The Essential Online Grade Five Conference
Contents
Welcome!
Here are the contents of the upcoming Online Grade Five Conference.
When you join the conference, the lecture titles become active links that take you to the audio and video content.
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Table of Contents
Lectures
1. The Fifth Grader
500: Introduction to the Conference
501a: The Four-Fold Human Being
How the physical, etheric, and astral bodies interact with the human being, and the role of the Ego in their integration. Child development as the interplay of body, soul, and spirit. [14:48]
501b: The Nature of the Fifth Grader 1
The Janus figure in Steiner’s colored glass window; accelerated physical development of today’s fifth grader; the forward and backward look a necessity for the teacher; etheric memories. [13:45]
To view the “Janus” figure to which the lectures refer, click here.
501c: The Nature of the Fifth Grader 2
Heartbeat and breathing; seeds of adult emotional life; the final contraction of the etheric body; the “Grecian” nature of the fifth grader. [18:42]
2. The Main Lesson Block
502: How to Prepare for Main Lesson blocks in Grade 5
8 to 1 Law; preparation is more than reading books; central importance of teacher’s relationship to the subject; “Magic File Box,” with eight grades of folders. [31:38]
The Grade Five Curriculum, Expanded
A flow chart showing in detail the myriad themes covered in separate blocks and their integrated relationship to one another.
Click here to download the chart.
3. Geography
503a: Why Teach Geography? 1
Misunderstood and under-utilized subject; encourages the child to say, “Yes” to incarnation; look back at Fourth Grade Local Geography, and the “Angel-eye” view of the world. [13:44]
503b: Why Teach Geography? 2
Fifth Grade Geography provides “Archangel-eye” view of the world; much wider perspective; building of social groups through archangelic forces. [11:53]
503c: Approaches to Geography
Regional poems, songs, and Tall Tales; America’s lack of a “classical period”; Tall Tales and their mythological antecedents; Pfeiffer’s approach to “The Earth’s Face and Human Destiny”; polarities of mountains and plains; focusing on an engaging “part” to teach the “whole”’ cultural geography. [23:44]
North American Geography: A Student Work Slideshow [9:20}
4. History
Visit our Grade Five History Timeline. View it in 2 or 3 dimensions.
504a: Why Teach History? 1
“Those who forget the lessons of the past . . . “ “Relevance” and the erasure of history [14:42]
504b: Why Teach History? 2
Human and Cosmic Memory; the unique configuration of etheric forces in the fifth grader; intimations of past lives and the possibility of bringing old karma to closure. [9:54]
504c: Why Teach History? 3
Steiner’s description of “young souls,” and their interaction with “old souls”; for the latter, history is a reminder, for the former an introduction. [17:34]
505a: What to Teach in History 1
The Cultural Epochs; the stark contrast between Steiner’s “Occult History” and conventional history; Waldorf approach is somewhere in between. The first and second Post-Atlantean cultural epochs. [16:25]
505b: What to Teach in History 2
The third and fourth cultural epochs are the beginning of “history;” before that time humanity did not need to symbolize or embody the divine world; Norse mythology is “younger,” while the fifth grader needs the stronger “memory culture” of the Ancient Cultures. [15:26]
505c: What to Teach in History 3
Archetypes in all mythologies; triads in time and hierarchy; the ascent of the human being; myths as initiation pictures; the importance of reverence on the part of the teacher during the Ancient Culture blocks; cultivating “the mood of the myth.” [9:19]
5. Ancient Cultures: India to Egypt
506a: Ancient India 1
The triune gods as a picture of thinking, feeling, and willing; Vishnu’s Avatars; the epics: Krishna and Rama; Mahabharata and Ramayana; gods and human love; reincarnation and karma; the caste system. [24:31]
506b: Ancient India 2
Indian geography and landscape; the outbreathing experience of Indian culture; children’s growing self-reliance reflected in the quantity and quality of their main lesson book content. [15:55]
507: Ancient Persia
Turanians and Aryans; Agri-Manu and Ahura-Mazdao; the life and achievements of Zarathustra; the end of nomadic times and the beginnings of agriculture. [16:09]
508a: Mesopotamia and Assyria
Star science and the mercantile impulse; trade compensates for poor resources; navigation and astrology; Gilgamesh and city culture; the first epic written from an earthly standpoint; the loss of clairvoyance and the threshold of Death; the origin of materialism.
Ancient Cultures Part 1: A Slideshow of Student Work [42:50]
508b: Ancient Egypt 1
The enigma of Egypt; Sphinx and Pyramids, “concepts” given architectural form; the centrality of Isis, Osiris, and Set in Egyptian life; the Priest-King, now the only human who can directly enter into the spiritual world; cosmetics and spiritual sight. [24:17]
508c: Ancient Egypt 2
The age in which we live as a reflection of the Ancient Egyptian epoch; though dedicated to the afterlife, Egyptians lived lives of grace and elegance; bringing architecture, painting, and engineering to the class; the cultural crosscurrents of India, Persia, and Egypt are still of central economic and political importance in our time. [22:59]
Ancient Cultures Part 2: A Slideshow of Student Work [33:00]
6. Ancient Cultures: Greece
509a: Ancient Greece 1
An approach to Greece; begin with Greek myths very early in the year; narrating both the Iliad and the Odyssey in the winter, long before the Greek block; will students be confused? The literary and cultural centrality of Greece. [12:43]
509b: Ancient Greece 2
The Illiad and the Odyssey; the transition between sentient and “mind” soul endowments; Achilles and Odysseus; the strange link between party invitations and cosmic battles. [16:17]
509c: Ancient Greece 3
The diminishing role of the gods in the Iliad; the withdrawal of the gods from the battlefield, an epochal event described Homer; Hector’s farewell, the first depiction of family love, at once tragic and lighthearted. [12:36]
509d: Ancient Greece 4
The Odyssey, named after an individual rather than a battle or a place; a story of ancient initiation; the “Poem of Force” gives way to the “Poem of Thought.” Might and power give way to cleverness and foresight; Odysseus sees the gods but fleetingly, and only realizes it later; he takes on many “persona” before he is able to find his true nature in Ithaka. [14:33]
509e: Ancient Greece 5
Teaching a one-week block about Ancient Greece; finding the whole in any one of the parts, e.g., the Parthenon; study its columns and pediment, its statuary and its purposes; its relationship to Egyptian architecture; all of Greek life can be derived from such a building; a look at Greek dramatists or philosophers can also serve this purpose. [16:59]
509f: Ancient Greece 6
Teaching a two-week block about Ancient Greece; a block for a class with many boys: “War and Peace in Ancient Greece”; the two Persian Wars, and the role played by Sparta and Athens; Themistocles, the trireme, and the birth of military strategy; the rebirth of Athens; the Peloponnesian Wars, and the end of the Golden Age; the life and conquests of Alexander the Great. [17:09]
509g: Ancient Greece 7
Teaching a three-week block about Ancient Greece; recapitulation of the gods and goddesses; Athens and Sparta; the Persian Wars; a closer look at Athenian culture, particularly sculpture; the pre-Socratic philosophers; Thales and Pythagoras; Socrates and Plato; Aristotle and Alexander the Great; Alexander’s travels through the cultural epochs. [24:51]
Ancient Cultures Part 3: A Slideshow of Student Work [43:50]
View excerpts from a performance of the Fifth Grade Class Play, “Themistocles,” Part One.
9. Language Arts
510a: Language Arts 1
The “golden age of writing”; most of the girls grow confident and capable in writing skills, while boys need help; composition linked to the development of etheric memory forces; the “essential” and the “non-essential”; assign fewer, but better compositions; creating the rough draft in the classroom; corrections as grammar lessons. [25:24]
510b: Language Arts 2
Creating anthologies of students’ written work as an antidote to “reports”; importance of communicating your approach to Language Arts to colleagues and to parents; many schools give teachers little leeway in the way in which writing is taught; example of a Grade Five “Writing Test” from the Rudolf Steiner School in NYC; how can children’s love of expressiveness and joy in writing be supported and strengthened? [19:21]
510c: Language Arts 3
Recitation, speech in class plays, and everyday discourse; Fifth Grade Grammar; “learning through usage” is key; the Class Teacher as a model of good grammar (and spelling!); teaching poetic recitation in Grade Five; working with the Class Play as a division of Language Arts. [27:58]
510d: Language Arts 4
Necessity of frequent review of earlier grades; a “to-do list” of Language Arts topics to review and solidify; should Language Arts be taught by a specialty teacher in the middle and upper grades?Active and passive voices; direct and indirect quotations; how grammar meets the psychological experiences of the Fifth Grade child; helping your students connect to the Word. [31:04]
8. Mathematics
511: Fifth Grade Mathematics
An hour-long lecture given at a teachers’ conference in Mancos, CO. Importance of constant review; mastery of whole-number fractions a prerequisite for decimal fractions; money and baseball; working with children who struggle with math; Saturday classes. [1:05:37]
9. Botany
512a: Why Teach Botany 1
The outer revelation of the etheric world; the fifth grader’s etheric body sympathetically resonates with the plant; the etheric body is the physical body upside down and inside out, and these images can help us teach Botany in a living way. [13:29]
512b: Why Teach Botany 2
Importance of linking the plant to the landscape and then to the earth; Geography and Botany; gain familiarity with local plants, their names and “gestures”; children can grasp some concepts and typologies, e.g. forest, tundra, desert or root, leaf, flower, or fungus, algae, grass; complementary links of plants and insects; photosynthesis, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. [15:17]
512c: Botany Lessons 1
The counterintuitive approach with which the block begins, starting with the most “evolved” plants rather than working from below up; metamorphosis, an often-neglected principle that characterized the work of Goethe and Steiner; the “helix” of plant growth; contraction and expansion; monocotyledons and dicotyledons; the mountain as a plant writ large. [19:06]
512d: Botany Lessons 2
The role of the tree in the Earth’s household; the progression from less-evolved to more-evolved plants seen as parallel to a human life; the interplay of insects and plants; ants, bees, butterflies, and silkworms. [16:46]
Botany: A Slideshow of Student Work [19:20]
10. Homework, Reports, Tests
519a: Homework, Reports, Tests Overview
The power of tradition in the Waldorf school; need for clarity – how does a tradition begin? How economic factors trump pedagogy in private and public schools alike; “You’re gonna have to serve somebody . . . “ [19:57]
519b: Homework
Need for economy and efficiency in main lesson time; after school, do children need time to digest content, or to eat more? Who decided that Waldorf students needed homework at an ever-younger age? “Interactive” homework as a compromise solution. [16:51]
519c: Reports
Where did “reports” originate? No pedagogical basis, but plenty of public school precedents; patchwork of blocks that include reports for no special reason, while others do not; openness to the world vs. critical thinking; parental pressure and the need to educate parents. [17:35]
519d: Testing
Another public school solution to a deeply pedagogical problem; private Waldorf schools claim to eschew testing, but many test at least as often as charter Waldorf schools; the teacher who needs to test her class doesn’t know how to observe children carefully; testing as regurgitation. [22:43]
11. Working with Parents
520a: Parent Work 1
Teacher survival, spiritual responsibility, and self-development – three reasons for working hard with parents. Why bad things happen to good teachers. [17:19]
520b: Parent Work 2
The Waldorf School as a Mystery Center; need for transparency concerning Anthroposophy. Parents are also on a path. The change in the child’s karmic relationship to the teacher. New and improved shortcuts to getting fired. [24:49]
520c: Parent Work 3
Practical advice to enhance parent-teacher communication; making parent evenings worthwhile; writing reports that parents actually want to read. [29:25]
520d: Parent Work 4
Parent conferences; the need to compare a child’s work to her peers’ work; importance of frankness in face-to-face meetings, as well as a written record. [15:57]
520e: Parent Work 5
Parent evenings: how to get parents to attend in the upper grades; respecting beginnings and endings; should parent evenings be compulsory? Meetings must teach parents something new about their child; structuring the meeting; humor; winning over the fathers; the teacher’s “dress code”; avoiding making meetings “class business” only. [28:45]
12. Our Colleagues, Our Selves
521a: Colleagueship 1
Note: We suggest that you invite your spouse to join you as you listen to these lectures.
Rights, Associative, Competitive - Steiner’s Threefold Social Order and the Waldorf school; the Karma of Colleagueship. [39:16]
521b: Colleagueship 2
Faculty Chairs and Administrators; It’s Only Money. [21:16]
521c: Self-Development 1
The Waldorf School as a Mystery Center; Class Teaching as an Initiation path. [13:10]
521d: Self-Development 2
The “Pedagogical Law.” [24:07]
Click here for Links to Resources
Slideshows of Student Work
To view these slideshows click on their link.
Your password for all of the video presentations is “5online”.
Natural Science: Botany
Ancient Cultures: India to Mesopotamia & Assyria
Ancient Cultures: Egypt
Ancient Cultures: Greece
Geography: North America
Instructional Video
Grade Five Painting
Supplementary Lectures
If you wish to go more deeply into some of the themes addressed in the Grade Five lectures, we invite you to listen to some lectures given by Eugene Schwartz in his course, Rudolf Steiner: The Man, The Age, The Path.
Evolution of the Earth and Humanity
Rudolf Steiner’s penetration of the concept of evolution lays the foundation for his teachings about history, Christology, and the genesis of evil. His metamorphosis of the evolutionary picture presented by Darwin and Ernst Haeckel led Steiner to a unique formulation of the way in which species, humanity, and the earth itself undergo ceaseless development and progress.
SC35 Introduction to Steiner’s Evolutionary Picture [13:32]
SC36 Perfection and Change; Saturn and Sun Evolution [23:22]
SC37 Light and Darkness [12:49]
SC38 Moon Evolution; Angels and Dragons [15:24]
SC39 Earth Evolution; Hindrance and Evil [18:57]
SC40 Densification, Lucifer & Ahriman [18:42]
SC41 Lemuria and Atlantis [29:28]
SC42 Darwin, Haeckel, Ontogeny & Phylogeny [14:24]
SC43 The Cultural Epochs [23:23]
SC44 Ancient Initiation Rites [29:46]
SC45 The Mission of the Israelites [23:10]
SC46 The Christ Principle in Evolution, part 1 [29:13]
SC47 The Christ Principle in Evolution, part 2 [33:26]
The Spiritual Hierarchies
Although the Hierarchies are a mainstay of Christian theology and iconography, Steiner spoke of them as active in all world religions. His expansive picture of the activities of the hierarchical beings portrays their intimate and dynamic relationship to human life and evolution.
SC10 The Third Hierarchy – The Angels, part 1 [16:17]
SC11 The Third Hierarchy – The Angels, part 2 [15:47]
SC12 The Third Hierarchy – Archangels & Archai [15:01]
SC13 The Second Hierarchy – Spirits of Form, Movement, & Wisdom [18:28]
SC14 The First Hierarchy – Thrones, Cherubim, & Seraphim, part 1 [17:21]
SC15 The First Hierarchy, part 2 [14:11]
SC16 The First Hierarchy, part 3 [15:06]