The Lower School

Child development and leitmotif for this class

One of the main characteristics of children between the seventh and ninth year [age 6-8] is their desire to learn, without any need to form their own judgements. Memory, imagination, enjoyment of rhythmical repetition and a desire for universal concepts presented in pictorial form, come to the fore at this stage. Children actively seek guidance from the adult world and whilst they continue to imitate what they experience, their behaviour is modelled on how the significant others and in school the teachers are. Children start observing those around them for signs of how to be. They look to the teachers for guidance in all aspects of being in school and learning. Gesture is a powerful means of gaining their attention, words have to be generate images in the minds of the children and the way the teachers act in all things great and small shows children how things can be in ways that foster well-being, social awareness and moral authority. 

A child’s inner question to the teacher is: ‘do you see me?’ , “do I belong here?’, ‘can I participate?’ and ‘Can you help me encounter the world?’. These basic questions direct the teacher’s position and relationship in regard to the child. These are answered in and through the lessons which aim to let the children actually experience the world, and teach them the basic cultural and social techniques they need to engage with others and the world.  The teacher who succeeds in meeting these expectations of the children will be accepted by them as an authority.

Children in Class 2 are alert, active, energetic learners and need to be provided with opportunities to stretch their abilities in a healthy way as much as possible. Their energies need channeling into structured and meaningful activities and they need to establish a skills base in social and work life in school. Their prime developmental task is to learn the rules of a healthy social life and a caring way of relating to the world around us. They need strong moral exemplars, both among the teachers and indirectly through story material that includes figures whose spirituality is still embedded in nature rather than urban society. The pictorial, linguistic and form elements be cultivated through the teaching to support the children’s need to act increasingly out of inner images, rather than external instruction, though this is, of course, still needed. This means that many tasks need to be embedded in a classroom (also outdoor classroom) culture in which things have their natural time and place, letters and numbers and forms have their application and that the children can increasingly apply these because they have learned how to use them. Instruction is still a strong element but balanced by frequent phases of applying, exploring and practicing. By this age children should be used to periods of group and even individual work in which the teacher is a point of reference and support. Metaphorically the children are more ‘hunter-gatherers’, rather than sedentary farmers, which means they have to have many learning opportunities to explore the world around them and be guided to become aware of the inherent qualities in their natural and cultural environment and this can be expressed through personification (e.g. personifying natural phenomena, regular seasonal activities, days of the week having specific tasks, caring tasks and responsibilities in classroom and school house/grounds). This age group often require strong group activities with a clear focus and a wide range of challenges. The teacher requires energy and presence to meet this. 

In the flow of nature, we follow archetypal human pathways and song lines that weave us into the world’s fabric. The writing flows, the reading is internalised, the numbers go up and down, fingers and feet adept  - busy work for hungry children.

Narrative Themes
Legends and stories of admirable people and noble deeds. Fables. Nature stories. Class library of appropriate graded readers and stories. Traditional-type stories and folk tales retold at an appropriate level. Verbal book reports.

Musical Themes
Qualities:

• Pentatonic, Aeolian or Dorian modes.
• More rhythmic, some changes of tempo.
• Call and response, small and large groups in turn.

Topics: seasonal and nature, counting rhymes, times tables, significant people, fables.

Artistic Themes
Simple representations of animals and people, side and front profiles, addition of details Painting atmospheres, and controlling colours and mixing
Materials: wax sticks and blocks, thick (Lyra) pencils, coloured chalks, watercolour paints (warm and cool primary colours), beeswax/organic plasticine/clay

Physical Themes
How to be in the body in ways that free up the mind to engage with new complexities and abstractions. body geography, throwing and catching, skipping, string games, coordinating hands and eyes.

Child development and leitmotif for this class

In Class Three the developmental tasks are to learn to work with others, recognising that this requires cooperation, team work, rules, roles and tools. The teaching and curriculum content should provide a balance of subjectivity and objectivity as children learn that meeting basic human needs requires people to pull together and support each other in order to harness nature and her resources. This is balanced with the need to maintain a careful stewardship of nature. 

The psychological and social challenge of the developmental process Steiner called the  ‘Rubicon’ requires individuals to enter a new relationship to self and community that is no longer based on uncritical family acceptance and blood ties. The metaphor behind the notion of Rubicon is that of a transition from one state to a radically different one and crisis in the sense of an opportunity for fundamental change. This can be a painful experience of a loss of inner security and identification as children turn the question of purpose and identification towards the community and the natural world, though does not have to be experienced in a negative way. They discover that human cooperation is the basis for a new sense of security and structure through cultural rules (measurement, syntax) and co-dependences, and the meeting of mutual needs as a basis for future economic thinking.

This means that new teaching methods and relationships are called for. Many children at this age experience an emergent insecurity regarding the relationships between self and other and this often expresses itself as a demand for certainty and also for boundaries. This can be met by showing the children that human societies have rules and that the relationships between people and the divine world can be regulated and that people have responsibilities for each other and for the stewardship of the creation. In mythical terms, the loss of paradise is a call to work, to work together to make it work. Rules are experienced as natural laws or divine gifts.  

Between the ages of nine and twelve, rhythmical memory is at its strongest. The teaching method should draw on the child’s natural interest in the world and structure the content rhythmically. Key themes include origins of human communities, building  and caring for homes, farming and animal husbandry, basic structure of sentences (nouns, verbs, adverbs etc.), units of measurement based on the human being.

Narrative Themes
Archetypal practical life and living. Stories from the Abrahamic tradition.

Musical Themes
Qualities:

• Heptatonic, modal, or major key.
• More rhythmic variation.
• Songs in compound time.
• Songs which can also be played on pipe/recorder.
• Rounds IF THEY ARE READY – ie if they can hold melody, pitch 5th.

Topics: Seasonal and farming. Songs for rhythmic activities. Songs with different moods for a variety of activities.

Artistic Themes
Beginnings of perspective (foreground/background), diagrammatic elements, Painting – forms emerging from colour.
Materials: wax sticks and blocks, thick (Lyra) pencils, coloured chalks, watercolour paints, beeswax/organic plasticine/clay.

Physical Themes
How to be in the body in ways that free up the mind to engage with new complexities and abstractions. body geography, throwing and catching, skipping, string games, coordinating hands and eyes.

Child development and leitmotif for this class

In Class Four children are still very much in childhood though the signs of major change appear here and there. The forces of an autonomous inner life are beginning to emerge in individualised ways, manifesting as embodied emotional energy and the ability to imagine other worlds. This can be both disorientating and uplifting. Children begin to experience the need to regulate and shape their own relationships and follow their own interests. They respond with great interest to narrative accounts of a wide range of psychological types and the complexity of their relationships, for example in legends and myths. Friendship becomes more personal and exclusive. Their new-found depth of emotion needs and seeks a new relationship to the natural and cultural environment that involves their active participation, alone and with others in the fields of sport, music, nature, art and technology- especially digital technologies. The journey becomes a quest with companions. Key themes include relating the parts to the whole and dealing with the relationships between the parts (e.g. in fractions, in sentence structures, in the range of different animal types, singing in canon), exploring the locality, making and using maps,

Puberty
Physical puberty begins today for girls on average around the age of 12 and spans classes 5, 6 and 7. This process changes into adolescence. The physical processes of puberty have long since changed the young person’s relationship to their body, in particular in the growth of muscles and bones. The fact of this growth means that their bodies feel significantly heavier and sometime clumsy. Their relationship to their body changes correspondingly and they become much more conscious of what power their body has both in terms of physical strength but also in terms of its psychological effect on self and others. Our culture places a strong emphasis on the body, its appearance, its fitness, how we use it to express our gender identities and social roles. This presents young people with a major set of challenges related to adapting their sense of self to their perceptions of their body, others’ bodies and how other see them. Thus they are often preoccupied with the identity work of adapting, being accepted, relating, which can manifest in a wide range of challenges from eating disorders, sexuality, lifestyle issues, etc.

Narrative Themes
Stories of heroes/heroines
Legends of heroes from different cultures

Musical Themes
Qualities:

• Major key, major and minor modes.
• Contrast between songs in simple and compound timing.
• Lots of rounds, and work songs.
• Very simple splitting of parts.
• Songs that can be accompanied by pipes/recorders.

Topics: Seasonal and local traditions. Songs of local history/geography. Songs of the earth.

Artistic Themes
Illustration, pencil work,
Painting – developing an eye for composition, forms representing an inner impulse,
Materials: wax sticks and blocks, coloured pencils, coloured chalks, watercolour paints, beeswax/organic plasticine/clay, Caran d’ache pencils

Physical Themes
How to be in the body in ways that free up the mind to engage with new complexities and abstractions. body geography, throwing and catching, skipping, string games, coordinating hands and eyes.

Child development and leitmotif for this class

There is much evidence that the earlier onset of puberty leads to significant changes in the child’s relationship to self and body, self and others and self and world. Thus the developmental themes and task for classes 4, 5 and 6 have to be taken as an overlapping continuum. This means that children are in a transition from childhood to puberty, though this is very individual and girls tend to enter puberty before the boys. Some children are still very harmonious and fluid in their movements while others experience changes in their bodies. Many children are often strong willed, self-reliant and creative at this age and their intellect is emerging in ways that enable them to begin to understand more abstract concepts, such as time and space.

Physically they are individually in an optimum state of development (i.e. within their individual limitations), and they therefore need opportunities to explore and practice their agility, freedom of movement, skill and applied intelligence. 

They should have opportunities to expand their imaginative thinking in a range of spatial and temporal dimensions and their transformations, extend their powers of speech, recitation and dialogue through practice, experience how different cultures express their relationship to spirit and the natural and how the person relates to society, as well as archetypal narratives of individual quests. At this age children’s focus of attention and attachment begins to shift from teachers to peers and friendships assume greater significance. This brings significant changes in the social and communicative processes the child is embedded in,  which can also mean that children can be vulnerable if such relationships are broken or denied and the risk of marginalisation becomes greater.

Key themes at this age include the transition to abstraction in geometry, complex form drawing, expressive art that does not try to copy nature but give expression to essential qualities, the expressive possibilities of language in poetry and description, other cultures through their myths and pre-modern culture and the transition from myth to history, the world of plants and how they relate to their environments.

Narrative Themes
Multicultural mythology

Musical Themes
Qualities:

• Major key, major and minor modes, some pentatonic (eg Scots)
• Songs for dancing, songs that carry a strong mood.
• Any simple timing or compound timing including compound triple.
• Rhythms for walking, running, skipping.
• Two part songs and more challenging rounds, solo lines

Topics: Songs from all around British Isles. Songs for traditions of these islands. Songs for M/L on India, Persia, Ancient Greece. Songs for class play. Songs about plants/animals.

Artistic Themes
Integrating illustration and text, detailed and accurate drawing, beginning shadows
Painting – layering, receding landscapes
Modelling human figures
Materials: coloured pencils, coloured chalks, watercolour paints, clay, Caran d’ache pencils

Physical Themes
How to be in the body in ways that free up the mind to engage with new complexities and abstractions. body geography, throwing and catching, skipping, string games, coordinating hands and eyes.

Child development and leitmotif for this class

Puberty brings many changes the young person’s relationship to her body, to other people and to the world, most of which are liberating and unproblematical. At this age youngsters can be highly capable, fun, lively, loud, curious, imaginative, brave and in a way both ‘grown-up’ and yet unburdened by the world’s problems. Physical growth and body change in endless individual variation is the norm, with girls usually being ahead of the boys in this respect. The children are physically stronger and can apply this to real bodily work in the garden or crafts or moving furniture. Their intellect is usually fully awakened, which makes them capable of thinking causally and logically, as well as seeing fault and weaknesses in logic. This capacity is often not matched by self-awareness and this can be socially poisonous. Their intelligence needs to be applied meaningfully to practical problem solving, conceptual tasks, and understanding cause and effect in the material and cultural worlds.

In contrast to their outer behaviour quite a few young people also begin to develop private and intimate experiences through close relationships, diary writing, hobbies (involving relationships with animals). Students need age and developmentally appropriate tasks- they are no longer children- particularly in all technical fields ranging from tool use, to science and the techniques of literacy. They also need to learn social ‘techniques’ such as non-violent communication, conflict avoidance and resolution, health and well-being issues (e.g. food, body care, sexuality). The acceleration of puberty combined with models of sexuality in the media and access to social and digital media can be problematic when their use is not accompanied by understanding. Meeting the varied needs of a group of class 6 students is a considerable challenge best met by a team of teachers.

Key themes include physical work (e.g. digging and wood cutting in gardening and outdoor curriculum), use of tools and the history of technology (e.g. ship building, road building, building large structures like temples and bridges), historical intercultural exchange and trade (e.g. Silk Roads and global Middle Ages) and urban and non-urban empires, equations and formula and applying these to solving problems, using different text types (tools for the job), making accurate observations in science and applying these in art (e.g. shadows and optical phenomena), plants and animals in their environments, geology and shapes of landscapes and their relationship to human activity (e.g. agriculture, mining, transport).

Child development and leitmotif for this class

In Class 7, new levels of sensitivity, empathy, and identification can open young people to others and to the world. They can respond to social injustice in the present and past with deeply felt concern.

In this class a major theme is meeting the other, finding commonality in difference and discovering that people can find solutions together based on empirical evidence combined with imagination. In order to be able to do this they have to direct their gaze and attention to details in the world, away from their own emotional responses. One very rich field of life experience is the outdoor world of nature and activities such as hiking, climbing, bivouacking, that involve extremes of effort, technical skills, companionship as well as more reflective activities such as tracking and bird watching that bring the students into close encounters with nature. Teachers are required who can be role models of cooperation with good listening skills and sensitivity, self-humour and honesty who mediate the feeling, life is complex and sometimes bad, but together we can make a difference.

Key themes include the clash of cultures through European colonisation and biographical consequences for people around the world, creative writing is an important outlet for personal expression that also has the explicit aim of reaching others, chemical processes mirror alchemical/psychological processes, economic geography shows how the world of trade works and the forms of justice and injustice that accompany these processes, making shoes and clothes blends aesthetics, practical needs and skills and understanding of economic processes, and questions of nutrition.

Child development and leitmotif for this class

In Class 8 the pupils can justifiably celebrate the culmination of a life phase and anticipate the transition into the high school. This is year of projects, individual and collective that in a sense sum up all that has been learned and developed so far. As in the previous class, students need to engage with the world, and particularly the social world, with practical environmental or social projects that do good. The emphasis is doing something well that is of value to other people and the world, as well as showing the skills have been acquired- it is less a celebration of self and more a celebration of what is good in human society and culture. This is the true source of deep personal satisfaction and fulfilment and is particularly important in an egotistical world of celebrity. The focus in the classroom is on the world as it is today in all its political, economic, scientific and cultural complexity and conflicts- the 20th and 21st Centuries are the main theme.  The balance between collective and individual qualities is important; the universal human (e.g. anatomy) and the unique biography. Class 8 needs a team of teachers who can respond to the wide range of challenges and accompany the many projects, including facilitating a review in depth of the past 8 years.

Key themes include individual and collective projects, modern history to the present from a biographical perspective, the electrical technology that is basic to our modern society, questions related to the chemistry of foodstuffs and household products- topics which have a strong connection to everyday practical realities.