Waldorf In The News

New research out of John Hopkins University, published in the journal Psychological Science, shows that handwriting helps people learn certain skills, like reading, surprisingly faster and significantly better than learning the same material through typing or watching videos. According to the press release on the John Hospkin’s website — Hand-writing letters shown to be best technique for […]

Study results continue to show that taking notes by hand, versus typing, aids in learning and retaining information. In the Eduptopiaarticle — On the Advantage of Paper Notebooks — high school history teacher and librarian, Benjamin Barbour, shares the additional advantages he sees when his students use paper and pencil for note taking. Barbour claims his students are more

Many new to Waldorf education often ask, “What is Eurythmy?” when they hear it is offered as part of the curriculum. At its simplest, s​tudents l​earn​ ​intentional ​movement through exercises, patterns and games ​that increase in complexity​ through the grades. ​They learn to move in thoughtful and disciplined ways in collaboration with others. While this

Multi-year teaching in a Waldorf grade school allows teachers to take the time to make deep connections with students. Keeping the main lesson class teacher as a steady authority in a child’s life is beneficial to social and intellectual learning. Research on teacher “looping,” as it is often called, shows that rich and deep student / teacher

Cyber Civics celebrated Media Literacy Week with the feature article — Waldorf Schools are Media Literacy Role Models — discussing Waldorf education’s approach to media access for children.  “Waldorf schools have been quietly holding this conversation with intentionality and patience: asking families to be thoughtful, mindful, discerning, and slow with media access for children. Not to deprive them, but rather to

Teachers, in all schools, find themselves as purveyors of the arts as they stand before their students. They work to cultivate a learning environment that encourages each student’s ability to think synergistically and create — compositions, experiments, or variable solutions to problems — in STEM classes and in the humanities. Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, Professor and

Students at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School are building wood homes for local bat populations as part of their math block curriculum. The habitat construction combines lessons in math — measuring, math facts and more — along with science and learning about bats and their habitats. The idea came out of their Animal Block and a visit

A new study out of Finland shows that adding natural elements to a preschool playground improved the immune systems of the three to five year old attending students. The study, coordinated by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), added forest undergrowth, lawn turf and planter boxes to a playground that had minimal natural elements. Doing

Researchers in both neuroscience and education have noted the connection between music training and literacy skill building.  Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist and author of the book “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World,”establishes a key relationship between literacy and sound processing in her research — noting a direct connection between rhythm in

Psychologists from the UK, Dr. Helen Dodd and Dr Kathryn Lester, recently published the paper — Adventurous Play as a Mechanism for Reducing Risk for Childhood Anxiety — in the Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review. Upon analyzing existing research, they argue that free play in young children that involves risk may provide vital learning opportunities that help