Learning in a mixed-age classroom

May 07, 2024

Waldorf teachers are generally asked: “How does learning happen in a Waldorf classroom with children of mixed age group?”

Children learn from the kind of play they are involved in.

Children in the age group of 2-3, begin to explore everything around them as the formative life forces are active in them. They love moving and handling things on their own without any external imposition or assistance. They are involved in solitary play based on imitation. They move out of their own will but they are yet to learn to create harmonious relationship between their will and their surroundings.
Children in the age group of 4.6-5, by now start relating to their environment. Memory and imagination become the active faculties. The children start creating group play based on their memory and imagination. They tend to copy daily events and transform objects into things based on their imagination. They learn from each other as the play happens in small groups.

Children think of something new all the time. It is important that there are objects available to children which can be transformed by them.

‘As the muscles of the hand grow firm and strong in performing the work for which they are fitted, so the brain and other organs of the physical body of man are guided by the right lines of development if they receive the right impressions from the environment.’

Captured in a metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia primary school, this photograph depicts a typical classroom scene, where an audience of school children were seated on the floor before a teacher at the front of the room, who was reading an illustrated storybook, during one of the scheduled classroom sessions. Assisting the instructor were two female students to her left, and a male student on her right, who was holding up the book, while the seated classmates were raising their hands to answer questions related to the story just read.