How is reading taught in a Waldorf school? Why do Waldorf students wait until 2nd grade to begin learning to read?
Waldorf education incorporates the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning. Writing will be taught before reading. During the first grade year the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.
Waldorf education draws on the power of the oral traditions. The teacher tells the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The children take a greater and greater role in retelling and enacting the stories. Mastery of oral language precedes written language culturally and historically as well as individually. The richer the experience of oral language, the easier and fuller will be the mastery of written language.
Waldorf education is deeply bound up with the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning. Reading instruction, as such, is deferred. Instead, writing is taught first. During the first grade year the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.
Waldorf education is deeply bound up with the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning. Reading instruction, as such, is deferred. Instead, writing is taught first. During the first grade the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.
Related Questions
- How is reading taught in a Steiner Waldorf school? Why do Steiner Waldorf students wait until 2nd grade to begin learning to read?
- How is reading taught in a Waldorf school? Why do Waldorf students wait until 2nd grade to begin learning to read?
- How is reading taught in a Steiner school? Why do Steiner students wait until 2nd grade to begin learning to read?
