Is Learning to Read at a Waldorf School Really that Different?

Teachers at Waldorf Schools, as in other schools, directly teach reading to students in the early elementary grades. The goal everywhere is to create literate individuals. Students are considered literate when they have integrated the skills of phonetics, decoding, and comprehension, and ultimately become self-motivated readers who read for enjoyment and knowledge. The primary difference at Waldorf is only the order in which we teach the skills to reach the same end. Most educators open the door to reading for their students by first focusing on phonics and decoding skills. Comprehension skills, although not ignored, are usually emphasized after students have reached a certain level of reading fluency.

Waldorf teachers lead their students into reading through the door of comprehension. Beginning in preschool, students are told stories orally using rich descriptive language with no illustrations or media support so they can develop the skill of creating pictures from words in their mind.Creating images (and later concepts) from words is essentially the process of comprehension. The students are further encouraged to develop these images through the mediums of paint, crayon, puppet play, drawing and retelling.

In the Waldorf first and second grades the development of images through story is continued but in concert with the introduction of writing and phonetic awareness. Each letter of the alphabet is introduced with a story and image, for example the letter F may evolve from the story of “The fisherman and his wife” and is shown as a fish in the shape of an “F” first. Students then begin to put into writing the stories they have heard. The fine motor skills required for writing are further developed and supported when learning to knit and play a flute. As their writing fluency increases they are able to recognize the words they have written and begin to read their own written word. Fluidity and appreciation for beautiful language is encouraged over decoding skills as they begin this self motivated, inspired stage of learning. Gradually, decoding skills and recognition of common sight words are introduced in conjunction with comprehension through imaginative means.

So the teaching of reading at Waldorf is not so different from teaching reading at other schools. The primary difference it that comprehension is emphasized at Waldorf schools before phonetics or decoding skills. Waldorf strives to introduce the students to the beauty of language and the written word before delving into the more single focused task of decoding the written word. As a result the output from the students looks slightly different. Waldorf students often exhibit decoding skills at a later time than other students. However, the crystallization of students gathering all these remarkably abstract skills of comprehension, phonetics, and decoding together and beginning to read for content and pleasure, happens around 3rd grade for both Waldorf and non-Waldorf students alike.