This week the Upper Elementary students were very excited to finally record the presentations they have been working so hard on. Using the Smart Board, they took turns presenting the slides which they worked collaboratively on. They ended by explaining their 3D models and answering questions from classmates. They are feeling very proud of themselves and also relieved that presentations are complete. As we talked about in Parent-Teacher Conferences, our Ancient Civilizations learning will continue in the form of taking what they have already learned and adding new information to it while learning to write and read about history. These lessons, along with many of our other history and geography lessons, encourage the students to have a strong sense of connection to all of humanity. Upper El students develop an appreciation of the contributions of their ancestors and of the diverse cultures and countries around the world. 

This weekend I will be editing and combining all of the research videos into one and will send it to you as soon as it is complete! We all can’t wait to share their hard work with you!

“The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing [them] for school, but for life.” -Maria Montessori

Since we are just finishing up a few days of ERB tests, I wanted to share some thoughts about standardized testing in a Montessori classroom. Many researchers believe that Standardized Testing measures superficial thinking and directly reflects how much a given skill has been practiced, and not depth of understanding. Testing, and preparing for testing, is not part of the Montessori curriculum, but Montessori is a preparation for LIFE. Because we realize that our students will be exposed to standardized testing after leaving FWM, we believe in preparing them for that. However, as a Montessori school, we take a different approach to testing than more traditional schools. As Montessorians, we don’t believe in setting aside large periods of time to learn things in order to perform well on a test. Instead, we foster a love of exploration, learning, and critical thinking. We focus on individual and small group lessons, assessing and evaluating as we teach and we observe our students as they interact with the materials and do their follow up work. It is during these observations that we can see if more work is needed in any particular area, or if a student is ready to move along at an accelerated pace.

This week we balanced periods of testing with extended periods of rambunctious play outdoors in the snow. On Thursday, we took advantage of Google Meet and had some friends who weren’t able to come to school join us virtually for our Literature Circles. Both groups are looking forward to finishing up their books this week and choosing new books. For the next book, we will be creating groups based on interest and the fourth and fifth year students will be mixed. We are looking forward to recording presentations at the beginning of next week and sending them out to you. We will also be diving back into our individual, large, and small group lessons in all subject areas. Finally, thank you all for taking the time to talk with me last week. I enjoyed sharing your children’s progress with you!

“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 – The Child, Society and the World (Unpublished Speeches and Writing)

As we get closer to recording presentations of Ancient Civilizations, we are focusing more of our time on research, even devoting morning work cycle to gathering and recording information in small groups. In addition to writing presentations, Upper El students are learning to keep track of and cite their resources, both printed and digital. We have now moved the dioramas into the classroom as well and students will be working on completing their models in addition to the written work they are doing for their group presentations. All of this intense focus is met with great enthusiasm by the Upper El students. They are thrilled and energized to immerse themselves into this work with their peers. We are looking forward to sharing the recorded presentations with you on Friday of next week.

Even with all of our focus on work, we are finding time to have lots of fun together. We had a great time playing outside in the snow this week, including an awesome Upper El vs. Middle School snowball fight. Upon returning to the classroom after recess that day, an Upper El student shared, “That was the best recess I’ve ever had in my entire life!” Another day this week, they created a snow slide on our playground and enjoyed taking turns sliding down the hill.

We have worked hard during this short week. The students’ ancient civilizations research projects are starting to come together. They are putting their MakerSpace and Art time to good use, making dioramas of their civilizations. It is wonderful to see how well they are collaborating on these projects. As we get closer to recording the presentations, we will concentrate our focus more completely on this group work and, towards the end of next week, will dedicate our work cycles completely to immersing ourselves into research.

In addition to our focused research in History, we continued with lessons in our other subject areas this week. In Geometry, the fourths learned to prove the equivalence between regular polygons and rectangles and fifths learned to apply a formula for finding the area of a trapezoid. In Biology we looked at functions of relationship in plants with a lesson on sensitivity and movement, called tropism. We learned about five different types of tropism: photo- (towards light), thermo- (towards heat), geo- (towards gravity), hydro- (towards water), and thigmo- (in response to touch or contact). Our Geography lesson on the work of air focused on the causes of local winds and rain.

This week we enthusiastically continued our work with ancient civilizations in preparation for our upcoming research presentations. Students started working together in groups of four to study the ancient civilizations of Egyptians, Romans, and Aztecs. On Monday the class collected all of the books from our classroom library on ancient civilizations and divided them up between the different groups. They are following a detailed research guide to help them pull the pertinent information from books their group chose. Art and MakerSpace work will be integrated with their research over the next several weeks, as they make models of their civilizations. The collaboration I am observing on a daily basis is impressive, down to their inclusion of their group members who are working from home.

Other work this week included large and small group lessons. In geometry, the fourths learned more ways to prove a trapezoid’s equivalence to a rectangle and fifths learned to use two formulas to find the area of obtuse triangles. In our large group geography lesson we looked at the causes of local winds and learned about sea breezes and land breezes. We also looked at how the seasons create steady winds that blow towards the equator and variable winds near large masses of land and water. We talked about parts of the world where monsoons are caused by changes in winds and areas of low pressure. Fourth grade language work this week focused on singular and plural nouns and fifth grade focused on regular and irregular verbs.

Thank you for your contributions to our sandwich making community service this week. I’m happy to say that each time we complete this process, we become a little better at it. Your children will be expert sandwich makers by the end of the year! We joyfully made and delivered over 200 sandwiches to St. Vincent DePaul.

I hope you all had a wonderful break and enjoyed the holidays with your families. We have had a happy and busy first week back full of collaborative work, individual lessons, and engaged class discussions.

This week we kicked off preparations for our upcoming research presentations during the first week of February with daily lessons on Ancient Civilizations. In Upper Elementary, we study civilizations to learn to see them as an evolutionary stage and to identify with the process of civilization. They learn to challenge the notion of a simplistic, linear progression of human development and they discover the most significant events of civilization. We explore the cultural contributions of civilizations and we hope these studies will arouse each student’s curiosity for expanded studies of civilizations. As we learn about the development of civilizations, we will explore how each group satisfied certain fundamental needs. We will look for ways they expressed basic human tendencies and will compare and contrast groups. Within each study, we will focus on geography, cultural activities, everyday life, and political and economic systems. Upper El students will be working in small groups, each group focusing on one civilization. Working together, they will complete their research in school. During the first week of February, they will present to their peers and I will record their presentations. The Ancient Civilizations group presentations will be shared with you at the end of that week. I’ll be sharing more information with you as we go!

“When a particular sensitiveness is aroused in a child, it is like a light that shines on some objects but not others, making of them [their] whole world.”…”[The sensitive period] comes for a moment but its benefits last for a lifetime.” -Maria Montessori