Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

9
The Language Arts Curriculum
in Grades 1–8
First Lecture on the Curriculum
The first thing we need to consider when we welcome children into
the first grade is to find appropriate stories to tell them and for them
to tell back to us. In the telling and retelling of fairy tales, legends,
and accounts of outer realities, we are cultivating the children’s speech,
forming a bridge between the local dialect and educated conversational
speech. By making sure the children speak correctly, we are
also laying a foundation for correct writing.
Parallel to such telling and retelling, we introduce the children
to a certain visual language of forms. We have them draw simple
round and angular shapes simply for the sake of the forms. As already
mentioned, we do not do this for the sake of imitating some external
object, but simply for the sake of the forms themselves. Also, we do
not hesitate to link this drawing to simple painting, placing the colors
next to each other so that the children get a feeling for what it means
to place red next to green, next to yellow, and so on.
On the basis of what we achieve through this, we will be able
to introduce the children to writing in the way that we have already
considered from the perspective of educational theory. The natural
way to go about it would be to make a gradual transition from form
drawing to the Latin alphabet. Whenever we are in a position to introduce
the Latin alphabet first, we should certainly do so, and then
proceed from the Latin alphabet to German script. After the children
have learned to read and write simple handwritten words, we make
the transition to printed letters, taking the Latin alphabet first, of
course, and following it up with the German. [Steiner is referring
here to the fact that the German language at that time was written