Physics — Week One — Sound

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We are having such an amazing time with our Physics block so far!

For the first week we are focusing on sound and we’ve already learned so much about the world of sound. Though our task is to focus on the realm of experience and not worry so much about the concepts, in our experiences we have come to understand so much!

First, we started by exploring musical sounds vs. non-musical sounds. I began by playing a symphony for the students and I had them identify the different instruments that were present in the piece. Steiner was very clear that the students’ understanding of sound should come out of their experience of music. This seemed just perfect to me. Our experience in main lesson on Monday was the first experience many of my students had had at looking at a piece of music more objectively. That experience really set the tone for what our work in this block would be about. How can we take those experiences that we’ve had so far in our lives in the feeling realm and look at them with a bit more objectivity? Music was the perfect place to start.

The next day I had everyone bring a sound in to the classroom. First, we made all of our sounds at once. The cacophony that arose was deafening! I was quite a contrast to the melodic symphony we’d experienced the day before! Next we tried to see if we could make these various sounds musical. We were quite surprised and impressed to find that if we added instruments one by one we were able to accomplish it! The students then came up with a fantastic definition of musical sounds vs. non-musical sounds. They observed that while non-musical sounds exist on their own in chaos, musical sounds have a relationship to each other. They exist with an awareness of the other sounds that are present. I was quite impressed with this insightful definition of music.

We went on to take a look at different types of sounds classified by the way that they are made. We came up with three basic categories — struck sounds, friction sounds and blown sounds. We came to the conclusion that just about every sound we could think of fell into one of these three categories.

Today we explored the idea of pitch and volume. We played with bottles and filled them with different amounts of water and created a scale. By the end of the day we had worked our way up to playing Happy Birthday! Tomorrow is the birthday of one of the students and we can’t wait to play it for her!

Tomorrow we’ll look at the different ways sound travels. We’ll see how it moves through air, both in an enclosed space and outside. We’ll also make tin can telephones to see how sound travels along a string. So much fun!

Related posts:

Filed Under: Curriculum Tips, Grade 6, The 3 R's

A New Poetry Book

January 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

I spent a good part of this weekend preparing for more geometry this week — I’ll certainly have some beautiful drawings to show for it as the week progresses.

One of the things I needed to pull together this weekend was a new poem for my class to speak together in the mornings. It was my good fortune, then, that our school recently received a few copies of a great new poetry book.

The Waldorf Book of Poetry is a fantastic resource full of poems to use in the Waldorf classroom. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent poring through poetry books trying to find something appropriate to use with my students. Every time I do it I’ve thought that certainly countless Waldorf teachers before myself have spent the same hours trying to find just the right poem. David Kennedy has taken all that work and compiled it into one volume full of poems appropriate for all kinds of situations. Usually it’s pretty simple to find rhymes and poems to use with the younger grades but in this book I found poem after poem that was perfect for my sixth graders and even older students. I can’t recommend it enough!

Related posts:

Filed Under: Grade 5, Grade 6, The 3 R's, The Art of Teaching

Caesar!

December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

These three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are always such a whirlwind of activity! In our story of Rome we’ve made it through the life of Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar Augustus. We’re loving the stories and doing some great work with our writing.

In addition to the imaginative content we’re really taking a close look at grammar. We’ve gotten quite good at identifying subjects, predicates and direct objects. We can also tell when a verb is transitive, intransitive or linking. It’s so satisfying to watch the students identify these grammatical constructions with such confidence. We finished up last week looking at the verb “to be” which is one of those verbs that almost doesn’t seem like a verb. We conjugated it in past, present and future tenses, an activity which dovetailed nicely with the students’ work in French class.

This week we’ll take a closer look at verb tenses. We’ll take a critical look at writing to determine what tense it is written in. Students this age still often struggle with changing tenses in their writing. They’ve gotten pretty good at writing descriptively, but I want for them to be able to notice when they change tenses. I’ve noticed that the biggest challenges come when students are writing about a particularly engaging story. They’ll start out in past tense and then as they get into the story a bit more they start to feel like they are really there and they’ll switch to present tense. This is one of those mistakes that makes the English major in me twitch, so I’ll be happy when my students can start to notice when they’re doing it.

Tomorrow I’m going to bring portraits of three powerful Roman men — Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Augustus Caesar — and we’ll draw them in our main lesson books.

I love that moment in sixth grade when students start to see their drawing not as a collection of lines but simply as a mixture of light and dark. Marble Roman statues are perfect for this exercise.

Related posts:

Filed Under: Grade 6, The 3 R's, The Art of Teaching

Back to Rome

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My family and I had a most wonderful Thanksgiving Break and though I was sorry to see the hustle and bustle of those busy schooldays return, when I saw my bright-eyed students this morning I was struck so strongly with a feeling of gratitude for them. I am so fortunate to spend my days with these amazing individuals everyday.

Today we returned to the world of Rome. We’re following the dynamic figures of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and Cicero as Rome changes from a republic to an empire and then eventually crumbles to the ground. Tomorrow we’ll draw a map of the Roman Empire and see how much territory it truly spans. Today I started with the beginning of the story of Julius Caesar and this week I plan on having the students complete a writing assignment about the life of Caesar.

For resources, once again I have my colleagues to thank for pointing me in the direction of the most fantastic resources.

Augustus Caesar’s World by Genevieve Foster is a fantastic book that gives the story of these important figures in an extremely imaginative way. The book could be given to students as a reader (or to read parts of, because the individual chapters can stand on their own as independent stories) or it can be used to teach the entire block from. I’m beginning with a different resource for the story of Julius Caesar, but I plan on turning to this one for the rest of the block.

Ancient Rome by Charles Kovacs is another Kovacs resource that is not to be missed. Kovacs is so great for bringing just the essentials. I often feel like I need a little bit more of the story for my own benefit and to liven up my telling, but when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of the topic, Kovacs always reassures me.

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare is our class reader for this block. Because of the way our blocks fell this year I am assigning two readers back-to-back, without an independent read between them, which I regret, but this book is so good, I’m sure my students will enjoy it. Because it tells the story of a young Galilean at the time of Christ I thought its content was perfect to go with this block at this time of year. I’m looking forward to telling the students the biography of Jesus Christ during our last week of this block, though I am a bit overwhelmed and intimidated by the prospect, as well.

It feels like a lot of very important content to bring in three short weeks that will be broken up by the festivities of the holidays!

Related posts:

Filed Under: Grade 6, The 3 R's

Business Math

November 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Just a quick post with the promise of a longer one this weekend. As usual, things are pretty busy around here.

I started a new block this week, despite the challenges of Halloween festivities throwing a wrench into our beginning of the block rhythm. We had a celebration after main lesson on Monday and then a skating party for the day after Halloween. It was a lot of fun, but didn’t lend itself to a good race-through-the-gates start.

We are quite into the block now, though, and the work we’re doing is really helping me to notice how different my students are compared to last year. I’m finding that the business math content is suddenly inserting my students into the world. They are now interested and want to know about the world in a way that just was not at all present last year.

We started the block talking about different economic systems — self-sufficiency, barter and money. Everyone was fully engaged as we talked about each system and the benefits and drawbacks of each. I’ve also introduced percents and we had a nice conversation about where we hear talk about percents in the world. The students were full of examples — “50% off,” “split it 50/50,” test scores, tipping and tax. We had a lively conversation about the different tax rates in different states and they were quite interested to find out where was the most affordable state to live in, when it comes to tax. Tomorrow I’m bringing the list of states with their tax rates and I’ll have students choose a state. I’ll create some sample questions that they can all calculate so they can see the price differences for each state.

We’ll also extend our economic system conversation to start bringing the question of how things are given value. Some students have already brought this up, mentioning that dollars are just “pieces of paper” and that it costs more than a penny to make a penny. Clever children, they are.

My plan for next week is to bring a game to the class where we can have the experience of determining the value of things. I’m imagining creating a currency and each student would earn a salary that they would trade for recess time, having friends do their chores, we might even bring things in to sell to our classmates.

This really is turning out to be a fun block!

Related posts:

Filed Under: Curriculum Tips, Grade 6, The 3 R's

A Little Downtime

October 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Isn’t it funny how just when you feel like you’re doing too much and getting just a wee bit overwhelmed with it all, something happens that forces you to sit back and cool your heels for awhile? Tuesday afternoon afterschool I was running errands. I had just bought dowels to make knitting needles with the fifth grade handwork class and was heading to the grocery store when my dansko-clad foot hit a crack in the sidewalk, my ankle turned sideways and I fell — hard. It was bad enough that I couldn’t put any weight on it all day on Wednesday. Today, I’ve been able to hobble around a bit but I stayed home from school both days. I’ll be back at school tomorrow, just in time to finish off our first Roman History block.

I was fortunate enough to have a very capable substitute to leave my class in the hands of. She was able to cover the material that I would have covered so my students will still be ready for their block test tomorrow. Though I never would have wished for a sprained ankle, having these two days has taken the edge off of what would have been a very busy block-switch weekend.

I always enjoy the opportunity to look back upon the work that we accomplished in each block and a block test is the perfect way to do that. I always write the test in a way that allows the students to do quite well. I want them to have that satisfying look back on what they know.

Topics that will be covered this time are:

  • Alexander the Great
  • Aeneas and The Trojan War
  • Romulus and Remus
  • The Sabines
  • The Etruscans
  • Horatius at the Bridge
  • Roman Law
  • Patricians and Plebeians
  • Carthage and the Punic Wars
  • Hannibal
  • The Senate, Assembly, Consuls, Dictator, Tribunes, and the power of the “veto”
  • The Gracchi Brothers
  • Gaius Marius
  • Spartacus
For academic content we covered:
  • Latin roots
  • Review of direct speech
  • Review of parts of speech
  • Beginning diagramming sentences
  • Spelling — lots of difficult names!
Wow! That’s a lot of material covered in a four week block! Hopefully this weekend I’ll post some main lesson page photos.

Related posts:

Filed Under: Curriculum Tips, Grade 6, The 3 R's

What We’re Doing

October 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I knew this would happen eventually. The year is truly in full swing and it is difficult to keep up with it all, let alone keep this little space up to date. Even so, I am encouraged by my readership (which is continuing to grow) and I really want to keep you all up to date on what we’re up to these days. I’m hoping for more than a once a week posting pattern, but we do what we can do.

History is the kind of block that can really make a teacher feel like she’s racing to keep up. When you’re covering expanses of nearly a thousand years in the space of three weeks, it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing it justice. But I just keep reminding myself that the idea is to create a feeling in the students that creates the backdrop for the cultivating of their skills and imaginations. I don’t need to make sure they’ve got the whole of Roman history down pat.

Last week was one of those weeks. We moved on from the infancy of Rome to the Rome we all know and love. We imagined legions of soldiers out conquering the Mediterranean (which is a great spelling word, by the way.) Rome entered battles at sea with that great shipping port Carthage. And at the end of the week Hannibal crossed the Alps only to face a well-rested and prepared Roman army.

Last week Rome was on the upswing. This week we’ll start looking at some of its troubles. Patricians and plebeians can’t work together in the assembly when there is such disparity in their circumstances. Rome realizes that its long arm of law can only reach so far. We begin to wonder if this great superpower will keep going.

We’re just loving all of the stories.

Related posts:

Filed Under: Curriculum Tips, Grade 6, The 3 R's

Rocks and Minerals Main Lesson Book Pages

September 20, 2011 By 5 Comments

Every year at the beginning of the year I swear that I am going to really work at keeping my bookwork current. I’m usually pretty good about studiously completing my own main lesson book for that first block of the year and then as the year gets busier my bookwork slowly goes downhill. Last year I didn’t complete a single page in my Ancient Greece book! Terrible, I know.

So, while the going’s good, I thought I’d share with you here my work for the year so far. (I apologize for the poor quality of the photos — late night kitchen lighting just isn’t very good.

The first page is my main lesson book rendition of my chalkboard drawing.

The chalkboard turned out decidedly better. I really love being able to draw with white, and not have to just leave negative space for it.

The next one is a page with the Fire and Ice poem by Robert Frost that we’re speaking in class.

I love how this page turned out. This was a great example of how creating a nice looking page yourself can really inspire the students to do their best work. Most of the class created pages that look just as lovely.

On the next page we got into the cold hard facts of the block.

We spent some time studying and working with the properties of minerals. This was a lot of fun. On this page I knew that I was going to include a little blurb about each of the properties and I wanted to include a little picture to go with it but I was short on time. I encouraged my students to take their work one step further and make it better than mine. I have found that one of the best ways to improve bookwork, painting, or any artistic work is to push the envelope a bit. Work on your piece until you are happy with it . . . and then. . . push yourself to take it one step further. We have a tendency to avoid fine detail in our work and that is what makes it truly improve.

Sometimes you just have to have a boring old page of writing. I usually have the students create simple one line borders like this around their pages. I don’t like when they get flowery and overly intricate with their border illustrations when they have nothing to do with the content of the page. I’d rather they keep it simple and draw one line all the way around.

The page no Rocks and Minerals main lesson book could be without — The Rock Cycle.

Though I started out being truly unhappy with my Pacific Ring of Fire map, in the end I actually love this page. I am so glad I ordered larger main lesson books. It means that we can create pages like this one. This one has three different bits of information on it but they all fit together nicely. I really like it.

We’ve got a couple of other pages in the works — mostly writing — an explanation of the rock cycle and a “journal entry” from a man in Mexico who saw a volcano arise before his eyes. Fun stuff.

I really love working in my main lesson book and I often wish I had more time to devote to simple, therapeutic artistic work.

Related posts:

Filed Under: Grade 6, The 3 R's, The Art of Teaching

Mentoring and Consultation

September 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The teachers at our school are working hard at refining and defining our in-house mentoring program. because the mentoring I received when I was a new teacher helped me so much in having a successful experience in the classroom, it is quite important to me to see that strong mentoring and leadership carry on. It is a subject that is near and dear to my heart.
I’ve taken on the task of researching the best approach to mentoring and evaluation of teachers and I am fortunate that AWSNA, the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, have put together a report of a survey that they did of successful Waldorf schools. The structure is all right there, now it is just up to us to put it in p,ace and carry it out. We are fortunate that we have a faculty full of talented and experienced teachers who are happy to share the wisdom of their ways.

I, myself, have given lots of thought to how I can best share my insights and experiences and this blog is a huge part of that process. I do think, though, that nothing can compare to the wisdom that can be imparted in a one-on-one, teacher-to-teacher relationship.

For this reason I am quite interested in exploring the possibility of offering mentoring and consultation through this site. My time is limited, but I so strongly believe that cultivating human relationships and helping others to become better teachers would be time well-spent.

So I’ve added another product to my list. I’m now offering consulting by the hour. This consultation will happen on the phone and will be preceded by email exchanges so I can prepare enough to make our time more valuable.

If you are interested in purchasing an hour of consulting time go ahead and add it to your cart and check out and I will contact you to make arrangements.

Related posts:

Filed Under: A Teacher's Life, Child Development, Curriculum Tips, Grade 5, Grade 6, The 3 R's, The Art of Teaching, The Reason Why, Waldorf

Teaching Writing — Developing an Editorial Process

September 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tomorrow I am giving my students their first writing assignment of the year. We did a lot of writing at the end of last year and I was quite pleased with the progress the students had made. This year, I want for that progress to continue and I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to make sure their writing keeps improving. There are a couple of things I am beginning to make sure that happens.

Instituting an Editorial Process

A couple of times last year I had the students take their writing to a classmate to be read and I was pleased with how helpful this process was. I learned with my last class that a few things need to be in place in order for a peer editing program to be successful.

  • Accountability. Reviewers need to be held accountable for their remarks. They need to sign the review sheet and it should be turned in (with the reviewed paper.) I insist on this not because I need to make sure students are being kind to each other, but because I need to make sure they are being hard enough on their classmates. The temptation for reviewers is to read it through and say, “I think it’s good,” and say nothing more. Reviewers need to know that it is important and helpful when they critique their classmates’ work. They’re not being mean, they’re actually being nice.
  • Form. The teacher needs to create a solid framework for the reviewing process. Perhaps the process begins with the writer performing a self-review, then finding a reviewer, reading the piece aloud, then the reviewer reading silently. Before reading silently, the reviewer should have a review form to fill out that gives guidance on things to look for. The reviewer then fills out this form, signs it and gives everything back to the writer.
Ideally the next step would be for the writer and reviewer to sit down together and have a writing workshop. This is a good way to ensure that revisions are actually made. Students’ temptation to write it once and call it finished is incredibly strong and it takes a concerted effort to convince them to sit down and revise. Many of my students were reluctant because they didn’t want their finished writing to be messy. They thought that if I asked them to revise they would have to rewrite the entire paper so they wouldn’t have cross-outs, inserts and arrows.
In addition to improving our editorial process, this year I plan on only rarely collecting a piece of writing the day that it is assigned. I am hoping that by refusing to accept writing immediately after it is written, I can encourage students to take another look at their work. I have also asked that students ask their parents to read over their writing the night they take it home. I spoke with the parents at our recent parent meeting about doing this and everyone understood the importance of this individual one-on-one writing workshop help.
My hope is that with these procedures in place my students’ writing will continue to improve.

Related posts:

Filed Under: The 3 R's
« Older Posts