1

Forming A Daily Main Lesson Rhythm

Consider:
1. Music – that the teacher plays to develop listening skills.
2. Music with students – singing/playing flute using seasonal and joyous
songs. Don’t teach music here; leave that for music class.
3. Nature description (describe something you saw on way to school)
4. Opening verses/songs- stay the same throughout the block or even year.
The “opening or morning verse” remains the same in grades 1-4 then
changes to the “upper grades’ verse” from grades 5-12.
5. Movement activities- think this through! We suggest you consider
weaving movement throughout the main lesson- not just filling the first
part of the morning with lots and lots of ‘circle’ activities. (See note
below.)
6. Attendance- how will you do this? How much time do you have for this?
How will you acknowledge those who are absent?
Note: During the first few weeks in the 1st-3rd Grades it is nice to
incorporate the singing of different rhythms (as you call out each name)
and have them respond in kind. This develops their listening capacities
and helps those that are new to the class learn their classmates’ names.
7. Pedagogical exercises- these can be used to help establish dominance,
right/left hand awareness, etc. Work with an extra lesson teacher or your
mentor on these.
8. Speech work- work with seasonal, block related, humorous poems, or
play lines (in 1st-2nd Grades poems can be used for Memory Reading).
9. Individual or ‘birthday’ verses – see below for thoughts on incorporating
these.
10. Mental math- incorporate this at the beginning of math practice classes or
during the skills practice segment of a math main lessons. Use the season
or math block theme for inspiration- get creative!
11. Artistic rendering/retell activity (see our suggestions in our documents
entitled Free Rendering for Story/New Material Review for Grades 1-2 or Free
Rendering for Grades 3-8 and Else Gottgens’ instructions for free
renderings and “Reviewing the lesson” below)
12. NEW LESSON/LEARNING! Make sure that the students learn something
new every day- review is not the lesson! Especially in the younger years,
each new concept should be accompanied by some physical activity.
13. Main Lesson Bookwork and any accompanying assignments such as
handwriting practice or writing a rough draft of a composition in a
practice book.
14. Main lesson story- these can be used in a variety of ways:
a. Literature curriculum stories such as fairy tales in 1st grade can be used
to introduce letters of the alphabet
Created by Janet Langley and Patti Connolly
 2

b. Stories told as ‘soul food’ (e.g., the stories of the Old Testament told in
3rd grade provide the students with life lessons and inspiration)
c. ‘Umbrella’ stories- are ongoing/serial stories that you create or use to
introduce various concepts (e.g., a stories from “Englishland” that are
used to introduce parts of speech and various language mechanics– See
The Roadmap to Literacy chapter 3.11 for examples of stories from
“Englishland”)
d. Academic stories: examples include a story with a lot of factual
scientific information such as Paddy Beaver (by Thornton Burgess) in the 4th
grade as part of the Human Being and Animal block, the biography of
Alexander the Great in 5th grade as part of the Ancient Greek History
block, or a story about the U.S. Constitutional Convention as part of the
study of U.S. history in 8th grade .
15. Grace- this can be a poem, traditional grace, or song– something which
expresses a reverance or thankfulness for the gifts of the earth or life’s
gifts
16. Snack/recess routine- consider reading an engaging book out loud for the
first 10 minutes- the students are less likely to gobble down their food that
way and it’s a great way to share a book you love while modeling oral
reading skills. (My students loved Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers
Lionheart in 3rd grade!)

Considerations on some of the above activities:

Movement Activity (Circle/Opening Activities):

Movement activities should be focused on bringing the students “in” and getting
them ready to listen and work– 15 min. for grades 1-3, 5-10 min. for grades 4-8.
You will not be able to cover the curriculum if you spend 30-60 minutes on the
first four activities above listed under ‘Consider.’
Past Director of the Pedagogical Section (the group that
oversees Waldorf education in the world), Christof Wiechert,
says that dancing around in a circle, stamping and clapping
makes the children tired… and that the ball exercises for the
integration of the senses of sight, hearing and one’s own
movement should be done later in the day… he then says, that
getting in the right mood for the day must not take too long
that no more than fifteen minutes should pass before the
morning verse is said and the learning portion of the morning
begins. (“On the Question of the Three-fold Structure
of the Main Lesson,” from “The Pedagogical Journal”
2010, pg. 5).

Created by Janet Langley and Patti Connolly

 3

Rather than front load most of your movement at the beginning of main lesson,
weave it throughout your main lesson and day in smaller, purposeful units. For
example, as a transition from the end of the new learning segment of your
morning to the bookwork segment, have the students get up and sing a song
with gestures, do a bean bag exercise, or a movement game such as “Simon
Says.”

Speech work: Remember these 4 important aspects:

1. Always begin each speech segment with a tongue twister and/or speech
exercise that focuses on an aspect of sound that will be featured in the
poem you will be doing.
2. Use gestures and movement with the younger grades.
3. Introduce the poem through an imagination or some picture that the
students can use as a reference point, an anchor.
4. Bring variety into the work – enliven the poem every day! Once they
know the poem or verse, try whispering it, saying it inside then when the
teacher claps say it aloud, have different rows say different lines, alternate
boys and girls, say it with a tiny voice, a giant voice, etc.

Music: You might want to consider alternating speech and music every other
day so you have more time to develop one or the other. On the days my class
had music class (not orchestra), we would just practice speech.

Mental math Mental math should take 3-5 minutes. Develop different kinds of
mental math exercises (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) so that all children have
opportunities to “work in their heads” in different modalities. See our
suggestions in Mental Math Games for Grades 1-2 and Mental Math Games for
Grades 4-8. (Note: In the lower grades, limit this activity as a warm up for math
main lessons, practice classes, or other short breaks during the day such as
waiting for a special subject teacher to arrive. During Language Arts main
lessons do literacy warm ups to get the students ready for literacy study.)

Review of the story or new material: When determining your approach to the
review, ask yourself, “What was the major theme of yesterday’s lesson? What
were the major images, concepts, facts of the presentation?” Design your review
to focus/highlight these areas. Be creative here! See our Free Rendering for
Reviewing the Story for ideas.

Teachers that “retell” every lesson are in danger of developing a culture in which
some of the students stop listening to the story the first day, since it will just be
retold on the second. That being said, we would recommend having the class
“retell” the story if they are going to be asked to write a composition that
basically summarizes the story.

Created by Janet Langley and Patti Connolly

 4

When Planning the New Learning portion of the Lesson:

1. First find an imagination around which you can build the lesson. For
example, when telling the biography of Louis XIV of France, draw a
picture on the blackboard of a radiating sun. Begin with this image and
then show how his life radiated out, touching every corner of his French
kingdom…Louis, the “Sun King.”
2. Write down which academic goals you are working on in the lesson. Be
conscious of your aims. Most schools have their academic goals listed for
each grade. You could also consult our skills rubrics and student objectives
in each grade section under ‘planning.’
3. Make a list of the highlights of the lesson, those topics/people/images
that you want to include in the presentation.
4. Make a point to include some new vocabulary in your presentation (a few
choice adjectives or adverbs at least!)
5. Make a list of any resources/items you need for the lesson and procure
prior to the morning bell- don’t waste precious time hunting around
during class.
6. When presenting the lesson, be mindful of those opportunities when
something in the new lesson harkens back to a lesson that you taught
them in an early grade or even earlier that year- remind them of this. Do
the same with something that harkens to their future lessons with you.
7. In the 3rd - 5th grades, the new material and the story may be separate
presentations…for example: in 3rd grade you might decide to tell the Old
Testament stories throughout the year without linking them to your new
lesson. In 5th grade, you might do a lesson on the geography of India and
end with the story of “Manu and the Fish.” By the time you get to Ancient
Greek History, the story becomes the lesson…for example: The story of
the “Battle of Thermopylae.”

Things to Consider When Creating Student Assignments:

1. Refer to the academic goals discussed earlier and plan your assignments
to support a variety of skills.
2. See our document Talking on Paper for suggestions on how to bring
composition writing in the early grades.
3. When it comes to student compositions in Grades 2-8, take into
consideration the aspects of writing on which you wish to focus and then
be creative in how the assignment will accomplish this. Avoid assigning a
composition on “A Day in the Life of a ______” for every block or culture.
Strive for at least one writing assignment a week during Grades 5-8
History and Geography blocks. (This includes writing poetry.)
4. Make sure that the instructions of the assignment are very clear. Nothing
frustrates students more than to come up short on an assignment because
they did not understand what you wanted or how to do what you asked.

Created by Janet Langley and Patti Connolly

 5

5. Group writing assignments can be fun for the students and help develop
social relationships, but they are usually time-consuming. I suggest
limiting these to maybe 2 a year.
6. There are, however, many wonderful activities that can be done in a
group for example: creating a 3-D map, building a diorama, putting on a
play or puppet show, etc.
7. By 4th grade most of the humanities’ (language arts, geography, history)
main lesson book entries should be the student’s own work. Except for
assignments such as maps, a thematic poem, or copies of drawings from
the blackboard, the main lesson book should be the student’s own
creation, reflecting his/her skills and understanding. Otherwise, they are
just doing handwriting practice by copying the teacher’s work.
8. Consider doing some of the paintings in painting class on smaller paper
and including them in the book in the place of a drawing. (This is
especially great for Botany.)

Created by Janet Langley and Patti Connolly