• 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.

But when I started teaching in the lower grades, I realized that this amazing curriculum is really just the medium for skill-building. These kids needed to learn how to DO things! Yes, the stories are great, but these days it is the skills that my students gain as we explore, that are most important.

Since realizing this, I’ve watched my younger students grasp hold of the imaginative content (whatever it might be) and work with it, building reading, writing, public speaking, drawing and so many other skills along the way.

And though it might feel a little disheartening to know that any old story could provide this medium just as well, take heart. Anyone who has told Greek Myths to fifth graders or Hebrew Legends to third graders can attest that there is true magic in this developmental curriculum.

So hold on to the magic, but the point here is that we should not lose sight of the fact that building skills is an incredibly important part of our task as elementary school teachers.

Language Arts Practice in Waldorf Grade 4

Okay, okay. So what does language arts skill-building look like in fourth grade this year? Here’s a brief picture. (Also, I’ll remind you, we are currently holding our classes via Zoom — no in-person instruction right now.)

Spelling

I’ve written before about my approach to spelling, which is primarily through our daily dictation practice. I LOVE dictation (truly, click through to read more about how it works) but here’s why I love it so much.

• Practice spelling with imagination. No dry lists of words to memorize. (Just as an example, our dictation for yesterday was, “In the early morning of time, there was a land of frozen fog called Niflheim.” Just try writing that without activating your imagination!)
• Practice common words frequently. I mean, how many times are you going to put “because” on your spelling list?
• Present your students with beautiful writing that isn’t just copying from the board. Copying teacher writing is something that Waldorf teachers hold onto for far too long. We want our students to write, but we also don’t want them to get stuck with simple writing. Dictation is a great way to keep your students active and avoid the trap of copying teacher writing from the board, without any student initiative.
  I will also say that our daily dictation habit is SO strong that I couldn’t imagine having class without it. Dictation is the transition as we move from our active circle work to more focused learning time. This serves the students in their skills, but it also helps me by providing a guidepost in our lesson every day. If it was a busy weekend, and I don’t have time to prepare ANYTHING else, I’ve got to have the dictation.

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Composition

When we were together in the classroom, throughout 3rd grade, the students wrote their own independent compositions every single week (usually on Tuesday). Even in the spring, when our lessons were written out in plans that the parents would deliver, those plans included a weekly composition.

I knew this rhythm lived strongly in my students when this year, after one of our Monday lessons, a quick-thinking student left a comment in Google Classroom predicting what our Tuesday composition assignment would be.

Though it made me smile a bit to know that my students were so secure in our rhythm, now that we’re working on Zoom, I’ve had to rethink things a bit. I’ve held the goal of a weekly composition, but we’ve taken weeks off. I’m realizing that four hours of Zoom per day is pretty demanding and I don’t want them to have any work to do outside of that. (I haven’t been terribly successful at this so far, but I’m trying.)

Phonics and Grammar

Though there are certainly phonics and grammar lessons that naturally appear in our composition or dictation work, I do plan ahead specific grammar and phonics content and craft lessons around it.

For example, right now we are focusing on verbs. We’re exploring different types of verbs (active verbs and being verbs) and next week we’ll start working on verb tenses. This content gets 10-15 minutes of our attention in every lesson. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but it is important that these lessons are planned out, otherwise there’s a chance that I’ll miss something.

Language is a strength of mine, so I naturally see opportunities for bringing language arts lessons in our every day experiences. But even so, I don’t rely on these naturally occurring lessons to bring all of the grammatical content that we need to cover. And if language arts is more of a challenge for you (like math is for me) you really need to be certain you’re planning out those lessons.

Reading

Tracking my students’ reading is something that is really changing now that we’re in 4th grade. In 2nd and 3rd grade, I read with them and they had occasionally reading charts that they took home and filled in. It worked in those grades, but this year is different.

The fact is that a LOT of my students have been bitten by the reading bug and they are reading all the time. And though I know that those kids don’t need me to oversee their reading development, there are students in the class who do. So I’m putting together a reading program that includes a combination of assigned books and free-reading (with book reports or reviews.)

I’m still in the process of pulling that together, and I’ve done a number of different things over the years, so I’ll keep you posted about what I settle on.

The Takeaway

So I hope you’re getting from this post that it is important to plan for your students’ skill-building. Though most students’ skills will naturally develop, as they explore interesting content, you can’t completely rely on this. Your job as a teacher is to have a plan for their skill-development, that is more specific than just presenting interesting lessons and hoping for the best.

What are some of your favorite skill-building routines? Do you have a favorite approach to reading? Share in the comments — I’d love to hear!

The post Making Time for It All | Skills Practice in Grade 4 appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I taught for a long time before I really became aware of all of the nuances of teaching language arts and I have to say it is the aspect of my teaching that has occupied most of my attention for the past few years. There is so much to think about and I find it endlessly fascinating to consider how students become readers and how they use the english language. So I’m really excited to explore some of that content with you in this episode.

Curriculum Guides

This episode is being brought to you by my series of curriculum guides. If you’re looking for support in teaching your students and would like to see an outline with specific content for individual blocks, my materials are for you.

My content is sold block-by-block, so it’s affordable and you don’t need to purchase an entire year’s curriculum to get the help that you need. Feel confident teaching history but feel a little lost with Astronomy? My materials will help you with just that specific block. There are no other Waldorf curriculum resources that can meet your specific needs, right where and when you need them.

You can check out my resources by heading to www.awaldorfjourney.com/shop. You’ll find materials for all of the grades (grade 3 will be coming soon), presented in a way that can help classroom teachers and homeschoolers alike.

Language Arts in the Waldorf School

Key points in this episode:

1. Literacy is not gained in some mysterious way.
2. Teaching English is different than teaching German.
3. There are MANY different aspects of Language Arts. You need to plan for all of them.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Blog post about Grade 2 Kid Writing
• Blog post about Grade 3 Composition
• Blog post about phonics instruction
• Waldorf Inspirations — authors of Roadmap to Literacy
• My review of Roadmap to Literacy
• Podcast interview with Janet Langley, co-author of Roadmap to Literacy — part 1 and part 2

The post AWJ 51 | Thoughts About Language Arts appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

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

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

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

Soul Development

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

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

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

Academic Development

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

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

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

Keeping the Balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use rhythm to your advantage.

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

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

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

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

Blend wherever possible.

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

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

It’s all about soul economy!

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

Hard-Working Waldorf Teachers

First of all, I have to thank all of you for your gestures of support in response to my last post. I love the work that we do and I want the rest of the world to recognize the amazing things that Waldorf teachers around the world are doing.

You all gave me some hope that recognition is coming and that our work is appreciated. I hope you’ll all keep fighting the good fight and advocate for the respect (and compensation) you deserve. I’m so grateful for the support of my colleagues and class parents and it’s nice to know there is such a strong community of teachers following along here, as well.

What block are we in? Writing or math?

During this last week before the American Thanksgiving holiday, we’re back in our Hebrew legends. Multiplication and division review is the official content of the block, so we’re doing lots of math practice, but these stories are so great, I can’t help but work with them.

I’ve actually worked with the content of the block in a unique way this time, inspired by the stories we’re hearing. Though we’re mostly studying math, I think it’s important that we continue to write. And some of the stories are so great that it would be a shame to skip over writing up a retelling.

This year, I’ve been giving my students a composition assignment every week, usually on Tuesdays. (I wrote another blog post about our composition rhythm here.) This rhythm works really well for us for a couple of reasons.

1. I have a support teacher dedicated to our class every Tuesday during main lesson.
2. I have found that we need to do composition assignments early in the week so we have time to review them and put the final versions in our main lesson books.
3. Tuesdays are generally good days for the 3rd graders. Mondays and Fridays can be rough, but Tuesday is pretty good. And doing the hard work of writing a composition helps make it go more smoothly.

So, to make the composition process go more smoothly, I make sure to tell a good, rich story on Monday. When my students have those strong images in their minds, they have no problem writing. There have been times that I have tried to force a writing assignment about a story that did not live very strongly for my students, usually because I was not prepared to tell it, and it never goes well.

I’ve also found that because my students are so squirrelly and restless on Mondays, it’s a perfect day for a good long story. They usually settle right in and listen, building images as I tell.

But during a math block?

Well, yes. This rhythm is working so well for us, it just feels right to let the math rest on Tuesdays and do a composition instead. It’s a solid part of our weekly rhythm that works really well. I’m sticking with it.

Over the summer, when I planned the year, I had intended to alternate language arts and math. When we were in a math block, our daily practice period would be dedicated to language arts, and vice versa. This seems like a good rhythm, and it also worked well, but I’m just loving our Tuesday composition days that I’m rethinking it.

So, here we are on a Tuesday, just finished writing a composition, and during our skills class we’ll do math. Tomorrow we’ll practice math during main lesson, put our compositions into our main lesson books for bookwork, and then do some phonics work during practice class.

I admit it is a little odd to switch back and forth, but a good rhythm is worth its weight in gold!

Hebrew Legends Resource

Have I mentioned the resource that I’m using for most of these stories? I am LOVING Pearl Buck’s Story Bible. It breaks down the stories from the Tanakh into just the right length for a good main lesson story. It also brings rich images and language. At the beginning of the year I was pulling from a few different resources, but these days I’m just going straight from The Story Bible.

Classroom Management

I don’t know about you, but for me classroom management is a constant work in progress. Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, I see something different and feel inspired to try something new.

Lately my thoughts are about just how much management I’m doing. The thing is, ultimately, I want my students to manage themselves. I mean, I can certainly keep them in line and direct the will of the group, but how much of that should I be doing?

How much can I turn the management of the group over to the students themselves? And if I do it, will they be successful? I’ve got lots of tricks up my sleeve, but lately I’m thinking that I need to keep my sleeves down a bit and let them do the heavy lifting.

My goal is to have a classroom full of students that hold themselves (not each other!) accountable for doing the right thing. And maybe pumping the breaks on my management is the way to make that happen.

Just some food for thought. What do you think? Leave a note in the comments.

Free Classroom Management Workshop

Finally, I’m getting ready to run my free classroom management workshop again in January. If you missed it last time around, you should definitely sign up this time. I go through three of my favorite classroom management strategies and give you tips for implementing them in your classroom. And it’s completely free.

Just click here to get to the sign-up page and I’ll notify you when the workshop is live.

The post Waldorf Grade 3 Update appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.