Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

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Language Arts Compendium
lies in grammar, but here, too, you can proceed very circumspectly.
This morning in our study of the human being I said that in ordinary
life we form conclusions and then proceed to judgment and concept.
[See lecture 9, The Foundations of Human Experience.] Although you
cannot present the children directly with this logical method, it will
underlie your teaching of grammar. Particularly with the help of the
lessons in foreign languages, you will do well to discuss matters of
the world with the children in a way that will allow grammar lessons
to arise organically. It is purely a matter of structuring such a thing
properly. Start by shaping a complete sentence and not more than
a sentence. Point to what is going on outside—at this very moment
you would have an excellent example.
You could very well combine grammar with a foreign language
by letting the children express in Latin and French and German, for
example, “It is raining.” Start by eliciting from the children the statement
“It is raining.” Then point out to them (they are, after all, older
children) that they are expressing a pure activity when they say: “It
rains.” Now you can proceed to another sentence; you can include, if
you like, foreign languages, for you will save a great deal of time and
energy if you also work this method into the foreign language lesson.
You say to the children: “Instead of the scene outside in the rain,
imagine to yourselves a meadow in springtime.” Lead the children
until they say of that meadow, “It is greening, it greens.” And then
take them further until they transform the sentence “It is greening,”
into the sentence “The meadow is greening.” And, finally, lead them
still further until they can transform the sentence “The meadow is
greening,” into the concept of a “green meadow.”
If you stimulate these thoughts within the children one after the
other in your language lessons, you will not be pedantically teaching
them syntax and logic. You will be guiding the whole soul constellation
of the children in a certain direction; you will be teaching them
in a discreet way what should arise in their souls. You introduce
sentences beginning “It” or “It is” to the children, sentences that
really live only in the domain of activity and exist as sentences in
themselves, without any subject or predicate. These are sentences that
belong to the living realm of conclusions—they are, indeed, abbrevi-