Elementary & Middle School (1-8)
Curriculum
TRWS Grades 1-8 Curriculum
History, language arts, science and math are taught in main lesson blocks of three to five weeks during the morning main lesson hours.Main Lesson Block
One subject is the focus each morning for several weeks at a time allowing the teacher to develop a wide variety of activities around this particular subject. In the younger grades, lively rhythmic activities get the circulation going and bring children together as a group. They recite poems connected with the main lesson, practice tongue twisters to limber speech, and work with concentration exercises using body movements.
Afternoons are devoted to lessons in which the whole child is active: eurythmy (artistically guided movement to music and speech), handwork or gym. Thus the day has a rhythm that helps overcome fatigue and enhances balanced learning.Subject Classes
Teachers present short “run-through” lessons that often require the students to recite information. Foreign languages are customarily taught from first grade on and these lend themselves well to these later morning periods.Primary Grades (1-3)
Curriculum:
Pictorial introduction to the alphabet, speech work, writing, reading, spelling, poetry, and drama
Folk and fairy tales, fables, legends, Old Testament stories
Numbers, basic mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
Nature stories, house building, and gardening.Middle Grades (4-6)
Curriculum:
Writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry, speech work and drama.
Norse, Greek, Roman mythology, history and stories of ancient civilizations.
Review of the four mathematical processes, fractions, percentages, and geometry.
Local and world geography, comparative zoology, botany, and elementary physics.Upper Grades (7-8)
Curriculum:
Creative writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry, speech work, and drama
Medieval history, Renaissance, world exploration, American history, and biography
Mathematics, geography, physics, basic chemistry, astronomy, and physiology.Special Subjects
Handwork: knitting, crochet, sewing, cross-stitch, basic weaving, toy-making, copper-tooling and woodworking.
Music: singing, pentatonic flute, recorder
German
Art: watercolor painting, form drawing, beeswax and clay modeling, perspective drawing
Movement: group games, extra lesson activities
The Waldorf Experience - The Grades
The grade school curriculum at a Waldorf school can be seen as an ascending spiral: the long lessons that begin each day and the concentrated blocks of study that focus on one subject for several weeks.
As the students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject. It is as though each year they come to a window on the ascending spiral that looks out into the world through a more focused lens. Through the main-lesson spiral curriculum, teachers lay the groundwork for a gradual vertical integration. The lessons deepen and widen each subject while continuing to keep it moving along the spiral with the other aspects of knowledge.
If the ascending spiral of the curriculum offers a “vertical integration” from year to year, an equally important “horizontal integration” enables students to engage the full range of their faculties at every stage of development. The arts and practical skills play an essential part in the educational process throughout the grades. They are not considered luxuries, but fundamental to human growth and development.
All students participate in all basic subjects regardless of their special aptitudes. The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs. Naturally, one student is more gifted in math and another in science or history, but the mathematician needs the humanities and the historian needs math and science. The choice of a vocation is left to the free decision of the adult. A child’s early education should give one a palette of experience from which to choose the particular colors that one’s interests, capacities, and life circumstances allow.
As the students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject. It is as though each year they come to a window on the ascending spiral that looks out into the world through a more focused lens. Through the main-lesson spiral curriculum, teachers lay the groundwork for a gradual vertical integration. The lessons deepen and widen each subject while continuing to keep it moving along the spiral with the other aspects of knowledge.
If the ascending spiral of the curriculum offers a “vertical integration” from year to year, an equally important “horizontal integration” enables students to engage the full range of their faculties at every stage of development. The arts and practical skills play an essential part in the educational process throughout the grades. They are not considered luxuries, but fundamental to human growth and development.
All students participate in all basic subjects regardless of their special aptitudes. The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs. Naturally, one student is more gifted in math and another in science or history, but the mathematician needs the humanities and the historian needs math and science. The choice of a vocation is left to the free decision of the adult. A child’s early education should give one a palette of experience from which to choose the particular colors that one’s interests, capacities, and life circumstances allow.
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