Real Understanding

I recently saw a quote by Sonke Ahrens, the author of How to Take Smart Notes (an amazing book, by the way, highly recommend) that said:

“If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down.  If you really want to understand something, you have to translate it into your own words.”

Even when my children were young and copying words for their main lesson book entries, the words they were copying were always their own.  They were words that bloomed from the images in their hearts, created by the stories and activities enjoyed in the days before. After drawing a picture of what resonated from our lessons, they would dictate the words for me to create a sample to copy. 

It is those words that helped me to understand what had spoken to them out of our lessons.  What parts made a lasting impression?  What did they gain from it all? What are they still working out?

It was the essential idea of what spoke to their hearts, and those words are the best way to see if my lessons are reaching them in the way intended.

Now, some might say that this is too heady for a Waldorf learner before grade 4 or 5.  Memory doesn’t really begin to take hold away from the physical until age 9.  But I beg to differ. Especially since they aren’t being required to also know how to spell the words and craft the sentence. They are verbally describing their picture and I am creating a sentence out of those words for them to copy.

We ask children from grade one and up to recapitulate the lesson from the day before as part of the rhythm of lessons.  As teachers, we know that if our lessons speak to the children, then their night work (the time while they sleep where they digest what they met during that day) will have made an impression and they will be able to share with us what they hold from the lesson . 

When we write the words our children choose, we are helping them to create a personal connection with the work in their book.  It makes it less abstract and more concrete.  It makes it their own. And I think that is a really important aspect of the main lesson book.  Not that they carry the impulse WE wish to instill by boiling down the content into a sentence for them to copy, but that each entry is a record of how our lessons touched hearts.

Dictating and writing those same words also supports learning to read when used as part of a wider literacy plan. When children write their own words, they can more easily recall those words by looking at the picture they drew. They will slowly begin to see a connection between letters and sounds as they sight read the words.

Waldorf education gives children so many opportunities to “translate” something into their own words. If we pay attention, it can tell us so much about what they are taking in and how they are making it their own.

Until next time,
Marina