Montessori (pronounced MON-tuh-SORE-ee) is a comprehensive educational approach from birth to adulthood based on the observation of children's needs in a variety of cultures all around the world.

Montessori Education is a brain-based, developmental, educational method that allows children to make creative choices in how they discover the people, places, and knowledge of the world. It emphasizes hands-on learning, self-expression, and collaborative play in a beautifully crafted environment of respect, peace, and joy.

Beginning her work almost a century ago, Dr. Maria Montessori developed this educational approach based on her understanding of children's natural learning tendencies as they unfold in "prepared environments" for multi-age groups (0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and 12-14).

The Montessori environment contains specially designed, manipulative "materials for development" that invite children to engage in learning activities of their own individual choice. Under the guidance of a trained teacher, children in a Montessori classroom learn by making discoveries with the materials, cultivating concentration, motivation, self-discipline, and a love of learning.

Today, Montessori schools are found worldwide, serving children from birth through adolescence. In North America, there are more than 5,000 private Montessori schools and more than 200 public schools with Montessori-styled programs. The Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), founded by Maria Montessori in 1929, maintains Montessori educational principles and disseminates Montessori education throughout the world.

Role of the Montessori Teacher

 

The Montessori Teacher acts as a guide and directs the children towards purposeful activities, which are appropriate for their age and level of ability. The teacher is there to help the children and to remove obstacles from their path to independence. The teacher will offer neither criticism nor undue praise but be constantly available when help is required.

After a careful presentation of an age-appropriate exercise by the teacher, the child is free to explore and to choose the materials he wants to work with. Each child is allowed to progress at his or her own pace without undue interference on the part of a teacher. Many of the materials are self-correcting - this reduces the need for children to seek adult assistance and allows them to work independently. This inherent control of error also encourages children to look at mistakes as welcome opportunities for improvement. Exercises can be repeated as many times as desired until the child is satisfied.

A large part of a Montessori teacher's training is dedicated to developing the skill of objective observation. You will often see a teacher in the classroom sitting quietly in a corner discreetly observing the children and maybe jotting down notes. Through her observation the teacher can get an insight into a child's personality, preferences, learning style, level of ability and social skills. She can then tailor her approach to suit each child's individual needs when she is working one-on-one with them.

Through observation the Teacher can also assess when a child has mastered one particular skill and is ready to move on to another challenge. She will then introduce the subsequent exercise and then the child is free to explore the new materials independently.

Concepts

The Montessori Method discourages traditional measurements of achievement (grades, tests) as negative competition that is damaging to the inner growth of children (and adults). Feedback and qualitative analysis of a child's performance does exist but is generally provided in the form of a list of skills, activities and critical points, and sometimes a narrative of the child's achievements, strengths and weaknesses, with emphasis on the improvement of those weaknesses.

The method was developed from observations of young children from which a set of universal characteristics of children was created for each level of development. The Montessori method has two primary development levels: the first is birth through 6, the second is ages 6-12. A Montessori classroom for the ages of 3 to 6 years old is called the casa dei bambini ("children's house"), with focus on individually-paced learning and development. As an educational approach, the Montessori method's focus is on the individuality of each child in respect of their needs or talents, as opposed to the needs of the class as a whole. A goal is to help the child maintain their natural joy of learning.

The Montessori Method encourages independence and freedom with limits and responsibility. The youngest children are guided in practical life skills, e.g., domestic skills and manners. These skills are emphasized with the goal of increasing attention spans, hand-eye coordination, and tenacity. The Montessori Method states that satisfaction, contentment, and joy result from the child feeling like a full participant in daily activities. Montessori education carried through the elementary and high school years follows the child's emerging tendency for peer-oriented interactions and still emphasizes that each student is the guardian of his or her own intellectual development.

Premises

The premises of a Montessori approach to teaching and learning include the following:

• A view of children as competent beings capable of self-directed learning.
• That children learn in a distinctly different way from adults.
• The ultimate importance of observation of the child interacting with her or his environment as the basis for ongoing curriculum development. Presentation of subsequent exercises for skill development and information accumulation are based on the teacher's observation that the child has mastered the current exercise(s).
• Delineation of sensitive periods of development, during which a child's mind is particularly open to learning specific skills or knowledge, including language development, sensorial experimentation and refinement, and various levels of social interaction.
• A belief in the "absorbent mind", that children from birth to around age 6 possess limitless motivation to achieve competence within their environment and to perfect skills and understandings. This phenomenon is characterized by the young child's capacity for repetition of activities within sensitive period categories, such as exhaustive babbling as language practice leading to language competence.
• That children are masters of their environment, which has been specifically prepared for them to be academic, comfortable, and allow a maximum amount of independence.
• That children learn through discovery, so didactic materials that are self-correcting are used as much as possible.

Goals

The goal of Montessori is to provide a stimulating, child-centered environment in which children can explore, touch, and learn without fear, thus engendering a lifelong love of learning as well as providing the child the self-control necessary to fulfill that love.

Implementation

Montessori is a highly hands-on approach to learning. It encourages children to develop their observation skills by doing many types of activities. These activities include use of the five senses, kinetic movement, spatial refinement, small and large motor skill coordination, and concrete knowledge that leads to later abstraction.

Classrooms

Montessori classrooms are child centric. Furniture is child-sized, where no teacher's desk is present. The typical classroom consists of four main areas: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, and Mathematics. Practical Life includes activities such as buttoning, sweeping, pouring, slicing, tying, etc. Sensorial includes activities to stimulate and train hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Many classes also include areas of culture, geography, botany, and music

Most Montessori classrooms try to include ways for the children to interact with the natural world, perhaps through a classroom pet (rabbits, gerbils, mice, etc.) or a small garden where the children can plant vegetables or flowers.

Pedagogical materials

Every activity has its place in the classroom and is self-contained and self-correcting. The original didactic materials are specific in design, conforming to exact dimensions, and each activity is designed to focus on a single skill, concept, or exercise. All of the material is based on SI units of measurement (for instance, the Pink Tower is based on the 1cm cube) which allows all the materials to work together and complement each other, as well as introduce the SI units through concrete example. In addition to this, material is intended for multiple uses at the primary level. A perfect example of this is the "Knobbed Cylinder" materials. Not only do they directly offer a sensorial lesson, but indirectly the child's grip on the cylinders paves the way for holding a pencil, and the grades of cylinders allow for an introduction to mathematics.

Other materials are often constructed by the teacher: flower arranging, phonetic object boxes (small container of objects that have their corresponding word) for the language area, science materials (e.g. parts of animals or plants, etc.), scent or taste activities, and so on. The practical life area materials are almost always put together by the teacher. (All activities, however, must be neat, clean, attractive and preferably made of natural materials such as glass or wood, rather than plastic. Sponges, brooms, and dustpans are provided and any mishaps (including broken glassware) are not punished but rather treated simply as an opportunity for the children to demonstrate responsibility by cleaning up after themselves.)

At higher grade levels, the teacher becomes more involved in creating materials since not only the students' capacities but also the potential subjects widen considerably. Many of the earlier materials, moreover, can be revisited with a new explanation, emphasis, or use; for example, the cube that a five-year-old used as an exercise in color matching is revealed to the elementary level student to physically embody the mathematical relationship (a+b)³=a³ + 3a²b + 3ab² +b³.

Lessons

A child does not engage in an activity until the teacher demonstrated its proper use, and then the child may use it as desired (limited only by individual imagination or the material's potentially dangerous qualities). Each activity leads directly to a new level of learning or concept. When a child actively learns, that child acquires the basis for later concepts. Additionally, repetition of activities is considered an integral part of this learning process, and children are allowed to repeat activities as often as they wish. If a child expresses boredom on account of this repetition, then the child is considered to be ready for the next level of learning.

The child proceeds at his or her own pace from concrete objects and tactile experiences to abstract thinking, writing, reading, science, and mathematics. In the language area, for instance, the child begins with the sandpaper letters (26 flat wooden panels, each with a single letter of the alphabet cut from sandpaper and affixed to it). The child's first lesson is to trace the shape of the letter with their fingers while they say the phonic sound of the letter. A possible next level activity would then be the letter boxes (small containers each with a letter on the top, filled with objects that begin with that letter). After mastering these, the child may move on to the word boxes (small containers each with a short three-letter word on the top, for example, "CAT", containing a small wooden cat and the letters C, A, T). One child might move through all three levels of lessons in a few weeks while another might take several months; however, while there is a prescribed sequence of activities, there is no prescribed timetable. A Montessori teacher or instructor observes each child and provides each with their correspondingly appropriate lessons as they are deemed ready for them.

Benefits

Dr. Angeline Stoll Lillard's 2005 book Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius (Oxford University Press) presents the first real comprehensive overview of research done on the comparison of Montessori educated children to those educated in a more traditional manner. Lillard cites research indicating that the children do better in later schooling than non-Montessori children do, in all subjects, and argues the need for more research in this area.

A 2006 study published in the journal "Science" concluded that Montessori students performed better than their standard public school counterparts in a variety of arenas, including not only traditional academic areas such as language and mathematical reasoning, but in social cognition skills as well.

On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, because of a random lottery, attended other schools. By the end of kindergarten, the Montessori children performed better on standardized tests of reading and math, engaged in positive interaction on the playground more, and showed advanced social cognition and executive control more. They also showed more concern for fairness and justice. At the end of elementary school, Montessori children wrote more creative essays with more complex sentence structures, selected more positive responses to social dilemmas, and reported feeling more of a sense of community at their school.