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Meant to inspire and ignite the child’s imagination, the Five Great Lessons are a catalyst for the Montessori elementary curriculum . Told too quickly, the lessons become meaningless, causing the children’s imaginations to jump from one concept to another. When we imagine, we are using abstract thought to think of things that cannot be seen. The follow-up lessons that come from each of the Five Great Lessons are used to materialize these abstractions. In other words, the children prove the existence of the wonders of the universe through concrete exploration. Exploring the Universe Concretely in the Elementary Classroom In the beginning… Isn’t that a great way to start a story? I get chills every time I start a story that way. And when you pause for dramatic effect, with the children gathered all around you, making eye contact with each child before you continue, you are making a personal connection and building the anticipation of what is to come. I like to present the First Great Les...

The Five Great Lessons are thought to be the catalyst of the Montessori elementary cultural curriculum. From the origins of the universe to the story of human communication, the Five Great Lessons provide the keys to learning about science, history, geography, and economics in the Montessori elementary environment. If these lessons are so important, why then, do we often rush to get through them? A Case of Semantics Perhaps a name means more than we think. In modern educational terms, a lesson is finite. It has a beginning and end, with the purpose of instructing. In short, a lesson is the amount of learning done at one time. If this is our definition of a lesson, then it is logical to think that the Five Great Lessons should be told quickly so that we can move on to more important activities. Some Montessorians call all presentations “lessons.” NAMC intentionally uses the term “activities” instead, to indicate that children are actively participating in their learning rather than pass...

In the second plane, the children complete the foundation of their social selves. Through their reasoning minds and powers of imagination, they explore their universe, their community and their own place in social life. —Lillard, Montessori Today, p. 114. Before having the freedom to explore outside the immediate Montessori community, students must demonstrate responsibility within the Montessori environment. This freedom begins with choosing one’s own work during the day, working independently, and being a contributing member of the collective classroom community. Contributing members of any community help nurture and maintain the community. Within the Montessori environment, elementary students become responsible for the environment by learning to care for and maintain the classroom. Since the sensitive period for order occurs during the first stage of development, maintaining the classroom’s beauty and order no longer comes naturally. Instead, it must be modeled and practiced until ...

The Montessori teacher’s specific responsibility is to aid human development through awareness of the children’s needs at each stage of self-formation. Through this approach to their education, the children can pass onto each successive plane of development well prepared for the challenges ahead. —Lillard, p. 114 Work journals in the Montessori elementary classroom can be a hotly debated topic. What do they look like? Who is responsible for them? Who decides what work is included? Somewhere along the way, we have lost the meaning of the work journal and turned it into a work plan . Keeping a journal involves more than a student making a list of what he has accomplished during the day. It provides him with an opportunity to reflect on what he has learned. Written after the fact, a journal shows the reader where the student has been instead of dwelling on where he must go. As such, the work journal is an assessment tool rather than a planning tool. Studying Montessori Today, Chapter 7: ...

… the best [educators] could do was to compromise, reducing hours in instruction to the minimum, cutting out from the curriculum grammar, geometry, and algebra, making outside play obligatory and postponing the age for entry into school. But however much free periods have been increased and children urged to play rather than study, strangely the children have remained mentally fatigued notwithstanding all these reforms. —Maria Montessori To Educate the Human Potential, p. 80. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about children needing more time to play. Studies suggest spending time playing is more beneficial than spending time in the classroom. Play is being touted as the answer to everything from low test scores to behavior challenges. But wait a minute … if that were true, wouldn’t Montessori classrooms have hours of play time built into the day? Wouldn’t the emphasis in the Montessori environment be on play and not on learning? Wouldn’t Montessori children suffer from ment...

The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences. —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 84. On my first day as a Montessori teacher, I entered the classroom with a plan already made. I had the whole first day meticulously thought out, down to the minute. The students and I would gather in a circle and get to know one another. We would tour the room and the shelves, eat snack together, and establish our classroom rules. We would also learn proper procedures for using materials, going to the bathroom, and so on. I did not foresee any real work happening for the first few days. Imagine my surprise, when, after greeting the last pupil, I entered the classroom to see 32 lower elementary students at work! Even the students who were new to Montessori had paired up with someone, and they all had mats unrolled with materials on them. They had not waited for instruction from me before they started their learning. It w...

The next period goes from six to twelve. It is a period of growth unaccompanied by other change. The child is calm and happy. Mentally, he is in a state of health, strength and assured stability. —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 18. During the second plane, children move from being egocentric to being social beings. They are self-confident and ready to see what the world has in store for them. According to Montessori, this is the intellectual period. The children’s thirst for knowledge transcends workbooks and tests. They need to know the secrets of the universe, and they will become engrossed in research and topics until they have satisfied that need. The intensity of their focus and concentration far surpasses the things and objects that appealed to them before. Help me discover it myself In the first plane, when children ask “why,” they want to know facts. Or, as Paula Polk Lillard says, although they say “why,” young children really want to know “what.” (Lillard, 1996) The...

It is at six years that one may note the beginning of an orientation toward moral questions toward the judgment of acts. The preoccupation belongs to an interior sensitivity, the conscience. —Maria Montessori From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 12. If the first plane of development can be called the “play-age” (Montessori, The Formation of Man ), then the second plane of development may be classified as the “age of rules.” In fact, Montessori tells us that “A second side of education at this age concerns the child’s exploration of the moral field.” (Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential , p. 4.) It is during this time that children consciously consider, explore, and question universal morality. This is also the age when children learn about and internalize universal principles of right and wrong. As elementary-age children begin to pull away from their family’s identity and start to develop their own identity, they also move toward their own understanding of right and wrong. In ord...

Instead of dividing schools into nursery, primary, secondary, and university, we should divide education in planes and each of these should correspond to the phase the developing individual goes through. —Maria Montessori The Four Planes of Education, p. 1. Dr. Montessori believed that growth, development, and learning happen in waves. She determined that children go through four distinct periods of development, which she called the planes of development. The four planes occur from birth–6 years old, 6–12 years old, 12–18 years old, and 18–24 years old. In each plane, children and youth are drawn to different skills and activities, and Dr Montessori believed that they can make enormous progress if they have opportunities to explore and practice these skills. The first plane is a time of monumental growth and development as the baby grows and learns to move, balance, develop coordination, learn to speak, and exercise her own will. All exploration is done through sensory experiences ...

In a previous blog , we discussed the value of inclusion and how Montessori’s tenet of following the individual needs of the child makes it inherently inclusive. The Circle of Inclusion Project (University of Kansas) and Raintree Montessori (Lawrence, Kansas) listed 11 specific ways in which Montessori education addresses the needs of all children, including those with disabilities. Included in this list is “ The development of organized work patterns in children. ” In today’s blog, Michelle kindly shares her classroom experiences to provide real-life examples of how Montessori meets that specific goal. Carrie entered my Montessori upper elementary classroom as a sixth-year student. Brand new to Montessori and unsure of what to expect, Carrie was quiet and, as one might expect, spent a great deal of time observing her new surroundings and friends. It did not take long for Carrie to settle in to her new environment, making friends and learning the routines of the classroom. She appeared...

In a previous blog , we discussed the value of inclusion and how Montessori’s tenet of following the individual needs of the child makes it inherently inclusive. The Circle of Inclusion Project (University of Kansas) and Raintree Montessori (Lawrence, Kansas) listed 11 specific ways in which Montessori education addresses the needs of all children, including those with disabilities. Included in this list is “Academic materials that provide a concrete representation of the abstract.” In today’s blog, Michelle kindly shares her classroom experiences to provide real-life examples of how Montessori meets that specific goal. The Montessori materials are more than toys or manipulatives. Carefully thought out and designed, each material has its own direct and indirect purpose in the education of the child. The sensorial materials used in the early childhood environment exemplify this significant feature of Montessori materials. For example, consider the Binomial Cube , which is presented as ...

The child's development follows a path of successive stages of independence, and our knowledge of this must guide us in our behavior towards him. We have to help the child to act, will and think for himself. This is the art of serving the spirit, an art which can be practiced to perfection only when working among children. —Maria Montessori The Advanced Montessori Method, p. 257. Two years ago, my choir group decided to go to Germany to sing throughout the Rhine River region for 10 days. We decided that this was a good opportunity for a family vacation, so my husband and son arranged to meet me after the tour to go to Bavaria. Since the choir trip was planned for the group, I did very little by way of preparation. Conversely, my family planned together for months for our trip to Bavaria, excited to decide where we would go, what restaurants we would try, and the day trips we would make. And although we were only in Bavaria for 6 days, I remember more about that shorter leg of my tr...

Maria Montessori observed that when children were given freedom in an environment suited to their needs, they flourished and reached their full potential. She noted that after a period of intense concentration and the opportunity to work with materials that were fully engaging, children were refreshed and content; their inner discipline and sense of peace seemed to grow. Dr. Montessori described this unique process in a child’s development as “normalization,” and she referred to it as “ the most important single result of our whole work. ” ( The Absorbent Mind, p. 204 ) Normalization in Montessori Elementary: A Teacher's Perspective In my experience, every Montessori classroom reaches a period of normalization in a different time frame, unique to the individuals in the classroom. One factor that seems to affect the rate of reaching normalization is the environment’s ratio of returning students to new students. In my experience, when fewer than one-third of the children are new, you...

Exploring and absorbing the world beyond the classroom are integral components of the Montessori elementary experience. At the start of each year, we discuss going out activities with our elementary students. We discuss our field trip budget and the richness these experiences can provide us. As a group, we brainstorm a list of places we would like to go. The students choose most field trips, but occasionally the directors may choose a field trip or direct their attention to excursions that relate to topics of study or interest. Planning Going Out Activities in the Montessori Elementary Classroom Each student is then responsible for collecting information about a destination and reporting back to the class. This may involve a phone call and/or internet research. Encouraging the students to research the information allows them to develop stronger communication, organizational, and practical life skills. It also builds their sense of independence. Beforehand, we discuss respectful phone e...

In my Montessori elementary classroom, I spend the first week of school building on the foundations that I set on the first day — further establishing rules and routines, empowering the students, developing relationships, and presenting inspiring work. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I begin talking with the students about classroom routines and expectations on the very first day of school. Throughout the week, we build on these discussions, usually during circle time. Like all Montessori teachers, I have high expectations of courtesy, respect, and order. Taking time during the first week to fully establish these expectations helps the students understand what is required of them and of others in the classroom. It serves us all well for the remainder of the year. Montessori Teachers Lay the Foundations for a Successful Elementary School Year in the First Week A great interactive strategy for discussing expectations is to invite the students to role-play different scenarios. For exam...