It’s the time of year when we all get a little sentimental and take some time to recognize the tremendous growth and development that has happened at school this year.

I remember when my last class was in eighth grade, they spent the year marking all of the “lasts.”

It’s our last Winter Faire/May Day/Field Trip!

This year’s eighth grade at my school is no different. As much as they are ready and excited to move on to high school, they (and their parents!) are squeezing every last drop out of their Waldorf experience with camping trips, musical performances, and field trips.

And while it’s true that eighth grade is a particularly special time for reflection, throughout the grades, Waldorf schools are pretty incredible at creating events and experiences that mark the passage of time and the development of our students.

Here’s a peek at a few of the ceremonies and celebrations that have marked transitions in my experience at Waldorf schools.

The Rose Ceremony

If you’re familiar with Waldorf schools, you’ve probably heard of the Rose Ceremony. The tradition bookends the year with two ceremonies. At the beginning of the year, the eighth graders present the first graders with a rose to welcome them into the grade school. At the end of the year, the first graders give the eighth graders a rose to acknowledge their transition to high school.

Typically, the two classes have a “buddy” relationship throughout the year, which makes the tradition even more meaningful. Throughout the grades, my students looked forward to having their first grade buddy, and I loved watching them sweetly nurture their new little friends.

The Rose Ceremony is just as significant for teachers. When I looped back and took my first grade class, my closest colleague was in eighth grade. After years of collaborating and supporting each other through the throes of middle school, our relationship transitioned, too.

Every school I have been involved with has some version of the Rose Ceremony, which makes it even more special. When I imagine that Waldorf schools around the world acknowledge their students’ transitions with the giving of a rose, I can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed and honored to be a part of the global Waldorf community.

The Rainbow Bridge Ceremony

Another sweet and sentimental ceremony our school holds is the Rainbow Bridge Ceremony. This event is held at the end of the school year and marks the kindergarten students’ transition into the grade school. Lovingly held by their kindergarten teachers, the students walk over a bridge and then meet their new teacher in the first grade classroom. 

The teacher then tells them a story, welcoming them into the grade school.

Honestly, I remember the Rainbow Bridge Ceremony for my former class like it was yesterday. They seemed so little—especially compared to the eighth graders I had been teaching all year. They sat somewhat nervously in a circle while I told them a story and I remember being amazed at how fully they drank that story in. They’re now in 7th grade and a couple of them told me recently that they STILL remember that story.

That story ultimately became the metaphor that guided our work as a class, including the story I told them when I stepped away from teaching and they received their new teacher. 

(If you’re interested, you can read the story I told my students when I stepped away, which gives a picture of the original story I told on the Rainbow Bridge day.)

There are so many more events that mark the passage of time in a Waldorf school—the festivals, projects, events and field trips—it’s one of the things that many of us love most about Waldorf Education. When we take these moments to reflect, we step out of the everyday stream of time, and hold the past, present, and future at once, recognizing the growth and transformation that is happening around us all the time. These moments elevate the every day, helping us to understand the impact and significance of the accumulation of our day-to-day experiences.

What are some of the transitions and ceremonies that are significant in your Waldorf Education experience? Share in the comments or send me an email with your thoughts. 

The post Waldorf Transitions, Traditions, and Ceremonies 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.

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.

Okay, on to the topic.

Record-keeping is another one of those topics that wasn’t fully addressed in my Waldorf teacher training.

I mean, yes, there was a lot to cover. And I got a FULL dose of the importance of imagination and activating the feeling life of my students. And truly, this is the MOST important aspect of my work. So thank you Nettie and Betsy!

But, beyond this, I firmly believe that what Waldorf teachers need to do to become more appreciated and respected in the mainstream world is to provide more documentation and feedback.

All it took for me to be convinced of this idea was my first IEP meeting collaborating with the local public school. They asked which “research-based” curriculum I had tried and what records I had regarding the student, indicating more evidence was necessary before they would consider him eligible for services.

Yikes. Clearly my insight and intuitive connection with the student wasn’t enough to convince them he needed extra help.

So, based on experiences like these, here are the top 4 documents I think every Waldorf teacher should be maintaining to track student progress.

Main Lesson Book Tracking

Are your students completing their main lesson pages? In the upper grades you should collect them and give feedback. At this age students themselves need feedback to encourage them to improve. If you’re curious about what this feedback might look like, take a look at my Record-Keeping and Feedback Guide.

In the lower grades, you probably won’t share your observations with students, but you should definitely have a sense for who is completing pages and who needs extra time. This will go a long way towards preparing them for middle school.

Developmental Movement Tracker

In the early grades, I tracked my students’ movement skills with an eye towards how I could help them along.

I created a chart with every student’s name listed and all the skills I was watching for. If you put your email address below you’ll get the chart I used for first grade, but it’s easily adjusted for your grade level.

Student Observations

However it works best for you, make sure you develop a system for tracking your student observations.

I can’t tell you how many times I wish I’d written down thoughts I’d had about a student. Even those insights that seem inconsequential at the time, can be really important when you’re meeting with parents and wanting to impress the importance of providing extra support at home.

Come up with a system that works for you and start keeping those records, even if you’re in first grade.

Extra Support Log

We all have those students who we suspect will need extra support to fully realize their potential. Often, we give them the support they need without really recognizing it.

Do you have a student who you ALWAYS give extra support right after an instruction is given?

Is there a child you KNOW would not succeed without a little extra encouragement from classmates and teachers?

Document this. At the end of every lesson, write down the students you worked with individually. Later, go back and look through your notes for trends. Are there students who wouldn’t have been successful without your support?

Ultimately, this is fine. Providing extra support is part of our work. But make sure you communicate with parents about it. You don’t want them thinking their child is a self-directed, independent learner, when they actually rely on you for a lot of support.

If you’re interested in finding ways you can support your students in the classroom, I am offering a free workshop all about the 3 classroom management strategies every Waldorf teacher needs to have. Registration for the workshop is open now and it will go live on September 10. Make sure you register so you don’t miss it.

I’m all about giving Waldorf teachers the tools they need to give their students all that they can, and this workshop will really help. I hope you’ll sign up.

The post 4 Record-Keeping Documents Every Waldorf Teacher Should Have in Their Binder appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

Seems like lately I’ve been having lots of conversations with my colleagues about math.

Could be because (if you ask me) January is a perfect time for a math block. The more inward, reflective quality of this time of year makes it a great time to sit down and crunch numbers. (That’s what we’re doing this month!)

But teaching math in a Waldorf way is not so straightforward. Developing an approach to math that aligns with Waldorf ideals, but gives students enough solid skill-building time is a challenge. Here are some of the challenges I have faced when teaching math. These are issues lots of readers have emailed me about and colleagues ask questions about.

• How do we make math (a subject that can be so abstract) lively and imaginative?
• How do we make sure our students get enough practice without it becoming “kill and drill”?
• How do we keep our students feeling confident and capable about math, especially when they struggle?

Here are some ways I’ve managed these challenges.

Keeping Waldorf Math Imaginative

Here’s the thing. Often, when I try to create an imaginative picture around a mathematical concept it feels forced. Our place value block this year is a perfect example. I came up with a story that explained the concept of place value. (You can read more about it in this blog post.)

While the story I came up with was good, as we moved through the block, I found a couple of challenges. First, those little math stories were not the kinds of stories my students loved and enjoyed together. We were used to rich fairy tales with strong images and cosmic significance. My little stories about a character collecting firewood and putting it into bundles just didn’t compare.

The other challenge with the story is that it can sometimes feel forced. We create characters and situations that bring the mathematical concept we want, regardless of whether it makes an enjoyable or believable story. It’s hard to tell stories like this with confidence and our students often see right through them.

If you ask me, one of the most important things in working with students is that the story feels right. If I try to tell my students a story that doesn’t resonate with me and I’m telling just because it’s what my colleague did, I’m asking for trouble. The lesson inevitably falls flat.

So, what to do? Do we have to use a story, even if it doesn’t resonate? Well, go back to the reason we use stories in the first place. We do it because we recognize that for the elementary age child, the path to interest is through the feeling life, and imagination is a huge part of the child’s feeling life. But, the truth is, a story is just one way to capture your students’ imaginations.

• Connect your math work with art. If imagination is king for the elementary school child, art is queen. Those beautiful geometry drawings, paper folding activities and free-rendering activities with all kinds of crafty supplies can allow your students to explore mathematical concepts in a way that comes alive for them.
• Connect your math work with the senses. You know that 4th grade fractions block where you divide up the pizza and then eat your fraction? That’s a lesson that always sticks. Look for other ways you can involve your students’ senses of smell and taste (the ones that often get neglected.)
• Explore math socially. Get your students working on a project together, talking it through, explaining to each other. Middle schoolers especially learn really well in a social environment.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you completely abandon story time. There’s nothing I enjoy more than telling stories and collectively building images with my students. But I’d much rather do that with a rich and meaningful story, rather than something I made up just to get to a particular math concept. I call this “a story for the sake of a story” and I love that it opens up my options and gives us good, rich stories to explore, even during a math block.

Getting Enough Practice

Oh boy, I don’t know a single Waldorf teacher who hasn’t asked herself if her students were getting enough math practice. That old Waldorf idea that a subject needs to “go to sleep” before you bring it back and expand just doesn’t seem to apply to skills like math. If you ask me, students need daily practice with skills like math, reading and writing.

But does a creative, inspired Waldorf approach allow for routine practice. In short, YES!

Giving your students a worksheet (I like to call them “practices pages”) is not anti-Waldorf. If worksheets were the only thing you ever did, then yes, that would not be an inspired Waldorf approach. But try giving your students a worksheet and see how they respond. Very often I find my students inspired by the challenge of a paper full of questions that they get to answer! They like it!

Again, the important part is that you are working to engage your students. If your students are showing signs of being engaged and interested, even with a worksheet, that’s your measure. If they’re bored and overwhelmed by a worksheet, that’s your cue to do something different. Math games (involving the social realm), riddles and puzzles are good ways to get the practice in.

The other mistake I sometimes see teachers make is holding on to the image for too long. At a certain point, that image that you’ve used to introduce a concept becomes cumbersome. The concept itself becomes solidified in your students and going back to the image every time can confuse things. Use the image as a tool to introduce an idea, practice with it and then move on.

By the way, the amount of practice your students need depends somewhat on their age. Here’s how I see it.

Grades 1 & 2 — In these grades we’re working with big ideas — number concepts, the feeling for numbers, place value and how the processes and our number system works. Practice comes in movement, rhythm and circle activities. They do need some practice writing the numbers and solving problems, but not as much as in other grades.

Grades 3-6 — These are the prime skill-building years, and this applies to every subject. Skill-building requires practice. They’re learning and practicing how to use the processes and they need daily practice using them — over and over and over.

Grades 7-8 — In these years we go back to the big concepts. Here they have solid computation skills and they are being presented with lots of different opportunities for using them. They’re figuring out how and when to use those skills. Less practice is required and ideally their skills are solid enough that they can explore the world mathematically.

Building Math Confidence

I have worked with so many students who, despite my best efforts, get the idea that they just don’t get math. And it’s true, there is something magical about thinking mathematically. When I think about my strongest math students, I think that their genius with the subject is something that they were born with. Their brains just work that way.

I’m not usually one to categorize students and there is plenty of overlap here, but bear with me. In my experience there are different kinds of math students. There are the Intuitive Geniuses and the Rule Followers. Both can be wildly successful but I think our traditional Waldorf ways favor the Intuitive Geniuses. I’m here in support of the Rule Followers.

I was one of those students who didn’t have that natural connection with math. For me it wasn’t that I didn’t understand math, it was just that, when given the choice, I always preferred to read or write. When it came time to do math, I was a Rule Follower. Luckily I had some really good teachers along the way who helped me find my way to actually enjoying math.

When I think about my experiences with those really good math teachers, I remember that they laid things out and explained them very clearly — step-by-step.

We are often taught to allow our students to approach math with a spirit of exploration and we encourage them to make connections and discoveries on their own. And truly, this is a fantastic way for them to learn. My strongest math students LOVE being presented with a real world math situation and then thinking it through to come up with the answers. With math tools at their disposal, they are ready to conquer the world, make connections and find solutions. They’re Intuitive Geniuses when it comes to math.

But this kind of experience is overwhelming for the Rule Followers. Those students need things laid out in a very clear, step-by-step way. Teach them the steps (the Rules to follow) and they will implement them flawlessly, eventually developing an understanding for the concept and how and when to use the rules.

I implore you, in your enthusiasm to keep math lively and interesting, don’t overlook the Rule Followers. If you are an Intuitive Genius yourself, this might be really difficult for you. Slow down, observe your students and think through the topics you are teaching step-by-step.

That ability to observe your students and intuit how to meet them is your number one job as a teacher. Don’t forget.

And if you’re looking for support and resources to help, here are some of my favorites.

Resources

• Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John Van de Walle
• Making Math Meaningful, Grades 1-5 by Nettie Fabrie, Wim Gottenbos and Jamie York
• Making Math Meaningful, Grades 6-8 by Jamie York
• Key to Fractions (also Decimals, Algebra, etc.)

Curriculum Guides

• Grade One Quality of Numbers
• Grade Two Introduction to Place Value
• Grade Six Geometry

Blog Posts

• Math Resources
• Grade One Math
• Grade Two Math Planning
• Grade Two Math Update
• Another Grade Two Math Update
• Grade Six Business Math
• More Grade Six Business Math
• Even More Grade Six Business Math (includes link to block test)

The post How to Teach Waldorf Math appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

This summer I attended the Art of Teaching Grade 2 workshop at Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, CA. I and many of the other participants were completely taken by storm with the new literacy resource Roadmap to Literacy by Janet Langley and Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl. Janet is a longtime Waldorf teacher from California and Jennifer is a Waldorf-trained Lindamood Bell literacy tutor. Their colleague Patti Connelly was our instructor and she essentially walked us through the structure of the book, emphasizing the aspects of literacy development that are key to 2nd grade. (Patti and Janet are the teachers behind Waldorf Inspirations, which you should definitely check out, if you haven’t already.)

Though this is my first time through the lower grades — I’ve never taught children to read before(!) — I’ve been aware of the shortage of Waldorf literacy resources. Over the years, I’ve watched my own children’s teachers struggle with teaching reading based on Steiner’s indications. The fundamental problem, it seemed, was not enough instruction in phonics.

When I think about my former middle school students and their struggles with reading, I see that understanding the phonics rules was at the root of their difficulty. And those students who had direct phonics instruction (usually through outside tutoring) did well and had the tools they needed to read fluently.

It’s true, many students will pick it up naturally, but as Patti pointed out in our summer workshop, about 2/3 will need more direct instruction in phonics in order to become fluent readers.

Roadmap to Literacy Review

In the following review, I go through the structure of the book and what I have found useful in my teaching. Janet and Jennifer sent me a copy over the summer to review, so this post has been in the works for awhile. They requested that I not review until I had read the entire book so I would have a thorough understanding of the entire approach, start-to-finish.

In fact, they recommend that teachers read the 600-page volume cover-to-cover before implementing anything in the classroom. To be honest, some teachers have shared with me that this is a barrier they have not been able to get past, so they have not yet implemented any of the recommendations in Roadmap.

In the end, I’m grateful that I read the entire book before school started, but I do think it is reasonable to not expect a complete read-through before beginning the work. You definitely don’t want to just flip the book open to the parts that are relevant for your grade, but read enough to understand the entire approach before bringing it to your students.

The fact is that the ideas and strategies in this book create a roadmap. You need to understand where you’ve been, know where you’re going and place one foot in front of the other along the way.

English is Not German

In the introduction to Roadmap, Janet recounts a conversation she had with Jennifer about why so many Waldorf students need tutoring in reading and writing. Essentially, the answer came down to the fact that English is a very different language than German. The pure, consistent vowel sounds of German make it very easy to read. Once you know the alphabet, reading progresses quite naturally.

This is not the case with English.

There are so many variations in how the letters sound, depending on the situation. Even the most seemingly consistent letters occasionally decide to throw us curve balls. (Ever noticed how even friendly little D sounds like T in “worked” but D in “played”?)

The idea that English requires different instructional techniques than German provides the basis for the book and essentially gives teachers permission to investigate instructional techniques beyond those recommended by Steiner. Years of reading instruction in English-speaking Waldorf schools supports the idea that English-speaking Waldorf students need more direct phonics instruction than their German counterparts.

Now, on to the book.

The book is broken down into six sections.

Section 1 — Essential Background Information

Here you’ll find an overview of the book and some of the basic premises (like the information above.)

Section 2 — Waldorf Methodologies

In this section they go through the typical Waldorf approach, what’s working, what can be improved and how teachers can go about planning for those improvements. They talk about long-established Waldorf approaches that were either never indicated by Steiner and have emerged over the years or established practices that don’t really serve children. They refer to them as “sacred nothings.” They also talk about the idea of “responsible innovations,” which is an idea I really like. Over the years, many diligent teachers have introduced innovations that come out of their own intuition for their students’ needs. The freedom to explore these innovations based on your intuition and observation of your students is what I love most about Waldorf Education. I believe the movement is best served when teachers honor the value that Steiner placed on the understanding that comes out of the human connection between teacher and student.

Section 3 — The 15 Aspects of Language Arts

This section covers the topics that must be covered in language arts instruction. It goes through the variety of activities your students must engage in for literacy to take hold. The book outlines systems for leading your students through these activities. This section also outlines the three phases of literacy: the phonemic awareness phase, the pattern phase and the syllable phase.

Section 4 — Phonics Rules

The specific phonics rules in this section are broken down by literacy phase, which gives a template for when the different phonics rules should be taught. The progression through the phonics rules is clearly outlined and strategies for teaching the phonics rules are also given.

Section 5 — Curriculum and Lesson Planning

Curriculum plans are given for each grade.

Section 6 — Assessment and Remediation

In this section you’ll find tools for identifying which phase your students are in, as well as benchmarks for each grade.

The Roadmap to Literacy Top Takeaways

Direct Phonics Instruction in a Prescribed Sequence

My hands-down favorite thing about this book is that it gives clear indications for the instruction of various phonics rules, with a prescribed progression. As I read through the pages, I can see how to gently lead my students from one phonics rule to the next, expanding their reading toolkit as we go. Specific lesson plans and images to support the students’ learning are absolute invaluable and I have used many of their phonics lessons already.

The Phases of Literacy with Indicators For Each

As we make our way through the Roadmap, it makes sense that teachers would want to identify their students’ place along the journey towards reading. Other resources (like Words Their Way) help teachers with this, but it is nice to have a Waldorf-specific resource for identifying where students are with their reading. Using this resource, I have been able to identify where my students are and anticipate where they are going next. This means that I can prompt them with relevant words of encouragement that will take them to the next stop on the Roadmap.

Kid Writing

I confess that when I first read through Roadmap and saw the activities that were recommended for my 2nd graders, I thought, “My students are nowhere near ready for that!” Kid writing was one of these activities. But I trustingly moved forward, taught them how to listen for sounds and what to do if they weren’t sure. We are now in our 5th week of kid writing and my students can confidently and independently sit down and write, listening for sounds and making pretty good educated guesses. Though there were tears the first week, each week they are writing more, taking more risks with their word choices and remembering correct spellings from previous weeks.

To be honest, kid writing is one of the most successful components of our language arts lessons and I am completely sold on the idea that writing is the best path towards reading.

I really appreciate that Roadmap gives a specific method for introducing and working through kid writing. I wrote another post about our kid writing experience that you can read here.

In the end, I am a huge fan of this book. It is a bit controversial as it turns the traditional Waldorf “whole language” approach to literacy on its ear, but I am grateful to have another set of tools to use. Different children learn differently and more resources are always welcome.

I think Roadmap to Literacy is the language arts resource that has been sorely lacking in the Waldorf world. And as a grammar nerd, I am hopeful that someone will write another volume that addresses language arts in grades 4-8.

The post Waldorf Book Review: The Roadmap to Literacy appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.