Casuarina School for Rudolf Steiner Education


Class 5

13 July 2009

(age 10 – 11)
The pivotal point between childhood and puberty.
Strong group dynamic in the class.
The children are involved in their work, with a new self-assurance.

Physical:

  • Increased balance and coordination
  • Growth in the limbs
  • Increased strength and endurance

Cognitive:

  • Thinking and reasoning becomes more active: though the pictorial aspect is still strong, the child is starting to think in concepts
  • Questioning and criticising, but now starting to be combined with a more realistic and rational understanding of the world
  • The class 4 concern with fairness deepens into a greater use of conscience and sense of responsibility
  • Greater memory and appreciation of time

Emotional:

  • Growing sense of self
  • Growing confidence in their own capacities

Casuarina School Slideshow
Needs of this age:

  • New intellectual, moral, social challenges
  • A teaching style which brings pictorial images into reasoning
  • Thirst for knowledge of a wider world, both geographically and over time
  • An understanding of the inter-relatedness of human cultures and their environment

Steiner Curriculum themes to meet the needs of this age:

Main Lessons:

A move from myth to history. Strong pictures of early civilisations and the gradual change in consciousness from one civilisation to another, with each civilisation having a new relationship with their gods, the world and each other.

  • Ancient India -sense of oneness, spirituality, ancient clairvoyance – Ancient East – eg China
  • Persia – farming and agriculture; themes of light and darkness
  • Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria – guidance through a spiritual leader, the ordering of society, identity as a group
  • Ancient Greece – new power of thinking, the new concept of “conscience” and self-responsibility, rather than obeying the will of the gods. The birth of philosophy and scientific thought; a new artistic impulse marrying beauty and form; new social & political structures. The development of democracy has a bearing on the social stage of the class.
  • Biographies of great leaders from ancient cultures

Grammar – time and space concepts
Maths -geometry
Botany : “how does the earth work upon the plant?”
Environmental studies: “how does the human being work with the plant world?”
National geography, including social and economic aspects: “how does the human being work with the physical world?”

Class 5 Main Lessons

  • Grammar and Punctuation and Dictionary skills
  • Writing – Text Types
  • Measurement – Volume, Capacity, Mass
  • Fractions and Decimals
  • Weather, Graphs & Problem Solving
  • 2D Geometry
  • Botany
  • Australian Society/Aboriginal Studies – eg, Rise of the colonies, Federation, White Australia  Policy, Votes – women and Aboriginals, Stolen Generations, History of 1800s – early 1900s
  • Australian Geography – National, State and Regional – mapping skills
  • Ancient East (India, Persia, China, narrative content and reading material, stories taken from ancient eastern cultures up to the time of classical antiquity, Hindu legends of Krishna and Ardjuna, Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh)
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Ancient Greece

Teaching styles:

  • More practical, objective approach to the world, though still engaging feeling
  • Teaching needs to be lively with strong leadership
  • Children respond to and respect specialist knowledge brought by subject teachers
  • Social skills development continues, with the theme of the individual working for the group