Cím: | Süss fel nap - Sam Betts: Teaching Enligsh in a Waldorf School |
Szerző: | Fűzfa Balázs (szerk) |
Sorozatcím: | |
A kiadás helye: | Pilisborosjenő |
A kiadás éve: | 1999 |
Kiadó: | Pedagógus-továbbképzési módszertani és információs központ |
Terjedelem: | |
Nyelv: | magyar |
Tárgyszavak: | pedagógia, tehetséggondozás |
Állomány: | |
Megjegyzés: |  |
Annotáció: | |
ISBN: | 963 9049 24 7 |
ISSN: | |
Raktári jelzet: | E |
Sam Betts
Teaching Enligsh
in a Waldorf School
"Before human beings became conscious indiwduals in the
modern sense they ivere shaped within by a spiritual artist
whose work of art ivas language."
(Rudolf Steiner)
One way of approaching Waldorf education is to think about the way human beings relate to their environment. How do human beings partici-pate in their world? The underlying philosophy of Waldorf education (de-veloped by Rudolf Steiner) distinguishes three levels of relationship: a level of will, a level of feeling, and a level of thinking. In reality these are three interrelating levels in the human soul organisation, and they do of course normally function within us in an integrated manner. Nevertheless we can experience clearly the difference between the three. And it is im-portant to distinguish between them in order to deepen our understanding of how a growing human being, a child, develops as both an independent being and as a participant in the world.
I have placed the thinking level last with good reason. The condition of awake, clear thinking consciousness is an aduit phenomenon. It is a condition that the human being gradually acquires as a result of the path of development irom birth to adulthood. This awake thinking consciousness can also be developed further in the course of aduit life. Sometimes natu-ral life experiences may intensify this faculty in us. Or we may undertake a process of self-development, or mner discipline, using exercises In per-ception (observation) and thinking to strengthen and develop further our consciousness.
We can see, however, that a child passing gradually through various stages of development does not posses the same thinking consciousness as the aduit. (We can therefore speak of an evolution of consciousness here, which m certain respects resembles the historical evolution of human consciousness at a general level.) The teaching methods of Waldorf education are founded upon this principle: that the child relates to both the world and the human beings around it in a fundamentally different way than the aduit. And this mode of relationship is gradually transformed in the child as it passes through different stages of development. These stages can be distinguished from each other. There are the more obvious milestones along the path - birth, change of teeth and school readmess, puberty. And between these are equally rmportant less obvious landmarks. (For example, the period of intensity around the 9* to 10* year when the child experiences strongly a separation of the self from the surrounding world.) The path of child development is an interplay between the unique individual being of the single child and a general lawfulness at work, indi-cated by these milestones.
Not surprisingly we find that the focus in the child's inner relationship to the outer world as it develops, shifts between the three fundamental levels mentioned above. In Rudolf Steiner's anthropology we find the helpful insight that the three levels of willing, feeling and thinking can be understood (or illustrated) from the point of view of consciousness.1 The character of thinking is experienced most fully in clear, awake consciousness. Feeling, however, functions in us in a "twilight zone", in a condition more akin to our dream consciousness. Here the clarity and sense of m-dependent self-direction is reduced, while the prevailing mood, the mo-buity within and between experiences (or events), and the sense of being permeated or carried by feeling are dominant qualities. My difficulty here in finding clear verbal concepts to express these qualities, itself indicates how the realm of feeling relates to the dream consciousness in us, which is neither so clear nor so awake. And yet we all know how powerfully and deeply we are moved and affected by dreams.
WilHng is virtually impossible to characterise verbally, though we can all contemplate its results. Here we confront the soul level that is most deeply asleep in us. The reality of the presence of the will in us, and its importance in enabling us to respond outwardly into the world is un ques-tionable. And yet it functions quite below the threshold of our conscious perception. This is the level of deep sleep.
With this description before us we can contemplate the child more closely. The young pre-school child (whether at home or in the "ovoda") is furthest away from the clarity of aduit thinking consciousness. Ali is movement, all is sensing, openness and discovery; the activity of meeting and transforming the environment. At the sanie time enomious steps are taken in the process of learning (which occur unconsciously, as mdeed they must): learning to stand, to walk, to speak, to begin to think. And then playing one's way into an understanding grasp of the envkonment and relationships with one's peers. In the course of so doing the child masters to a high level existence in a human physical body.
These are such enormous and fundamental steps in learning and human development (in a real sense far outweighing those of later years), that they would be impossible to achieve if they depended upon inde-pendent, clear conscious thinking by the child to ensure that they were carried out properly (This is worth viewing from the aduit angle also: where is there an aduit human being with the wisdom, skill and conscious understanding of the profound processes involved capable of training a child's organisni to stand, speak and begin to think?). They would be unspeakably painful too, if that were the case. Just imagine the repeated frustrations and checks of this period of life experienced with a clear, inner soul consciousness by the young child. Instead the soul is focussed here at the level of the unconscious, 'sleeping' will. This is the dominant quality at work in the human being.
The prevailing mood is one of unconscious wisdom at work carrying the chud towards the major milestone of school readiness.
Obviously the feeling and thinking levels are also intensely active. If the child grows up at this tender, sensitive age in a home atmosphere of tension and anger then this will leave a mark on the whole orgamsm. Equally significant is the mood or atmosphere absorbed in the "Óvoda".
"In the Óvoda the outer and the inner way in which the candle is lit, the cloths are folded and the dough is kneaded forms part of the child's environment. As an open and receptive 'sense-organ' the young chud ab-sorbs the outer impressions of the environment, as well as the qualitative inner 'moods' in which the outer deeds are enacted. We can say that the child imitates both what we are, and what we do."2
On account of the child's fundamental openness, imitation is the medium through whlch the child learns. Imitation works so strongly at this stage just because an unconscious sensmg-willing relationship to the environment prevails In the child. The later development of more conscious thinking goes along with increased independence from the environment and the ability to protect oneself from its influence.
Conscious, clear thinking and inner distance (separation) from the environment develop gradually as two sides of the same coin. It is remark-able to observe how the seeds of the child's thinking faculty sprout and develop steadily through the ovoda years. But they need to be left to themselves to function and develop naturally within the essential whole-ness of the child's nature, and within the unity of the child's relationship to the environment.
School readiness means just this: that the willing, feeling and thinking have reached a new key stage in their interrelationship, which renders the child able to embark with an intense feeling-thinking on the path of school learning. Though of necessity an oversimplification in the context of this article, we can characterise the lower school (altalanos) years as fo-cussed through the mobile, all-permeating feeling quality. The teacher most healthily educates the children when the lessons are given with attention to rhythm and specific, feeling moods. Mood and rhythm engage the child in the subject matter. For example, if I want to introduce the study of the human being in elass IV. the atmosphere I create as I speak about the human being, which depends upon my inner attitude to this subject, and my enthusiasm for it, is more profoundly educative for the child than the many facts I can assemble and pass on. The facts are im-portant, but they are the skeleton, as it were. The element that really stirs the child inwardly, right down into the way it breathes as it listens or joins in a conversation, right down into the physical organism as the seat of the responding soul life, is the teacher's enthusiasm creating a specific atmosphere which the child feels. Here is the muscular system that brings life and movement to the skeleton. If I focus my attention upon this element of feeling then teaching really nourishes the child.
And what of the element of rhythm? We can continue our example. As teacher I introduce the theme. I create a mood as I bring facts to life. Listening prevails. Then I let the theme setde in the child. On the next day the children recall it. A conversation develops. In the ebb and flow of questions and contributions the mood evolves and the theme deepens. Next the elass does something: we choose colours to draw the human being in movement, or we choose clay to model the human form. On a third day we complete this task. We go on to formulate a written descnp-tion. And so the theme is experienced anew in different ways at different levels. A rhythmical process takes piace over a sequence of days, guided by the teacher.
We characterised the learning mode of the pre-school period as sus-tained throughout by the unconscious wisdom of the will. The aduit (as parent or 'teacher') stands before this and serves it with respect and ac-ceptance. In the lower (altalanos) school we can say that the 'dreaming' feeling sustains the learning mode. Now an intimate, respectful relation-ship between the aduit teacher and the child is essential. The teacher must respect the child's need to feel the aduit as authority. Learning about the world, evolving skills and faculties, now occurs most deeply through this relationship with the aduit. The realm of dream is the realm of mobile, stimulating images, of permeating moods and tones. This characterises the feeling mode. The teacher's responsibility is to lead the children as they grow up through the 8 years of lower school Hfe, helping them to mature their faculty of feeling through mamfold experiences, both receptive and active, and nurturing the gradual development of independent thinking, the later focus point in the soul that leads the child through adolescence into adulthood.
How does this bear upon the question of teaching a language? Firstly it is important to recognise that each child learns its mother language in the first (pre-school) phase of life: at the stage furthest away from aduit thinking consciousness. So extraordinary is the process of language acqui-sition and so crucial to human life that we can but offer thanks that it is not normally left to the later efforts of human teachers to develop it. It is rather the responsibility of whatever 'powers' work in the realm of the unconscious wisdom of the will. Or we can say it develops because each human child carries an innate gift or tendency to evoive language. Provided the human speech environment is there, it will develop in a normally healthy organism. Asparents we can try to make our speech environment worthy of imitation, a worthy stimulus to the child. The richness and variety, the honesty and goodness of the speech environment calls forth healthily the child's gift of language, and In the process moulds the child's \vhole organism. It is also helpful here to indicate the more recent directions taken by research into language development.
"Broad developments' in the psychology of language acquisition have focussed on its intimate connexion with sensory perception and bodily movement, its subjectively active nature, its reliance upon moods and emotions and other semi-conscious processes associated with orai com-munication."3
Here we can see how intimately the development of the mother language is bound up with those fundamental modes through which the young child participates In its environment, as characterised above.4
Of course, acquisition of the mother language is different from learn-ing a foreign language at a later stage In life, whether In childhood or adulthood. But nevertheless it is illuminating and pedagogically helpful to realise that the inborn faculty for language functions most effectively and profoundly within us when the willing and feeling levels of the responding soul predominate. Put another way (in terms of consciousness) sleeping and dreaming are important in learning to speak. The foreign language teaching in Waldorf schools tries to make use of these insights both in re-lation to why a foreign language is taught and how.
At this point I should like to insert a personal experience by way of emphasis, and to create a transition to the concrete issue of teaching English in a Waldorf school in Hungary. I moved to Hungary just over six years ago with my wife, and our (then) two small chudren (six and four and a half years old). After 3 years, and certain difficulties, we returned to England for a year. But we came back to help launch the Szabad Waldorf Iskola in Fot in September 1996. My wife teaches English and music in the school. I teach some woodwork and geometry (partly in English), and advise the other teachers. The most remarkable aspect of the last six years (and the most exhausting, for the adults especially) has been our total and unexpected immersion in the Hungarian language. This language has taken hold of us and changed us. But the process occurred quite differ-endy with us as adults than it did with our children. For us it meant strug-gling to become open and receptive to the language, to its music, structure and meaning. We had to trust both in our feeling for the language, and in the activity of speaking it, an activity rising from an unconscious level of the will, and highly energy intensive (hence exhausting). The greatest aduit hindrance was our aduit thinking intellect, that always wanted to under-stand first before doing. But we have had to feel and do Hungarian first rather than thmk it out. We had no time to study the language or take an introductory course. People are always extremely kind, even complimen-tary about our ability to speak the language. But though we have both reached a certain level — I know I have a definite yet semi-conscious feeling for sound harmony, for example — we know that we will not make further progress without properly studymg the language. We simply have to tackle it with our thinking as well.
By contrast our two children had a great advantage. They naturally felt the language and did (spoke) it. No-one can teli that they are not Hungarian when they speak it. They were immersed in the Ovoda at first with no-one to speak English to except each other. The next year they went their ways alone, as the older brother started elass I. Only gradually, as their thinking awareness developed did they begin to understand the language and even compare its structure a little with that of English. They were following the natural path of human development. They began to speak Hungarian in the early childhood mode of predominantly doing (willing) and feeling. Later they awakened to the language they had acquired with their thinking intellect. As a result our children have absorbed this new language far more deeply and naturally than we ever can as adults. Be we have also, by circumstances, been made to follow (albeit mcompetently) their childhood route, as adults.
Acquiring the mother tongue, or learmng a new language (as our family did) by total immersion at a later stage are not the same as learning a for-eign language in the essentially artificial environment of a school class-room. The artificiality is a major disadvantage. Yet the first two experi-ences of language can help focus our attention upon why and how we teach a foreign language in a Waldorf classroom. I have tried to make clear what a profound educational process occurs as the young child learns its mother tongue. It is hard to imagine a more significant learning event in a human life. Hereby the child acquires the faculty to articulate its humanity both Inwardly (as individuallsed soul) and outwardly (as a social being). The gift for language is primary and universal, as are the funda-mental laws' of human development. Yet each child learns its mother tongue. Language gives the child its humanity, but the mother language gives the child a Hungarian or English, or French or Japanese... soul.
The universal gift is individuallsed within a particular culture.
Maybe this seems too lofty, but it is true. And when we teach a foreign language we do well to realise the unique nature of the subject materiai. A foreign language bears a unique culture, it expresses a unique soul consti-tution. Something we all use virtually unconsciously to go about our daily life, to experience our individualised humanness, and to study any other subject, becomes a "subject for study" itself. (This of course, has a profound bearing upon the study of the mother language, too.) Conventionally the outstanding aim of foreign language teaching is pragmatic: to give pupils a sufficient command of the target language. This may also bring additional benefits; for example: an increased understanding of language structure and grammar; the emancipation of the pupils as they strive to articulate themselves with unfamiliar sounds; greater mobility In the use of the vocal organism; and at a later stage, the widening of literary and aesthetic appreciation. However, in the Waldorf school foreign language teaching has a different fundamental objective:
"to give pupils individual experience of the reality of language... This means that its essence is neither conceptual, nor literary, nor utilitarian, but sensory. It is not primarily in the business of sharpening cognitive ca-pacity, or of passing on traditional educational values, or of training com-munication skills. Ifit is good it will be effective in these areas too, but its raison d'etre is to deliver an untarnished, living experience of an essential area of sensory reality. On this basis, language teaching in a Waldorf school will ideally have certain definite features."5
Johannes Kiersch goes on to enumerate several of these characteristic features.
The children are given concrete experiences of the sounds that colour a particular language and the shapes its words take. In this way the children learn to use and trust their artistic sensibilities, which are active in their response to these concrete sensory elemen ts.
They learn to be quiet, to wait and listen attentively so that they may delight in the surpnses, the ambiguities and the 'strange turns' (characteristic peculiarities) of the foreign language.
They develop a tolerance of ambiguity and a faculty for imaginative guesswork.
The children learn to identify with the perceptions and feelings of others.
In conclusion he says:
"Thus ideally "speaking, Waldorf foreign language teaching is a schooling in empathy. It is "education for peace" (between peoples), which raises consciousness not through discussion but through improving tiiq Jaculty of perception."6
Such high ideals cannot be realised suddenly or fully! But these aims and ideals will help us to orientate ourselves as we consider quite con-cretely the content and methods of teaching, first and forernost In the younger classes (1-4). It will be obvious too that such aims piace consid-erable demands upon the teacher, whose task is to provide a rich, lively, stimulating "area of sensory reality". Hence the enormous advantage when the teacher of English speaks it, lives it and knows it as the mother tongue: when the teacher is right inside the "sensory reality".
But the effort required of the Hungarian born teachers to transform themselves into Englishness brings other educational benefits. The chil-dren will be stimulated by the very effort their teacher makes to enter more fully into this new "area of sensory reality". Another challenge is to form the teaching method so that it integrates naturally with the chud's phase of development. We meet aquite different stage of consciousness m elass l than in elass 4 or elass 6. The selection of materiai and types of activity, the methods of presentation must evoive with the children. So too will the balance between whole elass, smaller group, and individually based work. We are helped here if we recall the natural path of language development in the mother tongue. Firstly, acquisition and deepening of the spoken language at a stage when the levels of will and feeling pre-dominate. Secondly, at the start of school life, learning to write and to read. This takes piace precisely when the child is crossmg gradually over the threshold of school readiness. The child is passmg from a phase fo-cussed through the will mode to a phase focussed through the feeling. Thirdly, during classes 3 and 4, when a more inward awakemng into thoughtful, individual awareness occurs, we raise the mother language into thinking consciousness within a lively feeling mood. The focus upon grammar and stylistic aspects of language begins: the more conscious ex-ploration of how the language functions, how it can be understood, used and enjoyed.
This path helps us with the foreign language lessons. Our first task is to build up a rich store of inner expenences In the child through the spoken word, using especially the primary faculty of imitation, that still lives strongly in the child of classes l and 2. In what follows the English teacher at Fot describes the work in the first 2 classes.
In elass l and 2 the entire English lesson takes piace in a circle. Nor-mally the elass teachers participate alongside the children, even though they often do not speak English. Only occasionally do the children leave the circle and return to theii places to draw a picture at the end. The children and teacher recite or sing a series of rhymes and poems, songs and singing games. Sometimes the children repeat these after the teacher; when they are well-known they speak or sing them joyfully together. Each item is usually repeated 2 or 3 times, a bit louder or softer, faster or slower, or simply repeated to enjoy the funny bit at the end again. There is always movement; clapping, stamping, dancing round the circle or acting out the meaning. In each lesson there is aquieter part when the children kneel in the circle to recite finger rhymes and practise speaking individu-ally, passing aquestion and answer round the circle such as: "My name is What is your narne?" Sometimes they listen to a simple story with
rhythmic repetitions, told with puppets or pictures. The lesson normally ends with a ring game.
A characteristic lesson in Class 1.
The lesson begins with flute music by the teacher, after which the children stand up uietly in their desk places and then, taking hands, are led to form a circle at the back of the classroom, where there is a large, open space for movement.
1. Teacher: Good morning, Class 1
Class: Good morning, Rachel
2. Opening verse: On the earth I stand upright
The sun above by day gives light
The moon and stars by night
(Done with simple gestures and movement, this verse may remain the same over several years. It was introduced imaginatively with sun, moon and star crowns, which certain children wear each lesson.)
3. Song: Good morning golden sunshme...
(a morning song greeting the day)
4. Song and action rhyme:
We all clap hands together
We all stamp our feet together
We all walk round together
We all hop round together
We all skip round together
We all sit down together
We all nod our heads together
We all jump up together
We all tip toe round together
5. Parts of the Body:
This is my head, my head, my head
This is my nose, my nose, my nose.. .etc.
(This includes many more parts, and the children point to each part mentioned.)
Later the children will work in pairs:
This is my head...
This is your head... (indicating the partner's head)
The children often get a bit excited doing this, so the teacher moves uickly on to a litde verse with gestures:
Cheek chin, cheek chin, cheek chin, nose
Cheek chin, cheek chin, cheek chin, toes ... etc.
Then follows a song:
Heads, shoulder, knees and toes...
6. Clapping game in pairs:
Patacake, patacake, baker's man...
7. Ring game:
Here we go round the mulberry bush
8. All kneel quiedy for Finger games
Tommy thumb, Tommy thumb
Where are you?
Here I am, here I am
How do you do?
Two litde dickie birds
Sat upon a \vall...
1,2,3,4,5
Once I caught a fish alive...
5 little ducks went swimming one day...
9. Ali stand for a final ring game:
Look who is here Punchinello, little fellow...
10. Ali stand quietly to end the lesson with a goodbye song.
(Length of lesson: 30 minutes.)
A lesson in Class 2
Now the opening flute music is played by the teacher with some of the children playing too on their fiutes.
1. The children stand and, singing this song, they step out of their desk places to form a circle:
Falling leaves ful the morning air
Autumn comes walking down
Sunlight weaves in her golden hair
And flashes on her fiery crown
Yellow, orange, red and brown.
2. The teacher greets the children: "Good morning..." . Then follows the opening verse:
The earth is firm beneath my feet
The sun shines bright above
And here I stand
So straight and strong
Ali things to know and love.
3. Another autumn song, which the children act out:
Rosy red, rosy red, apples bright above my head
Hanging from the apple tree, I can see the one for me
Will it stay or will it fali? Wish I wasn't quite so small!
Will I have to wait until I'm taller? La la la la la...
4. Now follows a series of rhymes to do with Right and Left:
I have got 2 feet...
This is my right hand, I raise it in high
This is my left hand, I touch the sky } repeated several times
Right hand, left hand roll them round
Left hand, right hand, roll them round
Right hand, left hand, folded, not a sound!
Jack be nrmble, jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick
Song with Dance movements:
Here we go Looby Loo..
5. A song about boys and giiis
I'm a boy, I'm a boy, you're a girl!...
Now the children kneel in a circle
6. questions and answers are passed around the circle, each child asking a neighbour:
What's your name? My name is…….
I live in…..Where do you live?...
or statements are passed round:
I am a boy/girl. You are a girl/boy.
or the dialogue takes piace between teacher and elass as they repeat:
Yes I am! /nodding head vigorously/
No I'm not! /shaking head/
or the teacher asks children individually:
Are you a boy/girl?
and the child replies:
Yes I am/No I'm not!
7. Ali children stand for a final game:
Have you seen the Muffin Man?
(In this game, one child is blindfolded in the middle of the circle. After touching another chud m the circle at a special point in the song and movement, the blindfolded child must guess who the other is by his/her voice.)
8. Ali stand quietly for the final goodbye song.
Throughout Classes l and 2 the lesson materiai and form are repeated with only slight variations over a period of time. In this way a healthy, rhythmic routine is established, and new materiai is gradually introduced within a sustaining lesson form as older materiai is mastered. Sometimes for a series of lessons the uieter, individual speaking part will be reduced and the teacher will teli a story instead. This is told in English with the aid of puppets or pictures. As the children become familiar with it they are asked to join in the teliing. For example with the "Gingerbread Boy" story the teacher might say:
Once upon a time there was an old woman and an old……. ("man" call out the children), who lived together In a little……..("house"... ) etc.
At the repeated rhyme:
Run, run as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!
The children all join in. They also help with the puppets or with holding up pictures at the appropriate moments.
It will be clear irom these lesson descriptions that the teacher creates with the children an artistic 'sensory reality' in which the children partici-pate fully with enthusiasm. Movement, rhythm, song, sound and gesture all play a part. A balance is sought between activity and receptivity, be-tween group and individual engagement. The increasing complexity of the materia! in Class 2 is also apparent and the increasing challenge. We can see that many basic linguistic elements are introduced through a variety of mediums. Vocabulary is steadily extended and repeated m a variety of contexts (for example: parts of the body, natural phenomena, animals, etc.). Simple, yet fundamental grammatical structures are used and prac-tised:
I'm a boy. You're a girl
This is my hand. That is your hand
question forms and answer forms etc.
These are practised and absorbed, at this stage with no 'theoretical' comment. The teaching takes piace virtually entirely in the English lan-guage. A story engages the children directly, not via translation. And puppets or pictures help to ground this direct experience. The children are m-volved In creating and recreating the spoken story visually.
In classes 3 and 4 the lessons also usually begin in a circle and a certain amount of time is spent on rhythmic chanting or singing. Gradually as their vocabulary and understanding broadens more emphasis is placed upon the children's individual speaking and comprehension. By elass 4 the children are beginning to write and read m English so each lesson has a part when the children return to their desks for book work.
A lesson in Class 3
1. Flute introduction
Children come into circle places, singing a seasonal song.
Teacher greets the elass, who then recite the opening verse.
2. A song, which involves the children weaving their way around the circle shaking hands with each other in turn, singing:
Good day! Good day to you
Good day, oh dippy doo!
3. Rhyme spoken:
My hands upon my head I place,
On my shoulders, on my face...
(a rhytne that prepares for work on prepositions; other prepositions occur in the rhyme: over, behind, below, etc.)
4. Commands:
Clap your hands!
Stand on your right leg!
Turn right round!...
(all children listen intendy and immediately react whatever is said.)
5. A game of "Simon Says". This continues the command theme, and children drop out of the game as they make a mistake, and sit down.
When only a few remain standing the game ends.
6. Reciting of numbers and number work.
0-20 and backwards to 0.
in tens, 10—100 and backward to 10.
In hundreds, 100-1000 and back to 100.
Teacher asks: "How many is this?" She claps a certain number. The children listen, counting silenuy, and put up their hands to give the answer.
7. Days of the week are practised using the "patacake" rhyme learnt In class 2. After recalling this we go on to work on today, tomorrow, yesterday. The children recite after the teacher:
Today it is……
Tomorrow it will be……..
Yesterday it was………
(This theme involves the awareness of past, present and future tenses of the verb, "tobe".)
Now follows a concentration game in which the teacher calls out:
"Today" - and all children must stand still and say, "Today it is…….".
"Tomorrow" — and all must step one step forward and say,
"Tomorrow will be…………"
"Yesterday" — and all must step back and say, "Yesterday it was…….."
The teacher calls faster and faster the instruction, and in varying order, and as the children get it wrong they drop out of the concentration game. Then all kneel. The teacher says:
"What day is it today?"
The children put up their hands: "Today it is Monday."
The question will be repeated several times, and can be answered indi-vidually or in small groups.
Then follow the questions: "What day was it yesterday?"; "What day will it be tomorrow?" - and the children make individual responses.
8. Individual speaking exercise:
Each child speaks in turn around the circle, describing him or herself and his/her neighbour to either side.
"I am a boy/girl."
"You are a boy/girl."
"He/She is a boy/girl."
9.A game to fmish the lesson:
"Who is missing?"
The teacher asks:
"Who would like to go outside?"
"Who would like to choose someone?"
"Who would like to say, 'Come in please!'?"
(Children are chosen.)
One child goes out, one chud from the ckcle chooses one to hide un-der a large cloth in the centre, one child calls the first child to corne In again.
All say, "Who is missing?"
If he/she finds it hard to guess we help by saying:
"It is a boy/girl."
"He/she is tall/short/fat/thin..."
"He/she has long hair..." When the guess is correct, the game is repeated.
10. Ali stand to sing the goodbye song and end the lesson.
A lesson in Class 4
These lessons often, but not always, begin with work in a ckcle.
1. Greeting: "Good morning elass 4, how are you today?"
"Good morning Rachel, we are very well, thank you! And how are you?"
"I am very well thank you."
(This question answer sequence can of course be extended to include other themes, and it can be addressed to children individually.)
2. Opening verse:
The earth is firm beneath my feet...
3. Several songs, sung as rounds.
My paddles clean and bright...
Who will ferry me over the river?.. etc.
The children sing m groups and sometimes step the rhythm round the circle or clap/stamp the rhythm.
(This elass has recently grown from 14 to 20 children so a certain amount of revision has to be done to help the new ones to catch up.)
4. As revision, the days of the week, the months of the year, and the four seasons are all recited.
Each season has a short poem, for example:
Autumn: Scarlet and yellow and golden brown
Winds of October blow all the leaves down...
Winter: Sleet and snow and slippery roads
Icy wind and a freezing nose!...
These verses are recited with actions, first of all together, then in small groups, then individually.
5. Alphabetical song (as revision): sung several tirnes with one child pointing out the letters on the board as we sing.
Alphabet recitation in different rhythms: AB-CD-EF ABC-DEF-GHI... etc.
(First recited all together, then individually with each child saying one group.)
Alphabet game:
Cards, each with one letter of the alphabet, are distributed. The chil-dren stand in a circle with their card before them on the ground. The teacher spins a wooden plate on the centre and calls out a letter. The child with that letter must run to the centre and catch the plate before it stops spinning. The child then calls out the next letter.
6. Children return to their desk places. questions and answers are practised individually on various themes: days, weather, months, names, age, number of brothers or sisters etc...
7. English books (fuzetek) are taken out. We read together what we have written already. This comprises the days, months, seasons with their poems. We focus on one poem. We read it together. We tap its syllabic rhythm while we read it silently. The teacher then taps the rhythm and stops m the middle. "Which word have I got to?" This
can be repeated and the different answers sought.
The teacher may ask:
"Which is the 6* word?"
"Which is the l Oth word?"
"How do you spell that word?" etc.
8. A letter game to finish the lesson. A number of apples are drawn on the board. One child comes out to 'eat' them. A word is chosen from a poem in the book and the number of letters is indicated on the board, e.g.:_ _ _ _ _ _ . (The teacher chooses the word at first; later one of the children can do so.) The children in the elass try to guess the letters in the word. Each time a wrong letter is called an apple can be eaten (i.e.: rubbed off by the child at the board). The elass tries to guess the word before all the apples have been eaten. At first the children can use their books to remind them how words are spelt. Later they will work from memory.
9. End of lesson. Goodbye round is sung.
It will be clear that in classes 3 and 4 the range of vocabulary and materiai used broadens and deepens. It is now extremely rmportant that the children speak more individually, and the teacher can help to correct their punctuation and practise difficulties. A wealth of tongue twisters and speech exercises are available to help here. And the teacher can create new ones to meet specific needs. The emphasis in classes l and 2 was naturally upon the teacher leading by example and the children following through imitation. Now in classes 3 and 4 the emphasis must change. The teacher will certainly initiate the new work and guide the elass. But the children (whether m a group or individually) must be challenged to speak on their own. The aim must be that they become independently active. The faculty for independent work will also be stimulated by the conscious teachmg of grammar.
The study of grammar in the mother tongue begins in elass 3. The nature of the sentence, the parts of speech, the tenses of the verb (especially past, present and the future) are all covered in classes 3 and 4. With this basis established it is important to bring the same grammatical elements to the children In the English lessons. What was acquired direcdy and more unconsciously In the lowest classes (strengthened by accompanymg movements, gestures, rhythms, etc.) will now be raised to consciousness. We see here the movement from the willing-feeling pole to the feeling— thinking.
Now the developing thinking faculty' will be challenged. But grammar must be taught in a pictorial, lively way so that the child's feeling is en-gaged. The teacher will be active finding stimularing images and situations to bring the grammar elements to life. Once a particular element has been grasped and practised through various situations, then the rule can be ex-tracted and recorded. As far as possible the teaching should remain In English. When additional explanation is needed in the mother tongue this should function as helper to the foreign language, and not take over as die primary teaching medium and mood. Exercises to deepen understanding of particular aspects of grammar should be done orally and not just in written form. Grammar teaching will obviously provide a continuous thread throughout the next classes (5-8).
Another important element is the elass reader (introduced in Class 5— 6). This provides the opportumty for ongoing group work, and gives indi-vidual pupils the chance to make further progress on their own. Vocabu-lary range can be extended. Word for word translation is not important here, but children can be asked to make freer renditions from a part of the text into their own words in Hungarian. Difficult new words can be dis-cussed and illuminated beforehand in English. It is important to remem-ber that the children need the stimulus and challenge of grappling seri-ously with something unknown, and not just taking the quick, short cut via the dictionary. In this way the faculty for "imaginative guesswork", which J. Kiersch mentions, is developed.
Choral speech and song will continue to play an important part in sus-taining and developing the cultural reality of English in the older classes (5—8). Drama work also provides an invaluable challenge to the pupils. Here they can develop self confidence in sustaining roles and experiencing themselves within the foreign language creating characters and dramatic situations. The fruits of such artistic work, whether by the older or the younger classes, are regularly presented at festivals during the course of the school year.
My aim in this article has been twofold: to provide a picture of the work in progress at the Szabad Waldorf Iskola m Fot, and to underpin this with a discussion of the principles upon which this work is based. The school's English teaching programme is now in its 3ri year. What we have been trying to plant in the youngest classes will, we hope, gradually bear fruit in the middle and upper school. Unfortunately our present older classes have not had the benefit of the kind of work now In progress in classes 1—4. Therefore I have placed greater emphasis upon the work In classes 1—4 with some indications as to how we will develop the teaching into classes 5—8.
I would like to conclude with a brief picture from the life of our school. School communities are not just concerned with teachmg, and teaching is not of course the only mode of contact with a foreign laii-guage. We are developing our relationship with a Waldorf School in Eng-land and last sumrner this connection bore its.first real fruit. The English Class 8 arrived in our midst in June. The children stayed with different families of our school. So did their teachers. Suddenly English culture was human and real: different clothes, different haircuts. First tentative steps at comniumcation took piace - not easy between shy or embarrassed 13 and 14 year olds. The English pupils also came to work and delighted In knockmg down unwanted walls in our dilapidated building. But the high point was their Class 8 play - The Fiddler on the Roof - performed in English (of course) In the Muvelodesi Haz In Dunakeszi for the whole of our school coinmunity. This was the momeiit when two different cultures rnet each other across the language barner. This is the kind of meetmg that we aim for as we pursue our progranirne of E-nglish teaching in the Foti Szabad Waldorf Iskola.
Notes
1. Study of Man — Rudolf Steiner, Lecture 6.
2. The Value of Authonty In Educalion: A. Steiner Waldorf Perspective — Trevor Mephain Paldeia vol. 13.
3. Language 'Teaching in Waldorf Schools — J. Kiersch 1. p.
4. Inner Language and Outer Language — John Davy in Paldeia vol. 14. for a fuller and lascmating coiisideration of this theme.
5. Language Teaching in Waldorf Schools — J. Kiersch 22. p.
6. see J. Kiersch op. cit. p. 22.
Bibliography
1. Johannes Kiersch: Language Teaching in Rudolf Stainer Schools. Steiner Schools Fellowslup Publications, 1997.
2. Michael Scott: Foreign Liinguage Teaching In Rudolf Steiner Schools. Hawthorn Press, 1995.
3. Alec Templeton: Aus dem Englischeunterncht der Mittelstufe. Bund der Freieii Waldorf-
schulen, 1997.
4. StetnerEducalion: Language. Vol 30. No 2., Steiner Schools Fellowship, 1996.
5. David Holbrook: Childrens' Games. Gordon Fraser, 1957.
6. lona and Peter Opie: The Singing Game. Oxford University Press, 1988.
7. ThisLittle Puffin. Complled by Elizabeth Matterson, Puffm Books, 1969.
8. The Waldorf Song Book. Collected by Brien Masters, Floris Books 1987.
9. Paideia. A Research Journal for Waldorf Education Issue nos. 13, 14.
10. Study of Man: Rudolf Steiner. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1966.
11. Practical Advice to Teachers: Rudolf Steiner. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1976.
12. Rhymes, Rhythms, Games and Songsfor the Izomer School
13. Tongue Twisten and Speech Exercises
14. Riddles
15. Proverbs and Sayings
16. Poems for the Middle and Upper School
17. Playsfor the Ljoiver and Middle School
18. A Change in the Year. Pentatonic Songs by Peter Oram
12—18 are all obtainable from:
DRUCKtuell
Postfach 100222
D—70827 Gerlingen, Germany
Complete list of publications For Language Teachmg in Rudolf Steiner Waldorf Schools obtainable on request from DRUCKtuell.
The author is a teacher at the School called
Fóti Szabad Waldorf Iskola
The address of the school: 2151 Fót, Vörösmarty tér 2.
Phone: (27)358-022/219