Getting back to a normal rhythm this week with group and individual lessons was nice. In addition to our weekly planned lessons in different curriculum areas, we have daily assigned work during the week. This includes work with analogies, puzzles involving reasoning skills, math word problems, and grammar. We correct these works together, sometimes discussing and comparing answers. This week, students enjoyed using our new Promethean board to explain to their peers how they solved the math word problems.

Our history lesson this week focused on artifacts we study in learning about human cultures by creating our own “trash heap.” We will use this trash heap in next week’s lesson when we learn about the expertise required at an archeological dig. In biology, we focused on the vital function of respiration in animals. We learned that respiration is the metabolic process by which organisms use oxygen, burn food, and release carbon dioxide. Fourth-grade geometry examined the equivalence between a rhombus and a rectangle by comparing the rhombus’s short and long diagonals with the rectangle’s base and height. Fifth graders learned how to use inverse formulas to find the missing base or height when given the area and a rectangle’s base or height.

In the Montessori story of the human being, there are three gifts humankind has been given that distinguish us from the rest of the animals – a mind with which to think, a heart with which to love, and hands with which to work. These gifts are given to us to know, love, and serve our world and ourselves. Maria Montessori felt that this was the cosmic task of our species. This is the basis upon which human work ought to be founded. (Lecture, University of Madras, 1940.)

The following is an excerpt from The Coming of Humans.

Human beings have a different kind of love than other animals. Other animals can love as well, but humans don’t only have one kind of it. We have the kind of love that two people share – the kind where people may be in love with each other – but we also have a different sort of love. Humans have love at a distance. We can even love someone we may never see. We may help others that we hardly ever know, just because they’re human beings. This love has an origin, and the origin is in the depths of time, when at some point in the past, people began to care for one another in a way that went beyond what other animals do. Our capability to love is our second gift. You and I and any other human can show our love for others. When something terrible happens to other people, we can support them in some way by giving them something – even if it may be that we will never know them, never know who they are, never meet them. We can do this without ever even expecting thanks. That’s a kind of love for others that other animals don’t have. We have that transcendent kind of love, when we choose to use it. 

This week the Upper Elementary students organized FWM’s annual Thanksgiving Food Drive. They enthusiastically spent their recess each morning collecting donations as they were dropped off during arrival. On Friday, they sorted hundreds of items for the two families we are supporting and loaded them onto Mr. Newman’s truck for delivery to the families. I wish you all could have felt the joyful energy in the room as they worked. After we finished and the donations were on their way, one student said, “I feel so good right now.”

Have a wonderful weekend,
Karen and Krystin

This week, we had a visit from the Botsford Fire Department to learn about fire safety, with a focus on being safe around stoves. We practiced what to do in case of a fire in the home and learned about the equipment on a fire truck.

Our class was very busy with lessons and assignments this week. There were numerous individual math lessons and lots of fantastic collaborative work in math. In geometry, the fourth graders learned about the equivalency between a rhombus and a rectangle. The fifth graders had their first of many area lessons. They learned that we use the square as a unit of measure when finding area, and they also discovered the formula for finding the area of a rectangle. In biology, the class worked in small groups to identify how different animals obtain their nutrition. In grammar lessons, the fourth graders focused on sentence analysis and breaking sentences into their parts. This week, they learned about the action, subject, direct object, and indirect object in a sentence. The fifth graders learned about collective nouns and how they differ from plural nouns. Students also had fun baking banana bread with Ms. Krystin this week. They are looking forward to doing more baking throughout the year!

Lastly, to all veterans, we express our sincere gratitude for your service to the country with courage and dedication. Happy Veterans Day!

We hope you have a wonderful weekend,
Karen and Krystin

It was a week of spooky fun and focused work in Upper El. We celebrated Halloween with a costume parade, a class party complete with many tasty foods brought by the children, and pumpkin carving. Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to our delicious spread! For some, it was their first time carving and pumpkin and there was a range of reactions to scooping out the seeds and soft inside of the pumpkin. After carving, a group of students separated the seeds from the rest of the innards and we have been enjoying roasted pumpkin seeds all week.

Our lessons this week included learning about the digestion process in biology, advanced equivalences in geometry, and identifying parts of speech in language. Individual students also had various lessons in math. We added two new pieces of independent work this week as well. The first is puzzles which are designed to help children sharpen their ability to reason, draw inferences, and evaluate evidence, all of which are important and vital critical thinking skills. The puzzles they worked on this week involve using deductive logic; students must draw conclusions based on what they know as certainly true or false, or unknown. The second new work is analogies. When students work with analogies they sharpen their reasoning skills as they analyze the subtleties of language and relationship. Analogies are useful tools for developing students’ grasp of concepts and ideas in different content areas.

Now that the weather has turned colder, please make sure your child has proper outdoor clothing each day at school. This means a warm coat for our morning recess and possibly a hat and gloves or mittens as the temperature continues to drop. We go out to play when the temperature is 20 degrees or above.

Upper elementary Montessori students study the parts of speech to become conscious of the diversity of language and how words do their work. Classifying a word depends on the work it does in the sentence, and Upper El children are asked to draw fine distinctions between types of functions. We look for categories of naming, describing, or relationship words. Work at this level prepares students for logical analysis, where it becomes even more apparent that the name a word takes in a context is totally dependent on the job that word is doing.

This week, we reviewed all of the basic parts of speech with mini-lessons on each. Then, students were asked to identify the part of speech for each word in some sentences from a book we are currently reading in class. What happened next was magical. Students enthusiastically collaborated, referencing dictionaries and our grammar flow chart hanging in the classroom. As I observed them working, I kept hearing, “This is so much fun! I love grammar!” I immediately took out my camera and recorded a short video so you could share in their enthusiasm.

We also had a fantastic class meeting to end our week. When I attended the Positive Discipline class last year with Gina Tryforos, I learned that students often have the same concerns about a classroom as teachers. If teachers are patient and let the class meeting process work, the children will solve most problems. Our most recent agenda item, written by a student, was “behaving when there’s no teacher in the room.” As I sat silently in the meeting and listened to the students brainstorm, I experienced the success of the process. Students took turns coming up with excellent solutions to the problem without me saying a word. This was just as meaningful for the children as it was for me.

“We must see the individual in [their] place in society because no individual can develop without the influence of society. It is like the nourishment of the body – we can talk about food, but if there is no food, our stomach cannot digest anything. Although we have lungs, we cannot breathe without air.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

We view the class meeting as the hub of a wheel that builds a community that fosters belonging, mutual respect, and cooperation; it supports the entire community. Many social and behavioral problems in an elementary classroom affect more than just the people directly involved, they have an effect on the whole classroom. In a class meeting, everyone shares their thoughts and feelings, and the group helps their classmates find solutions.

There are generally four different types of problems that are solved in the elementary Class Meeting.

• Individual problems: difficulty finishing their work, organizational challenges, playground issues, making friends.
• Problems that affect the whole group: people aren’t putting their work away, lessons are too long, people are being disruptive, and jobs aren’t getting done.
• Interpersonal problems: conflicts between two or more students.
• Ideas: field trips, projects, celebrations.

We have class meetings three times per week. There are four parts to the format: compliments and appreciations, follow-up on prior solutions, agenda items, and connection activity. The entire process takes 20-25 minutes. Our fifth-grade students take turns facilitating the meetings. Some important roles they take on are timekeeper, agenda keeper, scribe, and secretary.

This week, our agenda items were: people are holding the guinea pigs too long, and people are not being careful with the materials. Through brainstorming and discussion, Upper El students were able to come up with solutions for both problems, giving them ownership and buy-in of the solutions. We encourage you to ask your child to tell you about our class meetings!

“We can become sensitive to the needs of others; we can feel worthwhile, respected, and appreciated. We can learn to alleviate others’ problems. Not by words but by actions. We must work for the general establishment of human dignity, mutual respect, and mutual assistance to truly have a “democratic society.” -Rudolf Dreikers

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Karen and Deb

I look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming Parent-Teacher Conferences on October 26. Look for an email sent today to sign up for your time slot.

We’ve had a busy week here in Upper Elementary. In addition to our lessons, we added some new things to our daily work cycle.

Before starting their work, students respond to a daily journal prompt. Journaling is a great way to reflect on everyday experiences and relationships and can help us get in better touch with our thoughts and feelings. A journal offers a safe space to express and work through emotions. These journals are for each student’s eyes only to honor that safe space. The second new addition is a daily word problem. Students are encouraged to work together to solve each problem, allowing them to tell and write about their thinking process.

In our history lesson this week, we discussed evidence that may indicate our closest living relative: the species with which we share common ancestry. Using cladogram diagrams, we looked at the alternatives, remembering that we are looking for the animal with whom we share an ancestor. We compared humans with gorillas and chimpanzees by evaluating complicated evidence for the different possibilities. We compared bones and teeth, soft body parts, chromosomes, and molecules. As we completed this work, we discovered that humans share an unknown ancestor with chimps and that ancestor shares an unknown ancestor with gorillas. In other words, it seems we are most closely related to chimpanzees.

Fourth-year students learned about six regular polygons and some of their lines in geometry, such as major and minor base, height, diagonal, bisector, perimeter, and point. Fifth-year students learned to show equivalence between a regular polygon and a rectangle.

Our biology lesson introduced students to the “evolutionary strip.” Using a series of cards arranged in evolutionary order, we reviewed the common and taxonomic names of the familiar animals shown. Students noticed missing labels under two unfamiliar animal groups and were introduced to two new animals, amphioxus and lamprey. They learned that amphioxus had the first notochord that went from the tail to the head and that the lamprey had the first vertebral column.

Finally, Upper El students are enjoying creative writing time, and many have started collaborative stories with friends. They have especially enjoyed sharing their stories in progress with the class at the end of writing time, and we have loved hearing them!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
Karen and Deb

“Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

We enjoyed our trip to The Adventure Park this week. This is such a wonderful first field trip of the year. It provides real opportunities for the children to bond with, encourage, and support each other outside the classroom. Helping each other at a high ropes course is necessary and creates natural opportunities for teamwork. I saw children challenging themselves to try courses with intimidating and challenging elements.

In general, going out on field trips is beneficial for children. They can practice grace and courtesy with each other and people outside Fraser Woods we encounter on the trip. Taking trips develops children’s resilience, courage, and independence and teaches them about our interconnectedness with nature and the world. Field trips also provide opportunities to apply their knowledge in real-world settings and help children develop responsibility, manners, and cooperation.

Upon returning from our field trip, the children seemed more bonded, with new friendships and connections formed during our experiences in the trees.

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” -John Muir

Have a fabulous weekend,
Karen and Deb