GRADE YEARS

“Educate them in love …”

PRIMARY GRADES (Grades 1 – 4)

The young child in his 7^th year of life is living and thinking in a world of images. And our Primary Grades programme is designed to meet this artistic being of the child. In the first four years of primary schooling, everything the child meets in school will touch the child’s budding soul life. The curriculum builds foundational skills in reading, writing and arithmetic quite deliberately with each lesson growing into the next one. Stories, drawings, paintings, music, recitation are all daily experiences for our primary grade students and all the academic content is planned to be taken to the class in an artistic manner. This helps the young children to receive the academic content joyfully and with enthusiasm. A sense of beauty and wonder pervades the curriculum across these years. Repetition, reverence and rhythm form the cornerstone of our approach with children of this age group.

Every class will have a class teacher who will be the key person in the learning process, acting as the glue that holds various components of education into a wholesome experience. Many teachers travel forward with the batch of students carrying not only the present but also the past and future of the class’ educational journey with them. Teachers become familiar with each student’s strengths and needs, helping them grow academically, socially, and emotionally. In these years, the primary subjects in the curriculum include English, Tamil, Mathematics and Art with practical work in the areas of gardening, farming and house building and a unique study of the animal kingdom seen in relation to Man.

To bring in depth and beauty to the programme, core subjects are always handled intensively within an interesting framework called the Main Lesson Block (MLB). Unlike traditional classes that are 40-45 minutes long, our MLB’s will consist of a two hour class devoted to the study of any one subject for a period of 4-5 weeks. This framework lends itself to concentrated, in-depth study while recognizing the need to bring content to the class in bite-sized packets giving them the time they need to digest the subject matter. Main lesson time is a lively, interactive time, moving between artistic and intellectual activities that engage each student’s faculties of thinking, feeling and willing.

At TATVA, Art will not be there just for Art’s sake. It is in fact the core of education and is used to convey and depict academic content that the child can connect with more deeply. Students extensively work with painting and clay modeling and spend the initial grade years in open-ended tasks involving exploration of form and colour. Games and play too are designed to be another tool enabling the holistic development of the child. In the Primary Grades stage, it will revolve around group games and cooperative games. Field visits are organised to enable children to experience stimuli beyond the school environment. Such experiential learning makes the curriculum significantly richer.

“The heart of the Waldorf method is that education is an art - it must speak to the child's experience. To educate the whole child, his heart and his will must be reached, as well as the mind."
- Rudolf Steiner .

MIDDLE GRADES (Grades 5 - 8)

These are the middle childhood years when the beauty of our approach really starts to shine through in the work and beings of our children. The foundation laid in the early years is built upon in every area of learning to make their learning experience deep and rich.

Language includes a formal study of grammar, reading and composition with emphasis on fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Mythologies gently transform into historical stories in our classes giving the children a picture of the evolving consciousness of humanity. The learning of Mathematics, particularly Geometry, strongly engages the imaginative side of the child. Mathematics is related to life through the application of Arithmetic and Algebra to comprehend and solve day-to-day problems.

In Science, there is a strong emphasis on learning the natural sciences by the proper scientific method. With the focus being on developing keen observational skills, our phenomenological approach to learning Science wakes up the children to the beauty and lawfulness present in the natural world. Carefully directed discussions help the class hone their logical thinking skills as they induce the principles of science from their observations and what they already know of the subject.

Geography which starts in Grade 4 as Local Geography, extends to the study of Regional, National, Continental and World Geography and its influence on life. The emphasis on art continues, including art as a means to present academic content in various areas. Games get more serious as children, unlike in the primary grades, are ready for competition. The emphasis is more on team games such as volleyball, throwball, kho-kho, etc.

With every passing year, the growing capacities in the child are evident and the class teacher from the primary grades continues to work with the classes through these years, too. At times, subject teachers with specialised expertise start supporting the class teachers in this journey. The emphasis all through the Grade years (Grade 1 – 8) is on building in children a capacity to sense beauty.