Author name: awsna

While many of our schools have made local and national news for their outdoor classrooms, Anchorage Waldorf School’s recent news coverage in The Anchorage Daily News brings forth a new and unique angle to this story — climate!   The story of switching to an all outdoor classroom, in Alaska, during the pandemic, is indeed newsworthy. Third and Fourth […]

A study from the University of South Australia, published in the journal PLOS One, assessed the impacts of unstructured nature play on the health and development of young children. They found that any activity that gets children thinking and acting spontaneously outdoors without needing adult control can help them develop complex thinking abilities, social skills, and creativity. In the

Why do Waldorf schools have students, at each grade level, perform a class play? Class plays, often performed in springtime, deepen student’s curriculum, social emotional and collaborative learning. The plays reflect each grade’s individual curriculum and the appropriate developmental level of the students. Class plays incorporate music, recitation, memorization, acting, and visual arts. The play

New research from social neuroscientists from Bar-Ilan University and the University of Chicago have studied the social functions and brain mechanisms influenced by making music in a group.    This study is unique because it focuses on what happens in the brain when people make music together, rather than when they listen to or practice music

New research out of John Hopkins University, published in the journal Psychological Science, shows that handwriting helps people learn certain skills, like reading, surprisingly faster and significantly better than learning the same material through typing or watching videos. According to the press release on the John Hospkin’s website — Hand-writing letters shown to be best technique for

Study results continue to show that taking notes by hand, versus typing, aids in learning and retaining information. In the Eduptopiaarticle — On the Advantage of Paper Notebooks — high school history teacher and librarian, Benjamin Barbour, shares the additional advantages he sees when his students use paper and pencil for note taking. Barbour claims his students are more

Many new to Waldorf education often ask, “What is Eurythmy?” when they hear it is offered as part of the curriculum. At its simplest, s​tudents l​earn​ ​intentional ​movement through exercises, patterns and games ​that increase in complexity​ through the grades. ​They learn to move in thoughtful and disciplined ways in collaboration with others. While this

Multi-year teaching in a Waldorf grade school allows teachers to take the time to make deep connections with students. Keeping the main lesson class teacher as a steady authority in a child’s life is beneficial to social and intellectual learning. Research on teacher “looping,” as it is often called, shows that rich and deep student / teacher

Cyber Civics celebrated Media Literacy Week with the feature article — Waldorf Schools are Media Literacy Role Models — discussing Waldorf education’s approach to media access for children.  “Waldorf schools have been quietly holding this conversation with intentionality and patience: asking families to be thoughtful, mindful, discerning, and slow with media access for children. Not to deprive them, but rather to