How is reading taught in a Steiner Waldorf school? Why do Steiner Waldorf students wait until 2nd grade to begin learning to read?
Steiner Waldorf education is deeply bound up with the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Steiner Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning. Reading instruction, as such, is deferred. Instead, writing is taught first. During the first grade year the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.
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