Montessori teachers

[Lousli]

I'm starting my classroom really soon, the 25th! :

I'm a little nervous because even though I have 5 years of public school experience (one year charter M school) and a year of assisting in an elementary classroom, it will be my first year as a guide.

I'm teaching 6-9, but only have 1st and 2nd years right now as we are a new school and still working out the kinks. I will have 22 kids and an assistant.

My biggest question is that as I start the year I will be giving lessons to small groups of students, but the other students will not yet have had any lessons from me. Although there will be some cross-over materials from primary, most of my classroom is stocked with elementary things. The 2nd years, although they haven't had me as a teacher yet, will at least have experience with many of the materials.

What do they children do when they haven't yet had many lessons and so don't have many choices of what to work with? I want them to be doing meaningful work. I have of course a few ideas, but I'm a bit worried about the first week of school. Any experienced teachers want to give me some tips on this?

[Lillianna]

Lousli - are you back on the west coast? Good luck with your new class!!!

I think you could have more cultural and artistic materials out at the beginning of the year - objects to stimulate oral story telling (similar to "News Period" which is Primary show and tell - are you familiar with this?). Watercolor and drawing materials, listening to different genres of music as well as other social materials for the children to get to know one another such as "conversation cards" or "classroom care". You could also have a few puzzles or games (strategy). We do this in primary, at the beginning of the year we put out activities that are familiar to the child to help them feel comfortable. Over the first few weeks, these materials are gradually put away.

[Lousli]

Thanks! I am back on the West Coast (we moved back here at the beginning of June) and we've just been settling back in. I've been doing a lot of fiber arts stuff, spinning, dyeing, knitting, and even opened my own little Etsy shop. But now the school year is sneaking up on me and I'm starting to make plans. Thank you for the ideas and suggestions! I was really thinking about art activities and music, as well as some of the primary materials that they are already familiar with. I'm just a little nervous, I guess, with all the new things going on.

[nkm1968]

Good luck, DD2 starts LE in a new school tomorrow. DD1's LE teacher read out loud a lot that first year, Little House books, the Wheel on the School, the Number Devil. And a lot of cooking and art? Hope that helps, and mazel tov on passing your exams.

[MattBronsil]

Focus a lot on materials that will cross over into harder works as well. Don't necessarily teach the harder works, but think about the fact that:

The binomial and trinomial cube will stay in the room all year
The stamp game will always be around
The maps will be there all year
etc. etc. etc. Try to have as many of these things the child is familiar with that you won't have to put away later, but that you will teach more advanced things on.

If you have other experienced teachers at your school, discuss with them what to put out and watch what they are doing. They will have a good feel for how to start the year.

Matt

[Lillianna]

Lousli - my dd just started her first year of lower el. I was surprised that there are no art or music activities included in the class. Is this true to the training? The school we attend has long had "specialties" - art, music, gym, spanish...so I thought maybe they had just become accustomed to leaving these subjects to the specialists. I just wasn't sure if it should be part of the class and how to approach this with the other Guides (my colleagues) if it differs for your training. Most of them were trained in Bergamo.
btw, my dd (after only 2 days) mentioned that there wasn't a whole lot for her to do yet, so they are definitely aware of it. I know she will be getting plenty of new (incredible) lessons by and by.

[Katie063008]

Congratulations on your new class! I also teach a six to nine class - It's a great age. I usually start the year off with a circle to talk about the summer - otherwise you end up with a ton of chatting from excited friends! Then we move onto something that everyone can do - a team building game or something active. Then we have lesson on how to set up a page (date, margin etc. Some first years will need you to do this for them though) and an activity for the class ie introduce the creative writing book. You can suggest they write whatever they like but also provide at least one story starter. If you have students who can't write they can draw a picture that tells their story. While this is going on you can start small lessons, preferably with familiar materials. I like to start with bead chains, stamp games and reviews of familiar topics. For typical first years this might be a review of how to lay out the bead chain or how to choose a card with stamp game questions on it (I have made up cards for different levels. Yellow, static, green dynamic etc). For second years it might be starting up a research project on a topic that interests them. After a few lessons, you might want to ask the children to come to circle to discuss class rules (the children should come up with these, guided of course by you lol) Some teachers do this first off. Your choice. You can even get second years to create some skits for role play of rules. I usually end the morning with the work diary and handing in any written work that is ready to be marked (not all students will have written work every day). Then we talk about lunch routine, eat lunch, recess routine/rules, recess. The afternoon goes about the same alternating active activities with quiet ones. Children should be able to work on the assignments from lessons and second years are probably familiar with the room so they can take out a work they would like to practice. As you get more and more lessons done, the work cycle will fall into place and routine will be established. Good Luck! Would write more but baby very unhappy lol

Katie

[Lousli]

Originally Posted by Lillianna

Lousli - my dd just started her first year of lower el. I was surprised that there are no art or music activities included in the class. Is this true to the training? The school we attend has long had "specialties" - art, music, gym, spanish...so I thought maybe they had just become accustomed to leaving these subjects to the specialists. I just wasn't sure if it should be part of the class and how to approach this with the other Guides (my colleagues) if it differs for your training. Most of them were trained in Bergamo.
btw, my dd (after only 2 days) mentioned that there wasn't a whole lot for her to do yet, so they are definitely aware of it. I know she will be getting plenty of new (incredible) lessons by and by.

I had both art and music in my training. I have a complete art album as well as a music album, and even had to write a music exam and do a music oral exam (although they didn't count toward my AMI diploma). I knew nothing about music and learned the basics of reading and writing music and how to teach them to children, as well as a number of activities to teach songs and rhythm.

Our trainers were very adamant that we include both music and art in our teaching and not leave them to specialists. I have to admit though, I feel music is a weakness of mine and I'm not sure I will ever get to the stage where I am teaching my children to sight read! I did teach them a couple of songs though.

Congrats to your dd for starting lower el! My first week went pretty well, although I have a child that is certainly very challenging and I'm struggling to keep this little guy busy. When he's not busy, he's disruptive. And his attention span is very short, especially for work that challenges him. But we will see what I can do!