Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Grammar and Spelling
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harmony with the foundation you have laid in drawing and musical
instruction. Thus you have two processes that support each other.
[The Renewal of Education, pp. 111-112.]
3. Speech Development through Grammar
It will certainly not amaze you that the moment the head is physically
complete—around the age of seven—the change of teeth presents the
opportunity for the soul-head to arise from the larynx, permeated
with a kind of skeleton. However, it must be a “soul-skeleton.” We
do this by ending the wild development of language by imitation
and, instead, begin to control speech development through grammar.
We must be aware that when we receive children in elementary
school, we need to practice an activity on the soul similar to what is
practiced by the body when it produces the second set of teeth. We
make the development of speech firm in the soul aspect when we
include grammar in a reasonable way, so that what comes from speech
enters into writing and reading. We will achieve a proper relationship
of feeling to human speech if we know that the words people form
tend to become the head.
[The Foundations of Human Experience, pp. 207-208.]
4. Developing Grammar Artistically
In language, broadly speaking, the unconscious has had a great effect
on the child. We should also learn from the fact that primitive peoples
have often developed a much richer grammar than those present in the
languages of more civilized peoples. This is seldom taken into account
outside of spiritual science, but it is something we should consider as
a result of a genuine observation of human beings, namely, that the
human being develops a logic from within so that language is actually
logically formed. Thus we do not need to teach grammar in a way
other than by bringing what already exists as a completely developed
language structure into consciousness. When teaching and learning
grammar, we need only to follow the general tendency of awakening
the child and of bringing that into consciousness. We need only to
develop those forces that can be developed until the age of nine, in