We have had a busy, productive, four-day week. We continued our daily class meetings, led by the fifth years. We had group and individual lessons in history, language arts, and math. We started new books in class and finished books in Lit Circle. We also celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and started learning about his life.

Our class meeting agendas this week included a discussion of reorganizing the cubby area, people not doing enough of a variety of work during work cycle, and people needing to do a better job of cleaning up after themselves during and after work cycle. EACH of these agenda items was chosen by students. We are only in our second week of Class Meetings using the Positive Discipline approach and I am already seeing a positive change in the class. They are more settled and focused during work time and they are taking a more active approach to work together to solve their own problems in the classroom.

We started a new unit in History this week, the Timeline of Modern Humans. This is an overview of fourteen cultures of the modern human species, Homo sapiens sapiens. All of the cultures we will look at lived in Europe during the last 40,000 years, the Upper Paleolithic Age. We are focusing on European cultures only because most of the evidence for these stages in the development of humans was found first in Europe, so there are lots of books about these artifacts and the people we imagine using them. In Language Arts, we started a new writing unit this week, Informative/Explanatory Writing. We also completed a review of editing for content, punctuation, and capitalization.

We are excited about our new class read-aloud, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle. We have also been reading about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and are currently reading a book about the making of Martin Luther King Day, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round, by Kathlyn J. Kirkwood. On Tuesday we celebrated Dr. King by singing Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder, one of the main figures in the campaign to have the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. become a national holiday.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Karen and Angie

“There is a great sense of community within the Montessori classroom, where children of differing ages work together in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competitiveness. There is respect for the environment and for the individuals within it, which comes through experience of freedom within the community.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

Last weekend, Mrs. Tryforos and I attended a two-day workshop on Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom. This was easily one of the most useful and informative workshops I have ever attended. I returned with many tools to incorporate into the classroom right away. One of these tools is the Class Meeting.

In the past, I have written about our Upper Elementary Community Meetings. The Class Meeting follows the same basic format as those meetings, but with a few changes, which I view as improvements:

• Class Meetings are held three to five times per week (as opposed to our once-per-week Community Meeting)
• There are five jobs during Class Meetings:
  • Facilitator (Angie or I do this): Keeps the meeting on track, moves the meeting along, facilitates respectful sharing
  • Agenda Keeper: Anyone can contribute to the agenda and children contribute more than adults. The Agenda Keeper selects the oldest agenda item from the box for the meeting.
  • Time Keeper: Keeps track of the timing of each meeting segment and lets us know when the time is up
  • Scribe: Records the brainstormed suggestions of the class on chart paper
  • Secretary: Records the problem and solutions in a notebook which is a permanent record of the meetings and is accessible to all students, anytime
• There are four sections to the Class Meeting:
  • Compliments and Appreciations: A five to eight-minute opening where each person has a chance to give and receive a compliment or a thank you
  • Review of a past agenda item: The secretary reads one problem and solution from a previous meeting with a quick discussion to review how it’s going.
  • Brainstorming: The person who added the agenda item being discussed, shares it and we take turns brainstorming solutions. After the brainstorming, we vote (if it’s a class problem) or the person who shared the item chooses a solution (if it’s not a whole-class issue).
  • Connection Activity: A fun closing where we share jokes, riddles, or two-minute mysteries

We held our first three Class Meetings this week and the feedback from the students was very positive. They shared that they like the new format much better than the old one. You can find more information on Class Meetings here.

Wishing you a wonderful long weekend

Karen and Angie

Before break, fifth grade students were given a grammar assignment. After being given the following prompt, they were asked to rewrite it, adding a few sentences, using personal pronouns and their antecedents:

When she arrived there that morning, they were all running around, because it had escaped. She asked her and him where they saw it last. One of the others said he saw it go out the door when they came in…

They enthusiastically took that prompt, decided to collaborate, and ran with it. Here is their collaborative story…

When Lilly arrived at the restaurant on Sunday morning, the Pet Pack were all running around, because Heater the microwave had escaped. Lilly asked Kirby and Jewel where they saw it last. Kirby said he saw it go out the door when he and Jewel came in. Lilly went to go ask Toasty Toaster the Toaster Oven, Heater’s best friend, if Toasty knew anything about what Heater had done. Toasty said he hadn’t seen Heater all day, but he might be at his favorite spot, the sewers. Lilly asked Sewey the sewer rat if Heater was in the sewers recently.

Sewey said, “Yes, Heater was here two hours ago, carrying a cake. I tried to ask him, ‘Why the cake?’ when he took a piece of the pipe and ran off.” 

Lilly ran to Heater’s favorite climbing place, the cherry tree. When she asked Squirrely if Heater was there, Squirrely said, “Yep, Heater was here one hour ago, carrying a cake and a piece of a pipe that looked like it came from the sewers. He didn’t say a word, but he took my prized collection of acorn candles.”

Lilly said, “Thanks!” then ran off. Lilly tried to think. A cake, a piece of a pipe, and an acorn candle collection could only mean one thing…he was planning a surprise birthday party for someone…but who?

Lilly was in the middle of thinking when she heard some voices yell, “Surprise! Happy birthday, Lilly!”

When Kate arrived at the party that morning, the guests were running around, because the mad toaster oven had escaped. Kate asked John and Sara where they saw the toaster last.

One of the others said, “Mike saw the toaster go out the door when the guests came in.

Next, Kate called the police, “There is a mad toaster oven on the loose!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it,” the police officer said. “Oh, we see it, that thing is really mad. We are not going to get it, you’re on your own. Oh gosh, I am so scared.” 

So Kate took the closest rocket ship to the moon and looked down on the planet and saw the toaster. It was growing by the minute! Kate then called the SWAT team, but even they were too scared! Then Kate had an idea, “I should make the rocket into a laser!” So she did, and after much work, she BLASTED the now huge toaster off the face of the Earth! And then Kate heard a noise behind her. It was Allie with a ring of cake around her mouth. “Hey, can I get a ride with you?” asked Kate. 

When Mia arrived on the moon that morning, Bennett and Camden were both running around because Allie had escaped. Mia asked Bennett and Camden where they saw Allie last. Camden said he saw her go toward Mars when he arrived…

When Allie arrived at Mars, she found a cake and decided to sit down and eat it. Suddenly, a strange figure approached. It was Persila from Bennett’s story. “MY CAKE!” she exclaimed, “WHY ARE YOU EATING MY CAKE?”

“Mrm..,” Allie mumbled.

“This is the worst day of my li-,” Persila complained. “Wait a second…that’s not my cake…my cake was vanilla and that one is…chocolate.” 

“Hmm?” Allie mumbled again. 

Suddenly Persila turned around and marched right back to her rocket and launched back to Earth.

After Allie finished, she went back to the moon where she found Kate from Camden’s story, disassembling her rocket to turn it into a laser to shoot a gigantic toaster. After she shot the laser, she turned around to see Allie. Kate asked, “Can I get a ride home?”

“Sure,” Allie said, “you can go home with Mia.” Allie marched away to tell Mia that Kate was going home with her, and to tell them to launch immediately.

When Persila arrived at her party that morning, the other guests were all running around, because the cake had escaped. She asked Chuck and Margie where they saw the cake last. Chuck said he saw the cake run out the door when he came in, then Persila turned and ran as fast as she could all the way to the bakery where the cake was bought. She stormed in and yelled, “I NEED A MANAGER!” When the manager came in she said even louder, “DID YOU PUT LEGS IN MY CAKE?”

The manager calmly responded, “We did not mean to put legs in your cake. We’ve had three people come in to say the same thing. We must really stink.”

Persila then turned and stormed out. She returned to the party and said, “I WILL FIND THIS CAKE!”

Suddenly, from the other room, Margie yelled, “NASA’s launching a rocket to Mars.”

Persila walked to the TV room and sat down. Almost immediately she jumped up and yelled, “ISN’T THAT MY CAKE?” She had seen the cake boarding the rocket. She ran outside and called an Uber before anybody knew she was gone. When she arrived at NASA, she stormed into the control building and demanded that they stop the launch.

The scientists responded, “We can’t, we’re too far into the launch sequence.”

“Then I’ll stop it myself,” Persila responded in a heroic tone. She sprinted to the rocket and entered the bottom door. Suddenly, the rocket started to shake, it was time for liftoff. They were headed for Mars. When Persila stepped off the rocket onto Mars, she followed the footsteps of the cake all the way until she found Allie from Allie’s story (wink, wink, wink) eating the cake. “My CAKE! Wait,” she said, “that’s chocolate, I ordered vanilla.” Back to Earth she went. She followed her footsteps and entered the rocket. She turned the rocket on and flew back to Earth. When Persila arrived at Earth she ran back to the party, but before she got there, she almost tripped over a toaster oven in the middle of the road.

Suddenly it said, “Hi, I’m Toasty the Toaster Oven but everyone calls me Toasty. Is your name Priscilla?” 

“No, my name is Persila, but why do you want to know?”

“We had a party for Lilly and there was a cake that said, ‘Happy Birthday Persila.”

“WHAT?” she screamed, “Take me there NOW!” When she arrived, she barged in and said, “Who ate my cake?”

Through a bite of cake Lilly said, “Not me,” and burped. 

That is the story of Persila’s cake.

When the fifth graders shared their stories with the fourths this week, they did it with such enthusiasm and pride, and their classmates LOVED it! Sharing was filled with giggling and enjoyment. THIS is love of learning, one of the many benefits of the Montessori method.

Wishing you a beautiful weekend,

Karen and Angie

“For every exit, there is also an entrance.” -Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

Upper El students have had a fun week of preparations for our Winter Concert. This group of students worked incredibly hard and showed what amazing leaders they are during our practices as well as the performance, as we welcomed families and friends back to our Winter Concert tradition after two years without being able to gather as a whole school community.

A colleague stopped by the class towards the end of the week and remarked at how amazing it was that the children were so focused on their work. They worked on geometry, spelling, history, and reading comprehension assignments and they started putting finishing touches on their personal narratives. They also had grammar lessons and worked on follow up work for those lessons. Fifth years spontaneously decided to collaborate with each other on their grammar assignment and some included characters from each other’s story in their own. They are looking forward to sharing their stories with the class.

Thank you to all who sent in goodies for our class party! A big thank you for all of your support throughout the year. It is not by chance that this is such an amazing group of humans. We feel very fortunate to be guiding these incredible students and we are grateful to you for placing them in our care.

Wishing you joyful and peaceful holidays filled with love,

Karen and Angie

“An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of [the human], the enhancement of [their] value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.” -Maria Montessori

We were active and engaged this week! Individually, we continued to make great progress in our math lessons and work. In geometry, fourths learned about the difference between congruent, similar, and equivalent plane figures. Fifths learned formulas for finding the area of a rectangle and inverse formulas for finding the base or the height when given the area. Our history study of human evolution continued with the children adding information and illustrations to our class timeline of humans, and we began researching Homo neanderthalensis. In our language lesson this week, students learned the rules for capitalization and are now working on editing passages for capitalization errors. We also squeezed in some time to plant 52 flower bulbs in our garden beds!

After a week of hard work and lessons in math, geometry, history, and language, we spent Friday morning serving the greater community by making sandwiches for the St. Vincent DePaul Mission in Waterbury. This work is aligned with this age group’s grace and courtesy work of caring for others by being conscious of their needs and taking action to support them. Thank you to all who contributed ingredients for the sandwiches! These awesome students are getting very efficient at making sandwiches and I think we will increase our bread supply next month so we can make even more!

Wishing you an lovely weekend,

Karen and Angie

“This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with [their] hands and actively exercising [their] senses, also takes into account a child’s special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They can thus carryout an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations.” -Maria Montessori

Happy December! The first few months of school have gone by so fast! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration last week. Thank you to Raquel for helping us bake bread! Our pumpkin bread and cranberry orange bread came out delicious. We made enough to enjoy as a class on Monday and share with the school community on Tuesday.

Throughout their elementary years, Montessori students master math procedures and develop conceptual understanding of math concepts at a deep level. This is because their work begins concretely, with the use of carefully designed materials, before moving to the abstract. Their individualized work in the Montessori math curriculum prepares them for their later work in middle school and high school. But the benefits of Montessori don’t stop there. Students experience joy in this work. They look forward to tackling challenging problems instead of shying away from them. This week has been full of enthusiastic students participating in new math lessons, with everyone moving onto new concepts in their individualized work.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Karen and Angie

“As we observe children, we see the vitality of their spirit, the maximum effort put forth in all they do, the intuition, attention and focus they bring to all life’s events, and the sheer joy they experience in living.” -Maria Montessori

An observer of our Upper Elementary classroom would see most of the children collaborating on their work; this is intentional. Montessori elementary communities are designed to support this collaboration because it is recognized as a need for this age group. Elementary children crave interaction, not just in a purely social setting, but also in organized groups where they are focused on a goal with their peers. At this age, children form strong attachments to friends and want to be surrounded by their peers. For this reason, most of their work is collaborative, with the exception of when they are working on individualized skills. This is also the phase for “acquisition of culture” (Montessori). This is one reason why there is such a strong focus on learning about how people throughout history have contributed to society. The children assimilate this new knowledge about history as they are learning to contribute to their own world, classroom and beyond.

There is a great energy in the air the week leading up to a holiday. These children managed to harness that energy this week and put it into their work. They had great focus, working on assignments and research together. They were quite busy with math and vocabulary lessons and assignments as well as their collaboration on our class timeline of humans.

I’m really proud of these students for their leadership in our school community, leading the way with our composting program. Each day, two Upper El students went around to each classroom and collected their food scraps from the day and deposited them in our composting bin. Each day we saw increased participation throughout the school. Way to go Upper El! I leave you with this poem, spontaneously written by Cecelia.

Composting

Composting is good
You can compost wood

What can you compost?
Not a steel post

Wood chips, wood chips, you can compost that
But maybe not a big wet hat

Remember to compost every single day
And after you do, say “Yay!”

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road – the one less traveled by – offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of earth.” -Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Last week Upper Elementary students viewed the documentary, Kiss the Ground, a film that explains how we can stabilize Earth’s climate by drawing down atmospheric carbon using regenerative farming. We were all inspired by this film to take action. The following is the message Upper El students wrote to our school community.

Dear Fraser Woods Montessori Community,

As a class, we want to do our part to begin to take steps to help reverse climate change. Our first initiative is to create a composting program at Fraser Woods.

This week, we worked together with Mr. Fuchs to build a school compost bin. The bin is located beside the dumpster. We would like you to participate by saving your food scraps each day at snack and lunch. We will come around each day after lunch to collect the scraps and deposit them into the bin. These scraps will break down and become rich soil instead of releasing methane gas into our atmosphere.

Examples of things that CAN be composted are:

• raw fruits and vegetables
• egg shells
• tea bags (with the string removed)
• coffee grounds
• unbleached paper products
• wood/lawn scraps

Examples of things that CANNOT be composted are:

• processed food
• dairy
• meat

If you are interested in learning more about our inspiration, we invite you to watch the documentary, Kiss the Ground.

Thank you for helping us do our part to take care of our planet!

Sincerely,

Students of the Upper Elementary Class

 

Have a wonderful weekend,

Karen and Angie