Starting the Year Off Right

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

Starting with Botany

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

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

Starting with Ancient Civilizations

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

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

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

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

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

Why Ancient Civilizations in Waldorf Grade 5?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Structure of the Block

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

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

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

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

The Monkey King/Journey to the West

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

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

Ancient India

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

Overview, The Gods and Sons of Pandu

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

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

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

The Ramayana

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

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

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

Buddha

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

Ancient Persia

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

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

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

I’m switching to Substack.

I’ll go into all of the reasons why in a minute, but here’s the quick and dirty of what it means for you. (Or enter your email above to get all the details.)

What’s happening at Substack?

• Inspirational, practical weekly posts
• Premium content (downloads, coupon codes, etc.)
• Community participation
• Delivered right to your inbox

All for a $10/month subscription fee.

(Or join the free version for a monthly post. But keep reading to understand why you should passionately pay to support your favorite creators.)

Why the change? A few reasons.

A Community of Support

Back in 2010, A Waldorf Journey started as my sweet little corner of the internet where I could write about my teaching, reflect on those experiences and grow from them. I’m a writer at heart and composing those posts was cathartic as it helped me process what I learned in those early days.

But A Waldorf Journey has GROWN. And I’m not complaining. This growth has been oh-so-lovely. I’ve learned so much from this community and I’m filled with gratitude for the courageous, striving teachers, homeschoolers and parents I have met through this blog.

But it’s grown so much that I’ve become cautious about what I post. I don’t share (as much) about my challenges, failures, struggles and questions. I’m even more cautious about sharing the strivings of my students.

And though I hardly ever encounter unfriendly followers, these days I want to surround myself with a community of active supporters. I want the people who consume my work to be just as invested in the growth and development of this community and its members as I am.

I love the idea that by making that little $10/month contribution subscribers are saying, “I’m in. Let’s help each other grow.”

But there are some other aspects of this new platform that appeal to my writer-heart.

Focus on Content, Not Tech or Design

Back in those early days WordPress was NOT an easy platform. But I LOVED the challenge of figuring it out, and I loved expanding my skillset and working on creating beautiful web design. (I was so inspired by this work I actually went back to school in 2015 and got a degree in web design!)

A few things have changed since then.

• WordPress has become easier to use, but also a lot more complex. You should see the back-end of my website! It’s still fairly easy to write a blog post, but there are a lot of moving parts that keep everything looking pretty. Substack, on the other hand, is beautifully simple. Choices are limited, but sometimes limitation inspires the most creativity.
• I’m less interested in spending time to figure everything out. I’m still wooed by lovely design, but these days I just want to focus on the content. I keep coming back to the words I write and the messages they convey. I’m convinced that they’re what really count. Substack isn’t fancy, but it’s a place where words matter. It makes me WANT to sit down and write.
• I’m tired of thinking about internet-y things like SEO, page views, Facebook ads and beating algorithms. These are the tricks of the trade for making a living on the internet, but I’m completely disenchanted with it all. I want to connect with the people behind the metrics, not the metrics themselves.
• I want to write without thinking AT ALL about sales. Though I have the good fortune to write about something I love, the traditional online business game has me constantly figuring out how to weave sales messages and monetization into that content. Substack turns all that on its ear by allowing me to charge for the content itself. No more creepy sales messages finding their way in.

What it all boils down to is that I want to write about what I believe in. And I know there are lots of people out there, like me, who believe in it too. And I’m willing to bet they’re willing to put their money where their heart is.

Compensating Creators

The last reason for this switch is because I want to stand more fully in support of the creative world. There is so much out there — art, films, poetry, essays, photographs, memoirs, music — that make our world a richer place. Much of this content just doesn’t get picked up by publishers and producers. Substack disrupts this traditional model and allows creators to publish (and get paid for) content themselves. Being seen by the world is no longer decided by the powers that be.

If there’s one thing the past year has taught us, it’s that we need to notice and appreciate the gifts that touch our lives. And not just stop, notice and move on, but stand up for, sponsor and celebrate what matters to us. When people are free to write what they believe in and create from the heart, the world becomes a more beautiful place.

I hope you’ll join me in standing up for the creation of something you love and more actively supporting the growth of the other humans who love it too.

Meredith

The post Why I’m Switching to Substack appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

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

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

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

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

What I’m Doing

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

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

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

So, here are some answers to those questions.

What I Sent Home

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

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

Technology I’m Using

Google Classroom

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

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

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

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

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

Recorded Audio

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

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

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

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

Photographs

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

Video

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

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

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

Zoom

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of notes:

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

What Can I Share?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions I Have

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

Accountability and Assessment

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

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

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

Accessibility

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

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

Continued Enrollment and Financial Hardship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of years ago I started planning my painting for the year by drawing little thumbnails in my planning book and it has made such a big difference! The visual arts are definitely not my strength and painting always felt like “one more thing” to plan during the week. I have colleagues who absolutely love painting and they have no trouble coming up with a fantastic watercolor project on the fly. I’m that way about music and grammar, but painting is so much harder. I’m grateful to have found this little planning hack, especially this year with my painting class on a Monday.

Clay Instead of Painting

But during those off weeks, I’m sometimes hard-pressed to find a good project. We’ve made window stars, beeswax modeling, done some free-form crafting and that’s always the perfect time for thank you cards, but until now, I hadn’t ever done clay with my students.

Years ago I came across Arthur Auer’s book on clay modeling called Learning About the World Through Modeling and I remember loving it. The very first clay modeling lesson I ever did was pulled from that book and it was really easy to turn to based on that memory.

Holistic Modeling

One of the things I remember former students struggling with when it came to modeling was that they wanted to pull bits of clay apart and reattach them. It works so much better, and students are so much happier with their result, if they start with a whole piece of clay and push, pull and move the clay around to create the form that they want. Eventually, towards the end of the project, you may have the need to add clay, but the basic form of the object should come from the whole.

So, for this first clay modeling lesson, I set out a few basic rules.

1. Do not pull off pieces of your clay. Use your fingers to push and pull the clay around.
2. The only tools you may use are your hands. Your desk is not a tool for this clay exercise.
3. If your clay begins to dry out, you may dip your fingers into the water, but don’t dip your clay into the water. (I heard a student say, “A little goes a long way!”)

With all of that outlined, we began our clay work.

One Hand Exercise

To begin, we took our handful-sized piece of clay (make sure you don’t give a piece that is too large for your students’ hands) and moved it around in our one hand. Once they had loosened up a bit, I told them to squeeze and then see what their “fist-print” looked like.

After that, they worked the clay, continuing with one hand and molded it into “the shape it wanted to become.” We shared some observations and then repeated the process with the other hand — sharing those observations as well.

We did all of this in silence. I told them that I wanted them to be able to listen to their clay and to “be alone” with it. My students always want to share their projects with their classmates. Their motivation is perfectly harmless — they want to share the experience. But the end result is often comparison. We work a lot on how to appreciate the work of others and appreciate our own work, but I just wanted their first clay experience to be individual.

Incidentally, this is another thing I think about a lot. I have a large class and there are so many times when I want my students to “be alone” with their work. You know that feeling when you are so immersed in your work that you don’t even notice the people around you? I really want for them to have that immersive experience at times, particularly when writing or doing artistic work.

But this experience is SO hard to create in a large, very social class. It takes discipline and it is something I talk about with them regularly. I’m happy to say that as hard as it is, we do accomplish it at times. Just this morning we had a composition assignment and the students were so occupied with the story they were writing you could have heard a pin drop!

The Sphere

Next, I freed them up to use both hands to create a sphere. My mentor in teacher training always emphasized that we should use the word “sphere” because a ball is something that is meant to be thrown. The last thing we want is for students to be throwing their clay around!

They worked and smoothed their clay until they were happy with their sphere.

The Egg

Next, they were to transform their sphere into an egg. I showed them how to put the sphere in the space between their thumb and first finger, wrap their fingers around and gently elongate one end to create the narrow end of the egg.

I wish I’d taken longer to enjoy this step in the process because as I walked around the room I was astonished at how different their eggs looked. If we’d had a shorter period, we could have stopped right there and admired each other’s eggs.

The Bird

But because we had more time, we continued the exercise to create birds. I showed the students how to pull the narrow end of the egg to create the head and beak of the bird. Then we pulled on the heavier end of the egg to create tail feathers.

With these basic instructions, I let the students continue working on their birds. They pulled a little beak, some used their fingers to create little eye indentations and others made the line where the wing touches the body. They were so cute.

As they worked, I heard them name their little birds and appreciate adorable little things about them. It made me glad that I had warned them that we were not going to keep these projects — they were going back into the clay bin. (But I actually really wish I’d bought clay specifically for the purpose so they could keep their little birds.)

The post A Clay Project in Waldorf Grade 3 appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

If you’ve been reading the blog or listening to the podcast for any length of time, you likely know that I am a HUGE fan of mentoring. Truly, in my early teaching years, mentoring made a huge difference for me. I honestly don’t think I would still be teaching without it.

Now, there aren’t many people out there who would disagree that teachers, especially new ones, need strong mentorship. The challenge always comes in how to provide that mentorship when budgets are tight, people are busy and mentors are hard to find.

But despite those challenges, schools NEED to invest in their teachers. And teachers NEED to insist on their need for mentoring. This is a place where compromise just isn’t worth it.

As you can imagine, as opinionated as I am about mentoring, I am equally opinionated about the how, what and who details. Here are some of those thoughts.

Who Should Mentor?

Most often, when schools have tight budgets, they turn internally to find a mentor for new teachers. Most schools have an experienced teacher on staff and that person is often called upon to support newer teachers.

And while I completely understand why schools turn to this solution, there are a few reasons why it just doesn’t work.

Availability

The first challenge is availability. Usually, that experienced teacher is holding a class of his or her own. She has her own students, parents and curriculum to care for. Time out of the classroom may be limited. And the time that is there is often full of distraction. Far too often I’ve seen those weekly mentorship meetings get canceled, especially when things get busy — which is when teachers need the MOST support.

Conflict of Interest

The second reason why those internal mentorship relationships are complicated is because of the conflict that exists when teachers wear so many hats in the school. Often those experienced teachers are involved in school leadership, which can compromise their role as mentor.

To be clear — no one on school leadership should ever mentor a teacher at their own school. Here’s why.

Mentees need to be able to confide with utmost confidence in his or her mentor. You should feel comfortable turning to your mentor in despair when something goes wrong. You should be able to fall apart completely and then use the support from your mentor to rebuild.

If the mentor is part of school leadership, and involved in hiring decisions, the mentee is likely to gloss over those challenging moments, giving the mentor the impression that everything is going perfectly.

Or worse, the mentor, at some point down the line, is involved in a discussion about the mentees future employment and remembers those breakdowns and challenges that the teacher had.

For this reason, it is of utmost importance that the mentor is an outside resource.

Now, this doesn’t mean that teachers within the school can’t support one another. They should! But teachers need to be clear when they are talking with colleagues, that those colleagues may be a part of conversations about your employment and there is no confidentiality agreement about those casual mentorship moments.

The integrity of the mentor-mentee relationship must be held in the highest regard and not compromised because of finances or circumstances.

Sign up for my free online workshop The 3 Classroom Management Strategies Every Waldorf Teacher Should Know

What should be included in mentoring?

After years of providing mentorship, I have equally strong opinions about what kinds of support a mentor can provide. Here are just some of the supports I have provided teachers in the past.

• A format for self-reflection
• Classroom visits
• Guidance with creating rhythms
• Supporting documents for providing feedback to students and parents
• Communication support
• Classroom management advice and systems

Ideally, a mentor guides the teacher in identifying the areas of their work that need strengthening. Then they work together to create a system and a plan for doing that work.

Out of respect for the mentor-mentee confidentiality relationship, the mentor should NOT be expected to provide feedback to school leadership. This can be a tricky thing. The school is paying for the mentoring and will certainly want to know that the work is happening, but the mentor’s obligation and allegiance is to the teacher, not the school.

If the school is truly needing that kind of feedback and insight into the teacher’s work, they should hire an evaluator. An evaluator’s duty is to the school, not the teacher. When I have worked as an evaluator, there is a degree of detachment. The teacher knows that I am reporting to the school. He or she should assume that anything they tell me can be mentioned to school leadership.

Often, when I work as an evaluator, I provide some mentorship. I can give advice and support to the teacher, but my priority is to report to the school. For this reason,

• an evaluator can provide mentorship
• but a mentor can not move into an evaluative role.

What should be the format of the mentoring?

I have definitely found that frequent mentorship visits are more valuable than intense visits that happen once or twice per year. If you think about how our students learn and grow, we see the most progress when students have frequent, regular exposure. The same is true for teachers who are working on improving their skills.

There should be those intense mentorship moments at the beginning of the year, and maybe again at the end when assessment and evaluation needs are strongest. But otherwise, the best plan includes frequent, short visits that help teachers touch in and remember their improvement goals and measure their progress.

The value of these short visits, over longer, intensive mentoring just a once or twice, is a big reason why many schools turn to internal resources. It can be expensive to bring a mentor to the school with frequency, especially if your Waldorf School is the only one within a few hours’ drive.

I’ve done so much thinking about this mentorship need, and been on both sides of the mentoring relationship enough, that I’ve tried to determine a system that can provide the mentorship that is best for teachers, in a way that is affordable for schools.

This is part of the reason why I created my program The Practical Art of the Waldorf Classroom.

And that program is great. So many teachers have benefitted from what it has to offer. But if I had my pie-in-the-sky mentoring dream, this is what it would look like.

• Two 3-day classroom visits (one at the beginning of the year, one about halfway through)
• Bi-weekly check-in phone calls
• Weekly journaling in a shared Google doc. Feedback and insights provided in response
• Curriculum, record-keeping and communication support documents
• Email availability for questions as they come up
• Membership in a private Facebook group with other teachers

Oh my gosh, you guys. Wouldn’t that be great? I have no idea what it would cost to provide this level of support, but imagine the confident, capable teachers that would come out of a program like this!

Want to work with me to make it happen?

I’m kind of joking. I mean, I’ve got my own students, parents and school to look after, but I would LOVE to do this work.

Until we find a way to make it happen, though, I’m pretty satisfied with my Practical Art course. If you’re interested in learning more about it, a new cohort is about to start in February and I’d love to have you join.

You can find out more about the program here. Or just email me at meredith@awaldorfjourney.com to find out if it’s a good fit.

The post Waldorf Teacher Mentoring appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.

I worried that we would run out of material, the kids would get bored and chaos would ensue. I ended up spending HOURS preparing every lesson, just to make sure I filled every minute.

What’s worse is back in those days I planned EVERY minute of that 2 hour lesson anew every day! I hadn’t learned the value of rhythm, which is an absolutely ESSENTIAL part of my teaching these days.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this mysterious main lesson — that full 2 hour stretch — can be broken down into four different parts. And you DON’T need to plan each one of them anew every day.

So, this post is all about taking the mystery out of main lesson and putting together a plan that works for you and your students.

If you read this and you’re interested in learning more, you might consider signing up for my free workshop The 3 Classroom Management Strategies that Every Waldorf Teacher Needs to Know. At the end of that workshop I’ll be presenting a special offer to help take even more of the mystery out of that Waldorf magic.

But on to main lesson . . .

How does it break down? These are the parts of main lesson, as I (and many other Waldorf teachers) see it.

• Warm-Up
• Review
• Bookwork
• New Content

I’ll go through each of these and share a few thoughts about how much time it should take and what you should think about when planning.

Warm-Up

For me, the whole idea about the warm-up is that it helps the children arrive at school. They are transitioning from being at home, where their individual needs, wants and interests exist fairly unhindered, to being at school where they are part of a group. This requires a huge shift and our students do it every day!

In addition to making that shift from home to school, the warm-up is to help the students awaken their thinking, feeling and willing. This is an important part of making sure they are ready to make the most of the lessons to come.

There are a lot of things that can happen to provide this warm-up experience, but throughout all of this time, my guiding thought is about these two experiences.

• transitioning from home to school
• awakening head, heart and hands

So, usually, my morning warm-up includes the following experiences. I’ve marked the purpose beside each one.

• Greeting (transition)
• Jump rope
• Singing (heart)
• Folk dance (heart and hands)
• Playing flute (heart)
• Movement exercises (hands)
• Dictation and math problems (head)

When it’s all said and done, this part of my lesson lasts 45 minutes to an hour. I know that many teachers and mentors say that you should never warm up for more than 30 minutes. But I have found that my students just need that time to settle in. Also, many of the things we do in our warm-up pertain to our lesson, so there is quite a bit of overlap between the warm-up and review.

Review

In this part of the lesson, you are reviewing the content from the day before, in preparation for working with it in some way. I usually do the review at this point in the lesson, though I am well-aware that it can sometimes feel like a bit of a let-down to start talking about yesterday’s news.

I try to remember that students feel like they come to school to learn the new content and it can be frustrating to have to wait too long to get it.

To alleviate this, I often bring some little nugget of new content in the midst of the review. As we are remembering together (usually in a verbal retelling) yesterday’s story or idea, I’ll mention something new and I always notice that my students sit up a little straighter and pay more attention.

Also, I should note that we don’t always do a verbal review together. It’s always a good idea to mix it up, so it doesn’t get dry. Sometimes we retell the story together. Other times students will act it out. Other times they’ll dive right into a composition about the story.

However we review the content, the next step is to work with it in some way. Usually this is with a drawing, writing assignment or some other exercise.

This is a part of the lesson that does require daily thought and preparation, though I try to map out ahead of time the different review activities. For example, I know that I have an assistant teacher in the room on Tuesdays, so I usually choose that day for independent activities that need a lot of one-on-one or small group support. I like to do guided drawings on Wednesdays and in the upper grades on Mondays I liked to give the students a reading passage to read and respond to.

It doesn’t always work out this way because I can’t always flex the content to make it work. For example, if I really want to do a guided drawing of Moses parting the Red Sea, but that story comes on a Thursday, I’ll probably change my usual schedule and do the drawing anyway.

My daily preparation became so much easier when I realized it was smart to map out the activities according to the day of the week in this way. Usually the recall and work takes 20-30 minutes.

Bookwork or Practice

Moving from the recall into the bookwork or practice time is so natural and easy. Sometimes the bookwork is an intrinsic part of the review process (like in the case of a guided drawing.) Other times, students are working at their own pace through the review content and they can move into bookwork whenever they are finished.

Often the bookwork involves transferring a completed, corrected composition into their main lesson books in finished form. Other times they are entering the review of a science demonstration. Other times they are writing step-by-step instructions to a math process. Almost always, the bookwork is the final, complete work and comes out of a draft that the students have written and I’ve corrected. It is rare that I have students turn straight to a page in their main lesson books without some sort of preparation.

One thing to note: I know that it used to be regular practice for teachers to write class compositions on the board that students would simply copy. They would write the composition together, so it was a group effort, but everyone wrote the same composition in their books.

My feeling is that this practice doesn’t give the students enough experience with writing. Often only a few students (the natural writers in the group) are involved with the process, and others are simply copying from the board. I find this to be of minimal educational value, so beginning as early as 2nd grade I started having my students write their own compositions. Now they’re old hands at it! And it really helped them listen to the sounds and do their best to spell.

If you’d like to read more about how I handled compositions in 3rd grade and “kid writing” in 2nd grade, click through and read those posts.

New Content

In the lower grades, I tend to end the lesson with new content, while in the upper grades, I bring the new material earlier in the lesson (sometimes even before the review) and end with bookwork.

In the lower grades, though, I like the feeling of bringing everyone to rest with a story at the end of the lesson. It feels like a little gift from teacher to student.

It was particularly important in 1st grade, when I think my students would have fallen apart without that daily story. These days, sometimes the work of our review goes long and I save the story for another day, but I do my best to manage my time so I can tell a story.

And one thing to note: I can’t tell you how many classrooms I have visited where the teachers did NOT tell a story or present new content in the lesson. It is definitely true that this is the aspect of our lesson planning that requires the most preparation, but it should not be skipped! It is absolutely essential that students learn something new every single day.

So, on those days when my story needs to wait until the next day, it’s usually because our review was juicy enough that it satisfied the need for new content and took up more time.

So, what does the timeline look like?

• Warm-Up — 60 minutes
• Review — 20 minutes
• Bookwork — 15 minutes
• Story — 20 minutes

So, what does that add up to? Hmmm, 115 minutes? It should all fit. So why is it that I run out of time every day?!

What do your main lessons look like? Which part of the lesson do you struggle with the most? Drop a note in the comments and let’s chat.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Main Lesson appeared first on A Waldorf Journey.