Writing Across All Subjects Helps Deepen Understanding
Writing helps students grapple with, understand, and remember complex concepts in a wide range of academic subjects.
In Waldorf schools, students use writing and drawing every day to create their own unique “textbook” for each subject area. This process allows students to demonstrate the depth of their understanding and become authors and co-creators of their education.
A recent study sheds light on why writing is such a critical component of learning in all subject areas:
Professor Steve Graham and his colleagues at Arizona State University’s Teachers College analyzed 56 studies looking at the benefits of writing in science, social studies, and math and found that writing “reliably enhanced learning” across all grade levels. While teachers commonly ask students to write about a topic in order to assess how well they understand the material, the process of writing also improves a student’s ability to recall information, make connections between different concepts, and synthesize information in new ways. In effect, writing isn’t just a tool to assess learning, it also promotes it.
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Why Waldorf? At Cedarwood, each student’s imagination is continually nurtured by a team of teachers and a broad spectrum of experiential learning opportunities as they develop their capacity for growth, creativity, and critical thinking. The curriculum is comprehensive and designed to educate the whole child, with lessons in math, science, language arts, history, geography, music, eurythmy, handwork, movement, and not one but two world languages, Spanish and Japanese. Art is not taught separately in our elementary program, but rather imbues students’ understanding of every single subject they encounter.
Curious about a Waldorf education for your child? Let’s connect!