Grades

First Grade
Second Grade
Third Grade
Fourth Grade
Fifth Grade
Sixth Grade
Seventh and Eighth Grades

In the first grade, Waldorf students hear the teacher tell fairy tales from around the world. The students then dramatize or retell these stories before they begin a lesson on numbers, letters, or ‘form drawing’ (according to the block)—a lesson that is based on the fairy tale.

Form Drawing

(4 weeks, and once a week throughout the school year)

Rudolf Steiner describes the first day of school as a time to talk with the students about why they attend school: they need to know how to express their ideas, how to write letters, and how to figure bill payments.

That first day, then, the children take up the task of how to draw a curve and a line—for the whole world can be represented by these two elements. Eugene Schwartz enumerates the benefits of Form Drawing thus:

• Promotes good concentration
• Improves hand/eye coordination
• Balances tendencies in children
• Helps the grasp of numerical relationships through simple geometrical drawings
• Improves neatness and balance

Arithmetic

(16 weeks, with daily times tables and “mental math’ practice throughout the year)

Heavy emphasis is placed on mastery of the times tables beginning in grade one. By the end of the year the students are expected to be able to multiply and divide by 1 through 5 and incrementally in tens. Mathematics are “age specific”, as is native proficiency language learning.
Eugene Schwartz enumerates the approach to math here:

• Through fairy tales the picture of numbers up to twelve are presented and worked with in a concrete way
• Rhythmical counting forwards and backwards from one to one hundred using whole body movements
• Counting in movement and music gives way gradually to reciting times tables.
• Learning about numbers as representing “how many”
• Cardinal and ordinal numbers
• Imaginatively presented in story for the personified symbols of the four operations and equivalence(x,-:-,-,+,=) are experienced.

Writing and Reading

(16 weeks)

Fairy Tales hold the first grader in breathless wonderment, and they sit at the edge of their chairs as the teacher tells a new story. From the story, a hieroglyph in the form of a Roman capital letter is presented. This method of introducing each letter of the alphabet, proceeding from the whole to the part, creates a deep foundation for reading and writing. The children are guided in making their own text book which becomes their first reader.

• A rich oral language experience through poetry recitation and song trains the ear for writing and spelling
• Form Drawing is skillful pencil handling that trains the thinking in directionality
• The movement in story dramatization and poetry recitation help children to experience the encoded meaning

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Writing and reading (16 weeks)

Writing
The first block begins with daily Form Drawing, where children practice drawing “great running loops” and “castle tops” before they begin exercises in cursive writing. Moving from the printed capital letters of first grade through these Form Drawings and then directly into cursive writing, children avoid the common problems of letter reversals (mixing up b and d for example) and misorientations (like printing letters upside-down).
Because we place great emphasis on proper proportions, the children use bright colors to draw their own writing guides directly onto blank paper. By mid-year, though, the children’s work should not require a liner.
In the course of this block, the children create two main lesson books—a “Book of Saints” and a book of “Vowels”—based on the stories and exercises that come just before writing time in the Main Lesson. This is how the children create these books:

• The teacher tells a story to the class.


• The children re-tell or act out the story the next day.


• One child suggests a sentence about the story; the other children emend it; and finally, the teacher writes the sentence on the board.


• The children then copy the sentences off the board and into their own blank books.

Reading
In addition to reading the main lesson books they have created themselves, the children also read familiar poems and short stories. But how do the children become familiar with these poems?
Well, recitation is a key component of Waldorf education, and so before the children receive these poetry readers, they will already have committed several hundred lines of poetry to memory.
And while most of the poems in this book are specifically written for children, the reader also includes the works of Rossetti, De la Mere, Bronte, and Wordsworth. Also, each year, the children perform a play or two for the school and the larger community.

Arithmetic

(16 weeks)

We place great stress on the children learning to know the times tables up to 12 x 12, through both recitation and writing. We continue to work with the four processes introduced last year, both in our daily mental math and in the three blocks devoted to math.

• Circle work, which emphasizes counting and includes a lot of clapping to a regular rhythm, is the basis for learning and practicing the times tables.
  Example: One, two, clap, four, five, clap, seven, eight, clap, etc.
• Going through the tables backwards strengthens the children’s grasp of multiplication.
• The children count apples (or bean-bags, or blocks . . . ) into bags of ten and then fit ten bags into a crate of one thousand, and so on. Thus the children not only learn to multiply in a very concrete way, but they also create either a real or an imaginary harvest activity.

The children also learn borrowing, carrying, and figuring out place value up to the hundred thousandth, and they are introduced to long processes of computation as well.

• As with writing, math exercises come out of the story activity at the beginning of class—and these stories are always of a social nature. (For example, “King Divide shares evenly.”)
• Math facts are drilled playfully and creatively, but the children learn them by rote.

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The 4th grade student wishes to revere but that reverence must be justified. These students are more self-confident as their perception of world sharpens, but the experience of separation from their surroundings can be painful. They begin to form their own personalities in response to their experience to the world, choosing qualities that go into their characters.

• History: The study of the state history focuses on the people who created the culture. The study starts with the first Tennesseans, Native Americans and includes field trips. Study continues with early settlers, emphasizing the importance of human deeds. Also covered are local and natural resources.
  
  
• Literature: Norse myths contain conscious choice. Gods are portrayed as individuals with distinct personalities, Loki showing the consequences of amoral cleverness, Siguna’s compassion, Odin giving an eye to drink from Mimir’s well to gain wisdom and spiritual vision. These myths give children strength to face challenges that may seem overwhelming
  
  
• Geography: The study of local geography starts with the students’ own bodies and expands to the four points of compass. Students make maps of their classroom, school, neighborhood, city, and state. They may also participate in orienteering.
  
  
• English and Grammar: The curriculum concentrates on reading, writing, grammar, spelling, letters (business and friendly), poetry, speech, drama, and creative writing. Grammar specifically covers syntax, punctuation, tenses and composition. Students will complete written and oral book reports.
  
  
• Science: Students will complete the lesson block on humans and animals, which covers the relationship between the human and animal kingdom. The students find strength and comfort in the comparison of the one-sidedness of various animals with well-roundedness of humans. They create the figure of human form and then follow a detailed study of forms and habitats of animals (beavers, bats, lions, foxes, etc.) through poetry, clay modeling and play-acting to feel fascinating skills and qualities that animals possess. The students see the unique and responsible position humans hold.
  
  
• Mathematics: Fractions are the primary focus of the 4th grade curriculum. Cutting up apples, baking and cutting pies, and pizzas, are all ways of creating parts of a whole as a visual experience of fractions before forming mental concepts. Additionally, these concepts are covered in the curriculum: addition, subtraction, multiplication, reduction and expansion of fractions, changing improper fractions into mixed numbers, prime numbers, factoring, long division, weights and measures, drill work.
  
  
• Music: Students continue to improve singing and recorder playing, and begin violin instruction.
  
  
• Artistic work: Cross stitch is added to the handwork so students can experience wholeness from many crossings. Knotted form drawings, inspired by Nordic and Celtic motifs, are added to drawing. Animal forms and geometric shapes are modeled in clay and/or beeswax. Students begin painting on dry paper.
  
  
• Spanish & German: Students begin the study of grammar.

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At this age the students view the world in a synthetic rather than analytic manner. They show grace and ease in their physical movements. They cognitively approach a problem in a more realistic, reasoning manner as their intellectual faculties emerge.

• History: Back to the dawn of human civilization, in ancient India, Persia, Greece, and Egypt, through mythology, music architecture, and art, the students discover the roots of western culture. They gain a sense for the differences between each cultural epoch so they understand how human consciousness has evolved through time. Among the biographies read are Buddha, Pythagoras, Socrates, Pericles, and Alexander the Great.
  
  
• Literature: The literature supports the historical block of ancient history through mythologies and poetry. The students recite and sing sacred and secular texts, using primary source material whenever possible.
  
  
• Geography: Geography also complements the study of ancient cultures. In addition, students study the geography of the North American continent, cultural and physical, which includes the study of Native Americans. There is a sense of great contrasts: the North American continent from north to south and east to west: human and economic use of resources in contrast. Students gain a feeling of relatedness with fellow human beings living in all other parts of the world.
  
  
• English and Grammar: Students review previous work and add active and passive verbs, subject, predicate, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, parts of speech, syntax, punctuation, phases, direct and indirect objects and compound verb tenses. Word families are emphasized in reading activities. Different writing styles include essays and short stories.
  
  
• Science: Botany, the study of plant life, shows students the order and structure in natural world. They see that the acorn contains the oak tree. Students study the monocotyledon, dicotyledon, algae, and mosses, and investigate how climate and geography affect plant growth.
  
  
• Math: The 5th grade curriculum focuses on factoring, finding averages, decimals, word problems, and situations involving measurement of time, linear and volumetric measures, and measurements of weight, ratio, calculation of area, and reciprocals.
  
  
• Artistic work: Form drawing is emphasized. In support of the ancient culture study, braided and geometrical forms from Egyptian and Greek artifacts are recreated. Triangles and hexagons are added to drawings. Painting continues. Greek columns, vases, and tablets are sculpted in clay.
  
  
• Music: Singing, recorder and violin playing continues.
  
  
• Games: 5th graders work towards a Greek Olympiad, which features the javelin, discus, running, long jump and wrestling. In May, they compete against other area Waldorf schools.
  
  
• Spanish & German: Spanish and German instruction is continued.

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An important change happens to the 6th grader’s physical body—where there was natural gracefulness, there is now clumsiness. On inner level, the body is entering into the skeletal system. Externally, the curriculum matches that change with the introduction of concepts based on laws of mechanics. The study of Romans follows the 6th graders’ feeling of omnipotence: I can do anything. This time is a gateway to pre-adolescence and idealism. The curriculum is created to ground the students, to inspire them to branch out and introduces then to the quest.

• History: The study block on Romans begins with Rome’s divine origin. The Roman epoch is studied chronologically, in a timeline in relation to expansion and contraction of Roman Empire and the changing map of Europe to help children understand history in relation to space. This is important as the Roman Empire most strongly dominated the physical world in the form of cities, roads, aqueducts, the Roman army, and finally the conquest of the known western world. Eventually, excesses of period led to the eradication of native cultures, the fall of the empire, the Dark Ages, illumination by the new religion of Christianity. Important people who may be studied in depth include Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Caesar Augustus, and Jesus. Emphasis is placed on causal thinking. Moving out of the Roman Empire, study continues with European medieval society, focusing on the cloister, the castle, cities, Arthurian legends, monasticism, the rise of the church, the creation of feudalism, and the Crusades. Biographies of Mohammed, Islam, Charlemagne, and William the Conqueror may be read and discussed.
  
  
• Literature: Recitations in Latin, debates, tales of chivalry, poetry, ballads, and scenes from medieval history support the study block on Romans and early European history. ‘Tom Sawyer,’ by Mark Twain is also read.
  
  
• Geography: Students study the physical body of earth and world geography, covering configuration and contrasts, landforms and oceans. This includes the cultures of Europe and South America. Students present their work in the form of reports, compositions, creative writing and maps.
  
  
• English and Grammar: Students focus on speech work, dictation, book reports, compositions and stories, and the art of discussion and debate. They review grammar work, particularly parts of speech, from previous years, adding the conditional mood, and emphasizing sentence, paragraph, and essay structures. Students end the year with a class play.
  
  
• Science: Students are introduced to laboratory science, starting with physics (sound, light, heat) through art. They learn about acoustics through how music is made: the musical instrument inside us, the larynx. They are introduced to optics through qualities of color. They study astronomy, the earth, and the moon, emphasizing moon phases, solstice, eclipses, and the equinox. Other subjects included in the 6th grade curriculum are thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, static electricity, geology (introduced in a comparative way), earthquakes, and volcanoes. Students continue their work with horticulture and the school garden.
  
  
• Math: Graphs, business math, concepts of economics—interest, taxation and profit and loss—ratio, proportion, exchange, estimation, and equations.
  
  
• Artistic work: The mathematical form of geometric shapes using ruler, compass, and t-square, with an emphasis on Euclidean forms, draftsmanship, exactness, and artistic composition become the focus of drawing exercises. Bas-relief in the Roman style, painting landscapes, color contrasts, woodworking, and dolls and stuffed animals that students have designed round out the artistic curriculum.
  
  
• Music: Singing, recorder and violin playing continues.
  
  
• Spanish & German: Penpals who speak Spanish and German as a primary language may be used for improvement of grammar and vocabulary.

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The task of elementary education is to give children an understanding of humanity and the world, to offer them knowledge so rich and warm as to engage their hearts and wills as well as their minds. Such a base will inform all real intellectual accomplishment in a child’s later years.

• History in the seventh and eight grades, therefore, leads us from the accomplishments of the Renaissance through an intensive study of the Industrial Revolution to the modern day. We focus on outstanding individuals such as Napoleon, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Edison. The study of history these grades, then, culminates in the sweep of American history.
  
  
• Geography takes up the same theme, showing the interconnectedness of every part of the earth in modern industrial civilization. The children gain a comprehensive picture of the relationship between minerals, plants and animals and the lives of human beings in various regions of the world.
  
  
• Physics lessons complement these historical and geographical surveys.
  
  
• Chemistry becomes real to the students when they consider it in relation to industry. Organic chemistry takes the children inside life itself as they identify fats, sugars, proteins, and starches for the roles they play in building organic matter.
  
  
• Mathematics emphasizes the practical applications of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.
  
  
• Literature focuses on the theme of human freedom in the short story, in letters, and in Shakespearean drama.
  
  
• Painting, which Waldorf students have engaged in as a central part of their education since kindergarten, now comes into a new focus, for the students in seventh and eighth grades engage in highly conscious studies of highlights and shadows in portraits and landscapes.
  
  
• German and Spanish studies, at this point, bring students into a study of poetry and metric forms.
  
  
• Handwork at this age involves machine sewing an article of clothing and selected hand- sewing projects.
  
  
• Woodworking, which at this age is devoted to creating toys with moveable parts, requires real skill and imagination.
  
  
• Music study at this point means learning to know Elizabethan music and American musical forms.

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