WaldorfOnline

4.1: The nature of the Fourth Grader. A conversation with the buildings and grounds/maintenance person in the school. Constructive and destructive forces in the fourth-grade child. A new level of energy. The Fourth Grade class as the barometer of the school. For the first three grades children are at the receiving end of the teachers capacities. In Fourth Grade, they begin to give back and reflect what the teacher has given. Odd and even-numbered grades. The unique placement of Grade Four in Steiner's original seven year plan. [15:10]

4.2: The necessity of understanding the fourfold nature of the child. Childhood illnesses: why would they come so often in the third and fourth grade years? The 9 to 10 year change-it's not over yet! Working out of Rudolf Steiner's picture of the human being at a time when the physical body is seen as the be-all and end-all of human existence. Waldorf education is more and more removed from the educational mainstream with every succeeding year. Pointing to changes in the brain as a means of justifying Waldorf education cannot really take us very far; we need to penetrate the fourfold human being. [14:30]

The Fourfold Human Being:
A Dynamic Diagram [5:45]

4.3: The interplay of the etheric body and the astral body. Forces of health and well-being versus forces of destruction and illness. It is not a matter of having one overcome the other, but finding the healthy balance and harmonization of these polarized forces. The four to one proportion of heartbeat to breath is a sign that a degree of harmony has been attained. Dreaming consciousness as the balance between etheric sleep and astral wakefulness. [15:10]

4.4: From temperament to personality. The temperament manifests in a fourfold way, but the astral body manifests in a twofold way. The blending of a etheric and astral forces results in an eightfold division in the classroom. Now every temperament has its introverted and extroverted side. In the midst of this greater complexity a more mature social life is born in the class. The problems of cliques and the severance of once secure, now broken friendships loom large in the fourth grade. [15:50]

4.5: Future Shock 1: The premature primacy of the astral body in the life of the fourth-grader. The intentions of the higher spiritual beings who created us were that we would remain like automatons for the first 35 years of our life. The astral body was meant to be incorporated much later than it is in our time. This is an important aspect of the 10-year-old. [16:30]

4.6: Future Shock 2: The higher spiritual beings had to accept the rule of Lucifer in the first half of Earth evolution. Along with this came Lucifer's intervention in human development at the time of the Fall of Man. We are not constituted to be able to handle the power and speed of the astral body at age 10, yet this arrangement in the spiritual world necessitated the coming of the astral body at this time. The astral body is quintessentially social in nature, so good deal of our work in grade four is teaching children how to be social beings. The challenge of social media and computer games. [16:45]

4.7: Future Shock 3: Lucifer and Ahriman. Both have their place in Earth evolution. Lucifer opened up the early incorporation of the astral body: in our time Ahriman is able to work on this body as well. Children not only need to learn how to be social in one another's presence, but how to be social via technological means as well. Waldorf schools don't necessarily want to accept this, but it is a growing necessity of our time. [16:35]

4.8: Future Shock 4: The child's future is streaming towards him or her in grade four. This is a good year in which to honor and celebrate something more mature that will flash up now and then. Drama can be very helpful here. This is the year when a big and spectacular class play is a necessity. It is also good if you can create shorter plays drawn from material in main lesson blocks that are performed every two months or so. Ask your colleagues to be forbearing, because fourth-graders need to appear in public more often than other grades. This grade is like a Boot Camp for you, the teacher, in learning how to deal with the more complex social needs of the astral body. [15:10]

The Nine/Ten-Year Change:
A Dynamic Diagram [5:20]

4.9: Working with Parents 1. Grade Four is the year in which you get a better sense of which families constitute the core of your class. Just as braided drawing only gets challenging when we bring in a third strand, the "third strand" of the parents becomes an important part of the weaving of the teacher with the children. Many concerns, doubts, and uncertainties that have remained quiet within the parents in the first three grades begin to become outwardly expressed in grade four; in this respect it is a real fulcrum. [14:55]
4.10: Working with Parents 2. The “back to school parents morning.” This is an important way to inform all of your parents, all at once, altogether about what year will look like. Organize it like an evening meeting but give yourself more time to develop everything. Be very clear with your parents about the necessity of their presents at parent evenings and other events.[14:50]
4.11: Working with Parents 3. The Parents’ Evening. Give parents advanced notice about the evenings agenda and give them a clear schedule of the evening, so they know exactly when it will begin and precisely when it will end. The structure can be basically the same as the Saturday welcoming meeting that I spoke of in the previous lecture. The biggest warning: watch out for the tyranny of parents who want to make announcements. Find ways for them to announce things by paper, email, anything but the parent evening. And be wary of the tyranny of the parent who asks an important question at the very end of the meeting. Advice on how to work with this. [16:50]
4.12: Working with Parents 4. Parent conferences. In fourth grade is especially important that we meet twice with individual families: once in the fall and once in the spring. We must recognize how much of the child's future is prefigured in the fourth grade year and we want to share these insights with parents. The experiences that Eugene had giving parents advice based on such insights: a cautionary tale! [16:40]
4.13: Working with Parents 5. One of the tasks of Waldorf education in the 21st-century is to strengthen the bonds between teachers and parents. This spiritual strivings of parents increasingly are what draw them to the Waldorf School; Waldorf teacher should not disappoint parents by holding back on the spiritual foundations up for work. The importance of parent education grows every year, yet the economic problems of Waldorf schools are diminishing the educational opportunities available for parents. [14:00]
4.14: Working with Parents 6. The Parent Conference continued. Ground rules for the parent conference: both parents must be present, show examples of other children's work to get parents an idea of where their child stands in the class. Whatever decisions are reached in this meeting should be written down, and send hard copy to the parents. Be sure that you are speaking to the father as well as the mother. Suggestions for winning over fathers.
4.15: Working with Parents 7. Three Children A Day: the most valuable piece of advice given in the entire conference. [16:50]
4.16: Working with Parents 8. How to write year-end reports in a more efficient, effective, and even enjoyable way. The rise and fall of the written narrative report. The ascendancy of rubrics and metrics to make report writing easier for teachers. The written report as story and drama. [15:00]

The Other Two-Thirds of the Class is a parent/teacher workshop led by Eugene Schwartz
at the Susquehanna Waldorf School in Marietta, PA. View both lectures here. [2:30:00]

Torin Finser’s The Second Classroom, published in 2014, is the first book to take an honest and
objective look at the challenges faced by Waldorf parents and teachers in their work together.
Eugene and Torin recorded a conversation that they had about these issues. Download it here.

4.17: The Grade Four Curriculum. [11:00]
Norse mythology
Zoology
Local geography
Language arts and grammar
Arithmetic and Fractions
Form Drawing
Class Play
Class Trip
The integrated and unintegrated curriculum of the odd and even grades.

A Grade Four Block Rotation Guide
Click here for the PDF

4.18: Form Drawing. The most important subject in Grade Four. Learning how to draw knotted and braided forms is more than just a skill. It is an active and creative means by which the child harmonizes the etheric body that has sustained them for the first three grades and the powerful, dynamic forces of the astral body. [16:30]
Form Drawing Teacher’s Guides:
Your password for all of the video presentations is Four4Class

1. Part 1: Knotted Drawings [35:10]
2. Part 2: Braided Drawings [38:00]
3. Drawing with Pencil [8:00]
4. Student Work in Form Drawing [22:40]

Form Drawing Teacher’s Guides:

1. Part 1: Knotted Drawings [35:10]
2. Part 2: Braided Drawings [38:00]
3. Drawing with Pencil [8:00]
4. Student Work in Form Drawing [22:40]

Mathematics Teacher’s Guides:
1. Patterns and Predictions [24:50]
2. Secret Numbers [24:00]
3. Factors [19:10]
4. Fractions 1 [18:20]
5. Fractions 2 [12:45]
6. Fractions 3 [21:10]
7. Etheric & Astral Currents in Grade 4 Math [17:30]