A Movement Mentor's Back to School Toolkit
Curriculum guide, lesson planning tool, print resources
When I was starting out as a novice movement educator in 1990, there were few contemporary resources available to help forge lessons for each grade or even an overall movenent curriculum. I am so grateful to my own first mentor, the incomparable Maureen Curran Turtletaub, who shared her own handwritten materials so generously during that time (and ever since). Other than those notes, a dog-eared copy of Rudolf Kischnick’s Games, Gymnastics, Sports in Childhood Development and the classic Rudolf Steiner’s Curriculum for Waldorf Schools, there was little available in English.
Training in Spacial Dynamics and Bothmer Gymnastics opened the doors to discovery. After research into all the essential “indications” for the movement development of the child as expressed in Waldorf/Steiner education, I made up my own guide.
Curriculum Overview
Rather than creating a series of fail-proof recipes for teaching, I needed to track movement themes across grades 1-12. Teaching in themed blocks helped me make sure that each grade had consistent and progressive movement content from year to year. This basic chart helped me then, and may help you or your colleagues now.
You might notice a gap in the Gymnastics curriculum for grades 9-12. Honestly, I didn’t teach gymnastics in the high school. I wasn’t able to spot adult-sized students safely on my own. Instead, an elective of Circus Theater was offered, and students were able to participate as fully as possible in the all-school movement circus we presented from time to time. They became the spotters for the younger ones.
Lesson Planning Template
I also developed a simple, effective lesson planning template that became essential for helping to make sure each day’s classes were truly “three-fold”, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, with space for the extra details like transitions within the lesson and to and from the teaching spaces. Afterwards, each page was organized into binders for the appropriate grade. The binders served as an archive for lesson models that worked well, or that failed (sometimes spectacularly) and got reworked. Today, I find these archives to be a gold mine for myself and others. Take a look.
Using this tool helps make sure that there is a “breathing” to each lesson, an inwards breath of focused, “closed” movements (hand clapping, for example) as well as the more outward breath of “open” movements (tag game, SpaceBall, etc.) and that the closing movement sequence of each class was clearly defined.
For each grade, the opening and closing movements and verses remained consistent throughout the year. This was a key teaching tip for classroom managment that helped form each grade’s lessons: the children knew precisely what to expect, learned how to do it (eventually) and how each lesson ended.
As my teaching load grew and the class sizes grew, the Notes at the bottom of the page became more and more important for my own evening reflections, for communications with other teachers and parents, and for writing reports months later. I would be able to easily track how often someone had a tummy ache or was extra thoughtful with a classmate, who’s birthday was up, and what needed to be remembered or adjusted for future planning.
Today, there are more print resources available to new and veteran teachers. Here are a few of my favorites.
Waldorf Games Handbook by Kim John Payne, Cory Waletzko, and myself
Games Children Play II by Kim John Payne and Cory Waletzko
Singing Games by Anna Rainville
How do you plan your curriculum overviews and lessons? If you have a tip to share, or questions to ask, please do!
There is a new book out: "Physical Education and Movement in Waldorf Schools" edited by Gerlinde Indler and Lutz Gerding. Translated from German by Geoff Hunter It's a comprehensive compilation by numerous authors. ~ Graham