At the All School Meeting, we got to know one another a bit with a warm-up game and then talked about neurology and literacy via a clay project. Here is a brief recap.
Around seven, young children's brains begin growing and developing at an outstanding rate, a pace rarely matched at any other time in their lives.
Our curriculum this year will make good use of this significant growth spurt by combining the Waldorf curriculum, which in first grade, focuses on experiencing the alphabet and number systems in profound, experiential, and sensory-related ways (often referred to as "swimming in the letters" or "awash in the numbers") with a gradual progression into the deeper study of the English language. This progression is based on years of scientific research on how children learn.
In first grade, what we do at school together will influence how the brain is shaped, creating pathways and connections for capacities students will use for the rest of their lives. During our literacy work this year, first graders will begin to learn how to use the tool of language together by practicing and fine-tuning its use in more complex and varied situations. This deep study and practice will continue during all of the elementary school years.
But what does that really mean?
What that means is we will spend a lot of time practicing the basics, building a solid foundation for reading stamina, fluency, comprehension, and the development of a rich vocabulary.
That means having fun with each new piece needed to build towards a whole and robust literacy. Each piece of our literacy work, like partnering with older students as reading buddies and hearing rich oral stories of fairy tales, will be forces that shape the brain's growth and pathways... and encourage an interest in reading, learning, and the people and world around us.
Fairy tales are used in first grade because they bring pictures of humanity that we can't find reflected so broadly in any other form. Fairy tales offer pictures of morality, justice, relationships, kindness, cruelty being overcome, and compassion.
Between fairy tales and our work with phonics rules and word families, playing with rhymes and syllables, stretching memory capacities, reading, writing, and games with phonemes and graphemes, that remarkable 7-year-old brain will be shaped and strengthened well!
But what does that look like in our classroom?
Stay tuned; We have a great year ahead!
