The Class Five Child Class 5 woodwork - Carving a bowl At this age the child attains a certain ease and grace of movement intrinsic to the age. Movement that is co-coordinated, balanced and harmonious is a keynote of the developmental phase. Psychologically, the ‘I’/world differentiation develops, the individual ‘will’ element begins to grow, the awareness of ‘self’ strengthens and socially, a powerful group dynamic can surface within a class, although the individual ego is very much a fledgling. Cognitively, children are more able to understand questions and phenomena in a realistic and reasoning manner. The pictorial element in thought processes remains an important element in the child’s consciousness, although the understanding and formulation of concepts are beginning to depend less on the development of individualised images and thought pictures and more on the development of a faculty for comprehending clear, matter-of -fact, sense-free concepts. Out of the growing memory powers, the sense for time has developed. Memory allows for looking back and planning the future and, combined with deepening feeling, for the emergence of conscience and responsibility. This age is a time of rapidly flowering capacities. The child experiences a growth in length; sustained physical effort is within his or her group. Musically, a child has the capacity to master a musical instrument. In the basic skills of numeracy, literacy and linguistics pupils exhibit the emergence of independent creativity founded on a confident group of the basic rules, processes and structures. This year marks the pivotal point between childhood and puberty and for a short moment each child is poised at the crest of the wave, marking the end of the first part of their school years. They reach standards of work hitherto never dreamed of. They identify totally with their work; they spend time embellishing it, bringing it closer to perfection. They are often proud of their work, whereas in Class 4 they could easily be dismissive about it. Towards the end of this year, the teacher will begin to experience her pupils’ emergent intellectual faculties, ready to be used more consciously. They bring with them a new detachment and their accompanying critical standpoint. The harmony is lost, to be found again at the end of the Upper School years. In this year the aim is to make the transition from myth to history and its emphasis on the individual. The children should develop a greater consciousness of the inter-relatedness of life and environment - particularly through the study of botany. There will be an emphasis on the original Olympian ideal in which group distinctions are subservient to the greater whole and in which qualities such as beauty are as valued as speed and distance. The children should be encouraged to strengthen their memory by learning such things as vocabulary and by visualising spaces through the use of maps.
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Class Five Main Lessons |
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| Middle & Afternoon lesson overview download here (18kb) |