronomy Guide and 8th Grade Physics and Meteorology.

The post Group Learning in Waldorf Middle School appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

We’re keeping up with our usual rhythm of dictations, compositions, guided drawings, and other fun activities peppered in, but for the past week we’ve been taking a close look at diagramming sentences.

At the risk of revealing myself to be a complete grammar nerd, I have to confess — I LOVE diagramming sentences. I’ve been using a number of online resources to help make sure I get it right. This one in particular has things spelled out pretty clearly.

But beyond what those resources have to share, I’ve figured out a few things that have made it easier for my students. It’s easiest to work it through with an example.

The teacher gave the students a test.

1. Start by showing them how to identify the verb. I have found that the easiest thing for kids to identify in the sentence is the verb. Sometimes it’s a little tricky if the verb isn’t very active (like in this sentence) but most of my students can identify that “gave” is the verb in this sentence. Once they do that I tell them to underline the verb twice.
2. From there, I say, “Who is doing the verb?” They can almost always get the subject from that. We underline the subject once, in this case “teacher.”
3. Then I ask, “What is the teacher giving?” This is the direct object. We put the letters DO above “test” in this sentence. We sometimes have a chuckle about how it’s sometimes hard to tell when we have more than one noun after the verb. Is the teacher giving the test or the students? They love to imagine what it would be like if the teacher was giving the students to the test.
4. Then I ask, “Who is receiving the test?” They can always get this — this is the indirect object and we put the letters IO above test.

Once we have all these parts identified, it’s time to do the diagramming. Some kids get intimidated and stuck at this step. They just don’t know where to start. I always tell them to start with the subject/verb cross.

I started with only diagramming the main parts that we identified, which would look like this.

I broke this down pretty carefully. We did a couple days of just subject and verb, then added the direct object and finally the indirect object.

Once they’d had enough practice with that, I started looking at the other words. They could pretty easily see how the other words in the sentence fit in. “The” went with teacher, “a” went with test, and “the” went with students. I showed them how those words fit into our diagram.

I was actually really surprised to see which students had a hard time with this and which ones found it to make complete sense. Some students who struggle with language arts in other ways, with either reading or writing, were the first ones with their hands in the air when it came to identifying the logic of how the words go together in the sentence.

By the end of the week, just about everyone could do it really well. There were only a few mistakes I saw on our end-of-week quiz.

• Some students put the “the” on the line next to teacher (logical mistake!)
• A couple kids put “students” right next to “test.” Again, that makes sense to me — who decided that the indirect object should go below and off the verb anyway?
• A couple of them left off the extra words and only did the subject, verb, direct object, and indirect object (again, makes sense because that’s how we started.)

I found the whole experience pretty satisfying, and I think they did too. On Friday when I excitedly commented on how well they got it, someone responded, “That’s because we have a really good teacher!”

Awww, sweet kids.

What’s next?

Well, after a very busy fall, I’m VERY much looking forward to Thanksgiving week. We take the first three days of the week to do parent-teacher conferences, which I’m also looking forward to, but then I’ll be having some family time at home.

It’s been a really busy fall (which you might have guessed by my lack of presence here.) I enrolled in a master’s program which I am absolutely loving, but I forgot how time-consuming being a student is! The time invested is paying off — I’m learning a lot and getting good grades.

After the break we’ll start with our first math block of the year — Decimal Fractions. This is my fourth time teaching fifth grade, so just typing that out brings to mind the progression of the block. That’s satisfying!

I know that we’ll start with a review of place value, at the same time as we do some work with fractions with 10 in the denominator. My students are just finishing up their review books on fractions, and though they won’t quite be done with them when we start the math block, it’ll be close. The perfect time to move on to decimals. I know that once they learn decimals they’ll be SO glad to leave traditional fractions behind.

Otherwise, things feel almost back to life as usual in the classroom. We’re wearing masks, but all my students are back in the classroom, they’re back to engaging in our lessons the way I expect (which was pretty tricky on Zoom), and we’re having fun (even though we have to eat our lunches outside, sometimes under drippy trees.)

Hope things are good in your neck of the woods, too.

The post Diagramming Sentences in Waldorf Grade Five appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Starting the Year Off Right

I always give a lot of thought to which block will be the first of the year. I’ve started things off different ways in the now four(!) times I’ve taught fifth grade.

Starting with Botany

A couple of times I have started the year off with a Botany block. I was somewhat inclined to do that again this time but I changed my mind at the last minute because some of my students are starting the year off online (I’ll write a post about that at some point.) I decided to put the Botany block off in the hopes that more of my students will be in-person by then and we can do a bunch of hands-on, fun stuff.

But Botany is a great way to start the year. The weather is good enough in September that you can get outside and do some drawing, harvesting and observation of plants. And in general, I try to put those more outward-facing blocks on the ends of the school year. I usually close out the year with a Botany block, as well.

Starting with Ancient Civilizations

If you’re not worried about making the most of the warm weather or getting lots of hands-on, outdoor projects going at the beginning of the year, Ancient Civilizations is another great way to start fifth grade.

I really like kicking off the year with the history/mythology content. Starting with those stories gives you a good chance to set the tone for the year and give the students a feeling sense for the theme of the year from the very beginning.

Starting with a good story-telling block is also a great way to start the year off with good classroom behavior structures and routines. I’m finding this particularly helpful this year, after having been away from the traditional classroom for so long. More than a few of my students need regular reminders of school behavior expectations. This is absolutely to be expected and I consider it a standard part of the work I do with my students.

A good history/mythology block usually follows your typical routines and habits — listening to stories, completing main lesson pages, participating in verbal reviews of those stories — and I’m so grateful that my students are getting a reminder of how those things work best. I think if I’d started off the year with a big hands-on, outward-focused block, I’d be facing some behavior challenges and they’d have a harder time making the most of the block and then readjusting to typical classroom routines later on.

So, yay for me for deciding to start with Ancient Civilizations.

Why Ancient Civilizations in Waldorf Grade 5?

One of the things I love most about the Waldorf curriculum is how intentional it is about each aspect of the curriculum and how it meets the child of that age. This is no less true for Ancient Civilizations in fifth grade.

Up until now, the students have been hearing stories from the world of mythology. These stories are the truer-than-true stories that have lived in the oral traditions of their people. In fifth grade, they’ll start the year hearing those mythological stories, but by the end of the year we’ll move into the realm of actual history.

To prepare the students for this shift, we will show them, through these various cultures, how human beings came to make the earth their home. Each one of the cultures we’ll study this year brings the human being closer to feeling at home on the earth. Here’s a very brief picture of how each culture does that.

India. To the ancient Indian, the world was Maya. What we call the real world, they considered an illusion. They felt that the true real world was the heavenly existence of the spirit. In this way, the ancient Indian hardly touched the earth. They tread lightly and were happily inclined to return to the spirit world, however possible. The story of Buddha (though he comes from a later time period) brings a strong picture of this desire to escape the realm of earthly existence.

Persia. The ancient Persians came closer to making the earth their home. They represent the shift from a nomadic life to domesticating animals and growing crops. They had to act upon the world to make it suitable to inhabit, in a way that the ancient Indians did not. This is in part because of the differences in climate between the two regions. With wide fluctuations in temperature throughout the year, Persia is a more difficult place to make a life.

Mesopotamia. We’re covering this civilization in our next history block in January, but it continues to follow the stream of earthly incarnation. In Mesopotamia, the people developed cities and a system of laws that formed agreements between people living in community. The engineering required to build the walls and structures of a city demonstrates a further step towards making the earth a comfortable home. The story of Gilgamesh is a significant one that shows how far humans were feeling from the world of spirit. Gilgamesh’s quest was to find everlasting life. The last thing he wanted was to return to the spirit world.

Egypt. The last of the four civilizations traditionally studied in fifth grade is Egypt. The ancient Egyptians thought so highly of earthly existence that they wanted to bring it with them into the afterlife. Though it seems that they were obsessed with the idea of the afterlife (as seen in their elaborate tombs and pyramids) all of this attention was an effort to extend their earthly incarnation and bring it with them into the afterlife.

Now, of course, not all of this is explicitly articulated to the students. If you read an anthroposophical perspective of this journey, a belief in reincarnation and the spiritual world is pretty baked in. My goal is to present the stories so that they are accessible to students, no matter what their family’s beliefs might be. We can still talk about people learning to make the earth a comfortable place to live without assuming any particular belief.

At the end of the year we’ll conclude our mythology/history studies with a unit on Ancient Greece. In the past I’ve done a unit on Greek Mythology and a separate unit on Greek History. This year I’m putting them back to back so we can be immersed in the world of Greece for six full weeks.

Structure of the Block

Every year I find the history/mythology curriculum to be the most difficult content to get through. There are just so many fantastic stories to tell and I always feel compelled to do justice to each of the cultures we study. Inevitably, though, I find myself falling short, wishing I’d covered more. (This is, incidentally, why you’ll find so few history/mythology curriculum guides on my site. I just don’t feel like I’ve done them well enough yet! But I remain hopeful!).

But, I’ve started off the block with a pretty good outline (though it is a little more pinched than I’d hoped) and I’m determined to stick with it. Here’s a week-by-week overview of what it looks like.

• Week #1 (3 days): The Monkey King/Journey to the West
• Week #2 (4 days): The Monkey King/Journey to the West
• Week #3: Ancient India — Overview, the gods, Sons of Pandu
• Week #4: Ancient India — The Ramayana
• Week #5: Ancient India — Buddha and Ancient Persia

The one adjustment I might make is on week three. It’s a bit light and I might try to start The Ramayana at the end of that week, allowing for a full week on Persia.

The Monkey King/Journey to the West

I started off the year with these stories and I’m really enjoying them. They come from China and they have such a fun and lighthearted feeling. The Monkey King is a trickster character, a bit like Loki, so it makes sense to bring it at the beginning of the year, before diving into the more reverent content of the other cultures.

My students are thoroughly enjoying the stories and I think they’ll be sad to bid Monkey a fond farewell after Monday this week. If you want to read more about how I’ve been preparing these stories, you can read more on my Substack site. (This is where I post a bit more informally with weekly posts for subscribers that give a more journal-like experience.)

Ancient India

My summer planning time was definitely cut short this year, so I’ll be spending a good chunk of this weekend putting together my plan for the week. Thankfully 5th grade is familiar territory, so I have a good sense for the resources and stories that I might tell.

Overview, The Gods and Sons of Pandu

This coming week we’ll be diving into the India content and for this week my primary resource will be Charles Kovacs’ Ancient Mythologies. I like that his stories bring some of the basic facts about India in picturesque story form. Through these stories we’ll learn about:

• the holy River Ganges
• the Indian gods
• the climate
• the caste system

I’m realizing now, though, that I did not slot in the stories of Krishna, which are some of my favorites (from this fun resource). Hopefully we’ll have some time in this week to touch on those stories.

The Ramayana

I’m excited to devote a full week to these stories and I’ve got a couple of resources I’m turning to. First, I will read through the Kovacs story, though it is just twelve pages for this epic story. So it might present a good overview, but probably not enough detail for storytelling.

I was also recommended a book titled Sita by Devdutt Pattanaik. I plan to sit down with it this weekend. I also remember using this version by Krishna Dharma, though I no longer own it, so I can’t really attest to it. I’ll probably see what I can find at the library, as well.

I do like to start with a few different resources and look through them all before settling on one. My preference is definitely to find a good young adult or middle grade reader, though lately I’ve had to turn to adult books and sift through them to find the essence of the stories.

Buddha

My hands-down favorite resource for Buddha is the biography called Buddha by Deepak Chopra. I love this book so much, though it’s another one of those adult books that will give you a good background heading into the block. It’s not really an open-and-go book to read to students. (Incidentally, I was excited for 6th grade when I saw that Chopra has written similar books for Jesus and Mohammed. I gave them both a try and didn’t love them as much as the Buddha book.) Kovacs has a story about Buddha, but again, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to provide content for storytelling. (Though if you’re covering India in just one week, as was recommended in my teaching training, then you might be grateful for the short version that Kovacs provides.)

Ancient Persia

I’ve always found Persia to be the culture that gets overlooked the most, and honestly, when it’s paired up with India, it’s easy to do. The main gist of Ancient Persia is that it brought humans the capacity to use fire and it is a land of great contrasts. Those contrasts come through most dramatically through the story of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. As long as I get to that one, and the fire-filled story of Zarathustra, then I’ll feel satisfied. I plan to use Kovacs for these stories.

We’ll end this block with Ancient Persia before moving on to Botany in October. Hopefully I’ll be back with an update of some of the work we did!

The post Ancient Civilizations in Waldorf Fifth Grade appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I was so blown away by it, and so excited to fill in the gaps of my own education, that I spent almost all of my time working on the imaginative content. That first year of teaching (it was a 5th grade) I savored every story and lived into the images so strongly that they ignited my own imagination. Of course, the enthusiasm that those stories ignited came through in my retellings in the classroom (once my nerves settled). And that was lovely, but there was definitely something I was missing.

It wasn’t until I started working with my second class that I realized how much more there is to teaching than the imaginative content. It was then that I realized the stories are really just the medium that we use to facilitate the development of skills.

The stories are great, but they’re a small part of the picture. And though some students will learn those hard academic skills quite naturally and they’ll naturally evolve as you do your work in the classroom, other students need a much more systematic, strategic approach.

Putting it all together.

Back in those early days, my annual block rotation simply consisted of dates and stories. I knew when I was telling stories about India, Botany and Geography. But I had no idea when we might cover there/their/they’re or the Oxford comma. I trusted that it would all come about quite naturally in the course of our work together. And usually it did. I kept my eye out for those teachable moments and made the most of them.

But here’s the thing, what if those things didn’t come up? Or what if I didn’t catch the opportunity?

With that naturally evolving approach, I could never be quite sure that my students were doing enough writing, or that their spelling skills were improving. I didn’t have a method for making sure I’d ticked all the boxes and that we covered all of the necessary benchmarks for that grade. Heck, back in those days I don’t think we even had benchmarks.

Now, when I sit down to plan out my year, in addition to writing out the imaginative content — the blocks that I’ll be covering — I make a long list of academic skills that will be covered.

Once I’ve got all the goals written out, I organize them, looking for themes that might go together. Some of those goals are skills that we’ll work on throughout the year. For example, this year I’m going to start covering Greek and Latin roots. This work will last the entire year. We’ll have a Greek or Latin root to focus on each week.

Other goals are skills that get assigned to a block. During that block, I’ll directly teach the skill and we’ll practice it. For example, during one of our first blocks of the year we’re going to review the parts of speech. In that block I’ll introduce the idea of subject, predicate and direct object.

Organizing Goals and Resources

In general, the goals I set out for the year fall into two categories — language arts and math. I tend to check a few resources as I’m collecting my list of skills and then settle on one to give direction to my teaching.

Language Arts Goals

I checked the big yellow curriculum book, as well as some online resources for my language arts goals, but the resource that I found the most helpful this year is the book Continuing the Journey to Literacy by Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl. This book is the sequel to the groundbreaking book Roadmap to Literacy (which focuses on grades 1-3, Continuing the Journey is grades 4-8). While not quite as revolutionary as Roadmap, Continuing the Journey is a fantastic resource.

The piece of information I found most helpful from this book was The 17 Aspects of Language Arts. Yes, there are 17 different things to think about with your language arts curriculum! Continuing the Journey goes into great detail about each one of these, with ideas for how to teach them and how to structure the practice of these skills in your classroom. I can’t emphasize how helpful the book is in this way.

Here are the 17 Aspects of Language Arts that I came up with a plan for addressing in my classroom this year.

1. Storytelling
2. Reading
3. Research Skills
4. Notetaking
5. Outlining
6. Compositions
7. Essays (Actually, this is mentioned, but not something we address in 5th grade.)
8. Reports
9. Creative Writing
10. Correspondence
11. Vocabulary
12. Handwriting
13. Spelling
14. Speech
15. Grammar
16. Literary Terms and Analysis
17. Morphology

Once I had this list put together, I thought about the rhythms and routines of my classroom and considered how I could address each one. For example, for Correspondence, I’ll teach the format of the friendly letter as we write to family members during our North American Geography block. Vocabulary will be addressed in several ways — a vocabulary curriculum with grade-appropriate lists, but also word lists that pertain to each block that we’re studying. Handwriting will be reviewed during our first block back in the fall.

All of these topics fell into the year in one way or another. Grammar is a subject that requires a closer look, however. There are so many goals within the category of grammar that I broke those up over the course of the year and assigned them to specific blocks.

All of this work happened over the course of a few hours on my living room sofa yesterday, and though it was a long stretch of work (when I would’ve loved to have gone outside for at least a little while) it now feels so good to have it all organized.

Math Goals

After teaching 4th grade — a very math-heavy year — I was pleasantly surprised to see how much simpler the math goals are for 5th grade. The primary topic is decimal fractions, which is infinitely easier to grasp than the fractions we learned in 4th grade.

There were a few resources I used to put together my list of math goals.

Jamie York Press. York has a pretty good list of topics for each grade on his website. I used to have his grades 1-5 book but I must have loaned it out.

The Alliance for Public Waldorf. The organization that supports Waldorf charter schools has put together a fantastic document that lists Common Core goals and outlines how they align with traditional Waldorf timing. I found this document so helpful and I consider it my primary resource for this year’s goals. I generally align with the traditional Waldorf timing, but if I see that there is a Common Core goal that makes sense but isn’t typically taught according to the Waldorf schedule, I’ll add it to the list.

Here’s what I came up with for our math goals this year.

• Continue to review fractions
• Practice with the 4 processes
• Use parentheses to organize problems (common core)
• Write numbers as a “product of primes” (common core)
• Decimal fractions
• Place value to the left and right of the decimal
• Understanding the power of 10 in place value
• Using exponents to understand powers of 10
• Read, write and compare decimals to thousandths
• Round numbers to any place
• Multiply multi-digit whole numbers
• Divide 4 digit dividends by 2 digit divisors
• Use the 4 processes with decimals to hundredths
• Add and subtract unlike denominators
• Interpret a fraction as the numerator divided by the denominator
• Equivalent fractions
• Converting fractions to decimals
• Area of a parallelogram
• Geometry terms

All of this content is going to be covered in either our regular practice classes or in one of our two math blocks. Because it is such a light math year (and it is decidedly NOT a light history/mythology year) two blocks should do it, as long as we keep up the practice during the week.

Now that I’ve got all those goals listed out and assigned to different times in the year, I can go crazy with the imaginative content. I’m looking forward to reading some new and interesting stories this year. I’ve taught 5th grade 4 times already, so it’s familiar territory, but I’m sure I’ll find some new ways to spice it up.

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