Montessori Consulting

Tuesday evening I attended an informational meeting for the middle school program that is starting in August. Some of the parents of my elementary students mentioned that their children did not think they had been introduced to the head of the middle school!

She and I talked about that afterward and thought it would be a good idea to have her come to class and let the children interview her. We thought it would be great if we videotaped the interview, too.

Today as a journal prompt I asked the students in my class to think about questions they would like to ask the middle school teacher about that school. One fellow misunderstood the assignment and came up with burning knowledge-based questions like: Do iguanas live in wetlands? He was looking for another expert to help him with his great brain project!

The questions from the children are quite revealing, I think. I have them listed below. While we were getting these compiled another sub-discussion was going on (one the children did not know I could hear). That discussion went something like this: I have to wait two years before I can go to the middle school. Wow! I have to wait longer than that. I wish I could go next year. How long do you have to wait? It will be three years for me.

Several children were involved in this secondary discussion. There was no indication that any of the children were upset about being in Montessori, but the thought of a real farm school is truly exciting to them.

Here are their interview questions:

Will there be a cafeteria?
Will there be science lessons?
What animals will be at the farm?
Do you like pumpkin pie since we will be growing pumpkins?
Is there biology there?
Will there be books there?
Will there be language lessons?
When can we play outside?
What does it look like?
Where will they put the building?
Will there be a library?
What will it be like?
Will there be math?
Can we name the chickens?
Will there be things to build?
Will we do something different every month?
What are some good lessons?

The actual interview will take place one day next week. I can hardly wait.

This week has been like a whirlwind. It is hard for me to realize that it is already Wednesday. Snippets of the week will have to suffice!

Cut and chat with several helpful parents on Monday. So nice to have parent actually come into the elementary space and help prepare things. One of the tasks they completed was the bags that students will decorate for exchanging and taking home their Valentines. The finished work was noticed by several students and I caught many comments about the upcoming festive day.

Tuesday was lost in a fog. I have been fighting a cold and had pulled my back Monday afternoon. I rue that last week I glibly answered a parent question about how I stay well with all the kids who come down with things. Instead of saying that I save getting sick for holidays (true), I should have said that I have just been very fortunate this year. Alas, my fortune ran out! We did do a writer’s workshop Tuesday afternoon with the older elementary students and they wanted to know if we were going to do that every Tuesday (with excitement!). They were pretty thrilled with how creative they could be in only five minutes!

Wednesday is always music day. With my back still bothering me some, I did not participate as much as usual. I was pleased to note that our newest young student was much more at ease this week. This afternoon she and I even talked about the elephant song that Georgi taught them. It was cute with a hand puppet. I love the way Georgi incorporates all sorts of skills into the music class. This week it was counting.

After music I made sure all the early childhood students had a chance to meet our chinchilla. She is mostly nocturnal so the younger folks who simply pass by her cage each week did not realize there was a critter living there. Even Georgi thought the cage was empty. I coaxed her out with a few raisins, and the whole early childhood class got to see her. They were very respectful and did not frighten her.

Then something unusual for the elementary started today. Our book orders from Scholastic arrived yesterday and there was another one of the free charts included about having the class read 100 books. I have just been too busy to share these with the class, but I realized that they would really, really appreciate the reason for doing so. Scholastic will protect 100 acres of rain forest for each class that reads 100 books. This gives our young people a sense of doing something for the world. When I got back into the classroom after all the music classes, a student announced, “We are already up to 77!” I had to explain to him that we will be reviewing with the children which books they have read in order to get them on the chart. We started that this afternoon. I was pleased to see how engaged with the idea the students are.

Yes, the week is flying by, but, oh, we have been busy!

We have been busy with many things at school and sometimes communication among all the constituents suffers for that reason. We had our first staff meeting in a while last night (that is one of the areas that has suffered). I really enjoy having a chance to hear from everyone what is happening in the school. There are so many stories to share of what the children are doing.

One of the things that I brought up, though, is that I have been hearing from parents that they miss the regular updates of what their children are doing that I used to provide when I spent more time in the early childhood class. Valerie is going to take over that task, so parents should feel more connected once again. It isn’t hard to have the computer records printed for the past week (or for whatever time frame) printed, but Valerie hasn’t learned how to do that yet. A quick training session should have her up and running.

I have also been enjoying the information meetings I have been having with the parents of students who will be moving into kindergarten and elementary this year.

I set up a Yahoo group for our parents, too. It is a private group, so only parents can join, but those who are interested may check it out at Yahoo groups. Our group name is NHMS_parents. There hasn’t been any action, yet, but I wanted to ensure that parents could share among themselves and with us teachers.

Today’s technology makes some communication easier. For that I am glad.

When we get up in the morning and have weather like today’s, the question for parents is often whether to bring their students to school. We certainly did not have a full house today, but I heard from a several parents that their children really wanted to come today. The children only question whether their parents will be able to get them to school, not whether they want to go!

Carl and I live fairly close to school. If we can get there, we go ahead and open up. That way if parents opt to bring their children, we are ready for them. Some of the staff tried to make it today, but were not successful. It was not a problem. There were enough of us to handle the number of children we had.

One student arrived just before lunch and checked the job list to see what his job was for today. When he saw that he was supposed to set up the counters for lunch he hurried into the multipurpose room to get that ready in the short amount of time he thought he had. We had to rescue him from his responsibility. He was so intent on it, that he had not noticed that as a treat we were eating in the classroom and all the set up had been taken care of. I am constantly impressed with my class of students.

I do not have to ask whether they will grow into responsible adults. The answer is in their actions now as children.

In the elementary we have a thriving post office. The students write letters to one another and “send” them through the mail. First they get a stamp and envelope from one of the adults. In that process we read the letter and offer any suggestions for improvement to help make the letter more understandable. For emergent writers, we only ask that the names of the sender and recipient be legible.

Over time we raise the bar. As the students become more proficient, we ask that they revise for better form, complete sentences, or appropriate punctuation. They never realize that we are teaching them the conventions of letter writing.

There is mail to deliver every day.

Sometimes we teachers get mail, too. There have been several very sweet notes to the teachers recently. It is touching to receive a message from the heart of a young person.

Here are samples:
I hope you hade a good day you are a great techer’s.

Toow ulita frum …..

Dear Uleta, Thank you for your scool.

All these messages are precious.

Dear, dear students,
You are what makes teaching so wonderful. Thank you.
Aleta

We had a different kind of afternoon today. I had missed all of the morning since my dad made an emergency visit to the hospital in the middle of the night. I made the mad dash in to be with him and did not get to leave the hospital until nearly lunchtime today. (So now the kids and teachers have seen me unwashed and un-brushed in yesterday’s clothes!)

We have been reading the Little House books and Carl had brought a large newly delivered box of Little House porcelain dolls to school for me today. I let the children imagine what special item each of the dolls would be holding. Their ideas revealed how much of the details of the books they have absorbed. They suggested that Ma should be holding knitting. I have to admit that is more appropriate than the cherry pie that she has. Some thought Pa should have a gun, but they agreed that the fiddle was perfect. Almanzo was holding a pitchfork. We just finished the chapter where he and Royal used pitchforks to spread the sawdust around the ice blocks in the icehouse. What a nice coincidence. They have not yet “met” Grace yet, but I told them that they will understand how appropriate the sprig of flowers are when we get

It was not what anyone might call an academic afternoon. In view of my sleepless night, it was about the best I could offer. We did have a discussion about why Nellie Oleson had developed such an unpleasant personality. That fits into our education for peace.

We all agreed that the only character missing is Jack the brindle bulldog. He was such a part of the family, the children thought there should be a doll for him, too.

The truth is, that the Little House books have become an important part of our classroom community.

Our phone has been ringing and our calendar is filling up with parents of children looking ahead to next year. This is a very busy time for us. There were two observers in the early childhood class Wednesday. And Wednesday is our music day, too. Carl bemoaned the fact that the children would come back into the room after music and our observers would see them at their most “disorganized.” But what he often forgets is that our classroom at its most disorganized is a far cry from what a typical early childhood classroom looks like.

Sometimes our observers who come at this time of year worry that their children are not so quiet or settled as the children they see in the class. What is hard for them to realize is that the classroom has worked its magic on the children. When school starts in August, the classroom is not as quiet or settled as it is now, either.

Looking ahead I know that many of the children of the observers who are visiting us now will be new students in the classroom next August. They will come into our carefully prepared environment and feel the magic, and grow in skill and character. I love to see how children naturally blossom when they come into a classroom that is designed for them. Looking ahead even further, I can imagine the children that we guide through their early years becoming the leaders of tomorrow. Looking ahead…

Within every Montessori classroom there is a unique culture that emerges. Of course, we are always working on helping our students to develop a culture of respect. That is one of the cornerstones of Montessori environments for any age.

Beyond that basic premise, there is the personality of the classroom that grows and changes with the students and even with the season at times.

We have been watching a new culture develop around the Albanesi command cards. These are handy cards for helping the children move into areas where they particularly need some growth. We have never relied on those cards as teachers do in some classrooms, but they have been available for a few years. The new culture is that these cards have become a highly desired trigger for activity. The kids are finding pleasure and a sense of accomplishment in moving through them. A nice thing about the cards is that they allow the children a great deal of academic autonomy. And when they are at loose ends, they know that they can always go to a command card to get an idea for something to do.

As an observer within the classroom, I find this new culture an interesting development.

Since we are a state approved school, we must kowtow to the NCLB testing requirements. I have been very dissatisfied with the T-CAP tests (Terra Nova) that we have had to administer every year for a number of reasons. First of all, as a Montessorian, I realize that careful observation will provide better understanding of the progress of any child. Of course, NCLB is not about what is best for children (or schools, for that matter).

I was determined to find a better solution this year. I’m thrilled that through careful research I found an alternative that is not only NCLB compliant, but a more authentic assessment tool – the Brigance Assessment of Basic Skills. On the down side, it is more time-consuming and more expensive than administering the T-CAPs. I think the nicest feature of our new assessment is that we can fold it into the normal class day and do short segments either individually or in small groups of children. For this reason, the students do not feel any stress over it as many of them do when faced with “high stakes testing.”

In terms of benefits for the teachers, it far outstrips any “standardized” test. For one thing, we can see immediately how the children are doing and administer more detailed assessments in any area that we consider it might be needed. With immediate feedback, we can start adjusting lesson presentations to make a difference for the student. T-CAP results do not arrive until just before school starts of the next year. How helpful is that?

I have started giving assessments already. About half the class has completed the basic math computation placement test and the word recognition test. The best moment came this afternoon after a few children had completed the mathematics placement test. One child made his own assessment, “I think I need to work more on division.” That never would have happened with the T-CAPs. I made the right choice.

As the holiday break is drawing to a close, we spent a few hours at school today getting things ready for the return of the students on Thursday.

I mistakenly thought that it would only take about an hour to do all the little tasks, but that hour stretched to three. It is amazing how many little things just pile up over even a short break like this one.

We got the groceries for school this morning and dropped them off before having some lunch at home. This afternoon I got the book shelf ready, set up the snacks for our orientation visits tomorrow and also for school on Thursday. That was more involved than usual since all the dishes and glasses had been put away before the open house on the last day of school. I also set up a new water filter.

In the classroom I put up new pictures in the displays, fed the animals and put the laundry away. I also set up the daily board for the elementary. The one in the early childhood classroom still needs to be done, though.

I also changed the marquee out front. We did not need to know about the open house any more! And I got the book orders ready to be stamped and sent home. But that reminded me that I still need to write the newsletter.

In the middle of all this industry I remembered that I had to make the new name cards and labels for the two new children joining the early childhood class. Since they are visiting on Wednesday, it is a good thing that I remembered to do that.

During all my many tasks, Carl was replacing the sink cabinet in the multipurpose room. That will be a nice change for the children when they return.

So many things to get ready. But now I feel eager for the return of all those smiling faces.