Special Subject: World Languages
DWS offers two languages in grades 1 through 8: Mandarin & German
Children experience language in a way that closely approximates the natural assimilation of the mother tongue. Children in grades 1, 2, and 3 experience the language orally, and almost completely chorally, using playfulness and imitative skills to teach near native pronunciation through rhyme, rhythm, verse, song, games and dramatizations. As children mature, the teachers seek to exercise their growing capacity to express and communicate, and the emphasis in language instruction begins to move toward reading and writing the language through games, writing exercises, and storytelling. Grades 6 through 8 expand to include more grammar and vocabulary. Because Waldorf education favors living experience over the virtual reality of most technology, the living use of language is emphasized, and the language teachers research and bring in material that is appropriate to the developmental stage of the students.