The Montessori Kindergarten Year
Many of our parents ask when they should transfer their kiddos to the next school. Here are few excerpts from a wonderful white paper written by two current leaders in the Montessori community, Betsy Coe and Tim Seldin:
"Montessori is an approach to working with children that is carefully based on what we’ve learned about children’s cognitive, neurological, and emotional development. Although sometimes misunderstood, the Montessori approach has been acclaimed by some of America’s top experts on early childhood and elementary education as the most developmentally appropriate model currently available. One important advantage that Montessori offers the five-year-old has to do with how it helps the young child to “learn how to learn.” ... "Montessori is focused on teaching for understanding. In a primary classroom, three and four-year-olds receive the benefit of two years of sensorial preparation for academic skills by working with the concrete Montessori learning materials. This concrete sensorial experience gradually allows the child to form a mental picture of concepts like: How big is a thousand? How many hundreds make up a thousand? And What is really going on when we borrow or carry numbers in mathematical operations? The value of the sensorial experiences that the younger children have had in Montessori have often been underestimated by both parents and educators. Research is very clear that young children learn by observing and manipulating their environment, not through textbooks and workbook exercises. The Montessori materials give the child concrete sensorial impressions of abstract concepts, such as long division, that become the foundation for a life-time of understanding. Because Montessori teachers are well trained in child development, they know how to present information in developmentally appropriate ways. In many, many American schools, children do exercises and fill in workbook pages with little understanding. There is a great deal of rote learning. Superficially, it may seem that these children are learning the material, however, all too often, a few months down the road, little of what they “learned” will be retained, and it will be rare for the children to be able to use their knowledge and skills in new situations. Learning to be organized and learning to be focused is as important as any academic work. Doing worksheets can be impressive to parents, but there is rarely any deep learning going on. More and more educational researchers are beginning to focus on whether students, young or adult, really understand or have simply memorized correct answers." ... "The five year old in Montessori classes often help the younger children with their work, actually teaching lessons or correcting errors. Anyone who has ever had to teach a skill to someone else may recall that the very process of explaining a new concept, or helping someone practice a new skill leads the teacher to learn as much, if not more, than the pupil. This is supported by research." ...
To read the full four-page white paper, click here:
