Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

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Language Arts Compendium
A middle-grades teacher asks about notebooks according to blocks.
Dr. Steiner: You should give a dictation at the end of the period about
what was just covered. Create the dictation with the children. You
can summarize the material in a written form during one period
and review it in the next. Use key sentences rather than key words.
[Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, pp. 627-628.]
6. Dictations in Second Grade
Regarding a boy who had left the school:
Dr. Steiner: The two places that could be dangerous for us lie in the
following. The one is that people could claim he could do less than
is possible with a calculator. To that, we can say that our goal is to
develop the concept of numbers differently. We do not think that
is possible with such young children. We will have to go into this
business with calculators. The other thing that is dangerous for us
is his poor dictation. There, we can simply say that dictation is not
really a part of the second grade in our school. The situation is quite
tempting for someone with a modern pedagogical understanding.
That is how we can most easily be attacked. We will have to defend
ourselves against that. We need to energetically and decisively defend
ourselves. [Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, p. 410.]