When considering the school day – for all ages of children – the whole child is considered. At the beginning of the school day, middle school student delve into a one-and-a-half hour, academic lesson, or  “main lesson”. Main lesson is a longer class period with an integrated approach in thematic units in a project-based meaningful experience. These academic topics are woven together literacy and math as well as social studies or science. The integrated approach includes core curriculum such as language arts, mythology, history, geography, geology, algebra, geometry, mineralogy, biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and nutrition.

With a well-rounded curriculum that includes a variety of subject classes throughout each day children are learning through many different modes of learning styles. Main lesson typically begins with introductory activities that may include singing, instrumental music, and poetry. In order that students can connect more deeply with the subject matter, academic instruction includes artistic work that includes story-telling, visual arts, drama, movement, vocal and instrumental music, and crafts.

The Waldorf Integrated Main Lesson

For the first part of the school day, middle schoolers engage in “main lesson”. In Main lesson, academics are woven together to create well-rounded experiences for the students. Here are some examples of how the 7th grade main lesson projects are timed to be meaningful for the adolescent: The middle school child is beginning to experience physiological changes and new intellectual capacities. During a time when they are becoming more aware of their bodies, middle schoolers in main lesson, work on the biology of the human body.

Once this science unit is completed, the students move on to study the Renaissance Period. Through the artist’s eye, they also begin to see the beauty of the human form. The Renaissance was a flourishing period of exploration and enlightenment: a rebirth of human thought with a rush of bold ideas from artists, scientists and philosophers. In many ways, this time mirrors the inner experience of the adolescent! Middle school children are developing unique perspectives of the world, seeing with new clarity and a critical eye. Supporting their study of the Renaissance, in an artistic study, students learn order and structure starting in geometry and then employed as the laws of perspective in drawings and paintings. Students, in creative writing, explore points of view and “voice” as they compose writings from differing characters’ perspectives.

The seventh grade is a time of impressive change. The rich Waldorf main lesson curriculum engages children as they grow and mature. 

“Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” —Paulo Freire