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.

Today was one of those “tangent conversation” days. It started innocently enough. We noticed that the answer to a math problem was 537 — three prime numbers. That led to a conversation about our favorite kinds of numbers. I shared that my preference for even numbers goes back to when my sister and I took turns riding in the front seat (the even days were mine, odd days hers.) It was fun to find out that many of my students have a favorite times table (9’s were the most popular, but some even liked the 7’s!), favorite numbers, and some even associate colors with the different numbers.

I love these little random conversations, and I have to be careful that we don’t spend too long getting lost in the sharing (it takes a long time to give everyone a turn!). This is especially true now that half of our lessons are happening on Zoom. So usually, when I notice that we’re straying too far from the lesson plan, I pull us back on task. But for whatever reason, today, I let the conversation wander. I’m glad I did.

“The number I hate the most is 13 because March 13 was our last day of school. Friday the 13th is truly a bad luck day.”

I heard a little bit of a quiver when she said it, and it felt like an opening.

“You know, you all have had to be really strong this year. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy. Do you want to talk about it?”

I was so surprised to see that that was all they needed. Hands shot into the air and kids started talking. It was quite sweet. And their comments were very 4th grade.

“You guys might make fun of me for this (“no we won’t”), but I get really stressed out about school and I want to help my family so much, at least once a week I just cry for no reason.”

“My parents got a divorce right before covid and the only thing that was normal and stable for me was school. Without school I have emotional breakdowns all the time.”

“Listening to you all and thinking about this I feel like I could cry. I won’t, but I feel like I could.”

What struck me most about their comments was how vulnerable they were. These poor kids! As if dealing with the challenges of covid wasn’t enough, they’re also worried about their peers judging them (and judging themselves!) for how they handle it. Almost all of their comments came with a little apology or disclaimer.

It really made me think about our classroom culture and wonder what I can do to help kids share those vulnerabilities without worry and how I can help them learn how to support each other through them.

The Social-Emotional Classroom

Social-emotional work is such an enormous part of what we do as Waldorf teachers. I’ve never considered myself very strong at actively meeting and guiding those conversations directly. I tend to address emotional stuff through the back door, but this is one aspect of teaching that I want to learn more about.

In many ways, we Waldorf teachers are lucky. There is something about being with the same group of students for so long that ensures the development of a healthy social-emotional environment. I’m grateful for the strong connection I have with my students and their families, but I want to learn more about how to help my students grow through those challenging moments.

The Five Components of Social Emotional Learning

Usually, when I think about social-emotional learning, I think about helping students get along with others. Building relationship skills is one of the most challenging things we do at school and, really, our greatest opportunity for growth. But social awareness is just one part of social-emotional learning. Students need to learn so much more, and if you ask me, those other aspects are a bit less tangible and require more intentional guidance. These are the five core competencies of social-emotional learning.

• self-awareness
• self-management
• social awareness
• relationship skills
• responsible decision-making

There’s so much to be said about each of these, and I want to explore all of them eventually, but I want to make sure this post includes some solid implementation strategies, so let’s focus on the first one — self-awareness.

Self-Awareness: The First Social-Emotional Skill

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), self-awareness is the ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior.

When I first considered the idea of self-awareness, I thought of the 3- or 4-year-old who has a tantrum because they’re over-tired or hungry. They might be able to identify how they’re feeling, but they don’t understand how that feeling is influencing their behavior.

But truly, self-awareness goes far beyond this kind of scenario. Self-awareness also means exploring one’s identity, understanding emotions and their impact, examining prejudices and biases, having a growth mindset, and developing a sense of purpose. Clearly, self-awareness is a life-long journey. The struggle is real — and not just for the 4-year-old.

There are many ways that we can help our students gain greater self-awareness, but, as always, I find it helpful to actively plan experiences that I know will address learning goals — even those in the social-emotional realm. I can’t imagine creating a set of self-awareness benchmarks, like a handy little list of tick boxes that we can mark off when complete. But we can make sure that we’re providing our students with activities and experiences that address this development.

This set of self-awareness skills comes from the CASEL website. They’ve got a great interactive tool that lays out a full framework for social-emotional learning.

• Integrating personal and social identities
• Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets
• Recognizing and identifying one’s emotions and their impact
• Demonstrating honesty and integrity
• Linking feelings, values, and thoughts
• Examining prejudices and biases
• Experiencing self-efficacy
• Having a growth mindset
• Developing interests and a sense of purpose

As I look at this list, right away ideas for classroom activities, conversations, and stories come to mind. Putting together a social-emotional curriculum could be as simple as sitting down and generating a list of activities that would give students practice working with all of these. CASEL has put together this document that gives sample activities to support the development of some of these core competencies. They even have outlined four different approaches.

1. Free-standing lessons that explicitly teach students skills across the five core competencies.
2. General teaching practices that work towards establishing a classroom and schoolwide culture that supports social-emotional development.
3. Integration of SEL skills with academic curriculum.
4. Establishment of school policies and organizational structures that support SEL.

For the sake of my own planning, I’d like to focus on the first two. I know that I need to work with greater intention towards building my students’ social-emotional skills. Though I’m sure there will be opportunities to integrate this learning into our academic lessons, I’ll allow those moments to arise naturally. It’s the intentional work that I want to focus on.

Social-Emotional Lesson Planning

So let’s start by looking at one of the skills and think about some activities that can help strengthen it. These ideas are inspired by the CASEL chart you can find here. I highly recommend reading through this chart and seeing what ideas come to mind for you and your students.

Recognizing One’s Own Feelings and Thoughts and Their Influence on Behaviors

We want students to be able to state how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking and how these thoughts and feelings impact their behavior. Part of this is understanding that their thoughts and feelings will change, that they have an impact on themselves and others, and that it is possible for behavior to have an effect on emotions (including improving them.)

Lesson Ideas for Recognizing and Articulating Feelings

• Vocabulary work. Make a list of words for the week and let students role-play using the words. Post charts of the vocabulary words—brainstorm lists of emotional vocabulary words with older students. Integrate into academic work by using a thesaurus or dictionary. You can also do word searches and fill-in-the-blank activities.
• Drama. Ask students to act out how they might feel in different situations. You can have the entire class act it out by using only facial features or body language. You can also call on individual students to stand up and act it out using words.
• Reading. Use a piece of literature with a difficult, relatable scenario and have a class discussion about times when students have had similar feelings and how they handled them.
• Art. Have students create a watercolor painting or free-drawing that depicts a particular emotion.
• Class conversations. Ask students to describe a time when they felt a particular emotion. Let students share how they felt and what they did about it. Brainstorm things students can do to improve the way they feel. Create a list of these activities and post them on the wall. Have these conversations as a full class or in small groups.
• Stories. Any Waldorf teacher knows the power of a good story. Find stories and characters that allow you to explore the realm of feelings. Ask students how they would have responded in a similar situation.

Ongoing Teaching Practices

Of course, managing a classroom is much more than creating specific lessons. There are plenty of ways to set up your classroom practices to help students strengthen their ability to recognize and work with emotions.

• Create a space in the room that is dedicated to reflecting and processing feelings.
• Listen and reflect when students talk about their feelings.
• Talk about emotions and the physical and emotional cues that tell us how we’re feeling (“You must be really excited about recess. I can see you’re jumping up and down.”)
• Talk about your own feelings, how you recognize them, and how they influence your behavior.
• Encourage students to journal or draw about their feelings.
• Ask students how they’re feeling and what they can do to change their emotions.
• Encourage pretend play that allows students to explore feelings.

Social-Emotional Learning Recommendations

I imagine coming back to this topic in the future and exploring some of the other core competencies that we want to help our students develop. Until then, here are some recommendations, if you want to learn more.

• Kimochis. This is a website with tools and downloads to aid with social-emotional learning. I can imagine their tools useful for both parents and teachers.
• Responsive Classroom. I’ve been recommending Responsive Classroom for years. Their trainings are fantastic and they’ve got lots of articles, videos, and books to support teachers in developing a healthy classroom culture.
• Teaching Children to Care. By far, my favorite teaching book. I give it to new teachers all the time.
• Fly Five. This is a SEL curriculum I came across in my research that looks pretty good. It reminds me of Responsive Classroom so I think I’ll be taking a closer look. Speaking of which . . .
• They’re offering a free introductory webinar on Tuesday, May 11. It looks like this webinar is an overview of the Fly Five curriculum. I’m excited to learn more.

I hope you’ve found this helpful and that you’ll explore how you can implement some social-emotional learning practices in your classroom. I think we Waldorf teachers sometimes feel that because of our multi-year relationship with our students that we’ve got the social-emotional realm covered. But our students will benefit if we address this area of their learning with direct, intentional instruction.

What social-emotional learning challenges have you faced in your classroom recently? Share in the comments. Let’s learn from each other.

The post Social-Emotional Learning in the Waldorf Classroom appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

• 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.

Many of us are teaching in ways we never expected before and it’s pushing us far beyond our comfort zones. We miss working with our students in person, but the news isn’t all bad. I, for one, have been amazed at how much learning and connection is actually happening in our distance learning arrangement.

In this episode we’ll talk all about distance learning, some things I’ve learned and how you can make the most of this medium.

This episode is being brought to you by my free workshop, the 3 classroom management strategies every waldorf teacher needs to know, which is being released the week this episode goes liv

I’m really excited to offer this workshop because I think it is something that isn’t talked about enough in our training courses and it is exactly what Waldorf teachers need to be thinking about right now.

Just head over to www.awaldorfjourney.com/workshop to sign up for the workshop.

Also, registration opens soon for my new course, The Practical Art of the Waldorf Classroom. In this course we’ll talk about some big topics that should be on your mind during the school year.

• Rhythms and Routines
• Classroom management
• Imagination in the classroom
• Working with parents
• Working with students

Content Outline

• Where we’ve been and where we are now
• Student engagement
• Assessment and feedback
• Self-Care

Links to Things Mentioned

• The Distance Learning Playbook, Grades K-12
• Compassion Fatigue resource
• The Caregiver’s Bill of Rights

The post Waldorf via Zoom, Lessons Learned appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.