Today in class, I mentioned that
I teach at a religious education Montessori school. I feel like this style of
education isn’t discussed much in college classrooms or in regular education
conversations; I had personally never heard of it until last year when I was
asked if I wanted to volunteer in this ‘atrium’. I wanted to give a bit of a
description of Montessori style classrooms because they are incredibly
different from traditional education classrooms. The environment in a
Montessori classroom is of the utmost importance: this is one of the differences
from tradition classrooms. The classroom is filled with manipulatives that give
students a concrete item to work with. They are hands-on learning devices that
allow students to learn on their own without direct instruction from a teacher,
although lessons with these are given. Secondly, students are not grouped
together by age; they are grouped by developmental level. Because there is such
a variance in rooms, the younger students learn from the older students and
vice versa- not exclusively from the teacher. Therefore students can learn at
their own pace and about ideas that they are interested in instead of what a
teacher wants them to be interested in. Additionally, students are given large
chunks of time where they are allowed to direct their own learning and work
with what interests them in the classroom. I have found this very helpful in
understanding exactly where a child is in his/her thought process by observing
what they choose to work with in their free time.
This article [ http://voices.yahoo.com/choosing-school-montessori-method-vs-traditional-6817208.html?cat=4
] gives a very good list of both advantages and disadvantages of this classroom
style. I think that this style of learning definitely has pros and cons and
although I don’t think I want to teach in a Montessori school, I do want to
include some of the methods I have learned into my future classroom. If any of
you ever get a chance to watch a Montessori classroom in action, I would highly
recommend it as a great learning opportunity to see another style of teaching.
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ReplyDeleteSarah-
ReplyDeleteI also didn't know very much about Montessori schools even though I am taking all of these education classes. I think they should be discussed and observed more like you said because it really is an interesting school structure. I like they way students are grouped by developmental level instead of age. I bet this takes away a lot of pressure students get when they are not able to keep up with someone else in their grade at any other school. I also like that the students can learn from each other about topics they are interested in as oppossed to learning strictly from a teacher about topics they have no interest in.