Expanding "Circle Time"

Maria Montessori said that peace starts with educating children. And she was right. Today I was witness to a wonderful moment of children looking beyond themselves and seeing how they could help others.

Today at circle time one of our third year students brought in a news article with a photograph of children crossing a broken bridge to get to school. This photo sparked a huge conversation about getting to school safely. We discussed how a flood could damage the bridge and how people in different countries have different needs and abilities to solve those problems.

As we were cleaning up the classroom from lunch 2 of the older children came to me with a plan. This plan was that “our” school could raise money for “their” school so that they could rebuild their bridge and get to school safely.

Not only did they have a plan of what they wanted to do but how they were going to do it. They were going to make posters and put out jars or boxes to collect the money and we would count it all up and send it to them.

So the afternoon “work” became putting their plan into place. They made posters, helped find collection boxes in the school and posted them at the pick-up and drop off locations of the school house.

To help their project I notified families of the school through email so that they understood what the children were trying to accomplish.At the end of February we will count the money, write a letter and send it all to the Red Cross to help those who are currently in need.

I was so proud of those children; their enthusiasm to help those in need and their initiative to figure out a way that they could do it is both heartwarming and encouraging. Our world will be a better place because of them!



For more information on the story that triggered the children's compassion, check out the news article.

Learning to Read in a Great Classroom

Every day is exciting in a classroom with 3 to 6 year olds, but none is more exciting when one of the children reads for the first time. Watching as they decode each of the sounds, stringing them together and then figuring out the message is an inspiring privilege. Recently in the class we have had an entire group of children who have made the jump from building words to reading them. This results in a frenzy of requests around whose turn it is to read to one of the adults in the room and it is exciting to see the classroom working so well.

There are a few elements you may have noticed in the description above that are worth exploring a little more, first is the frenzy of requests and the second is the idea that children build words before reading them.

The desire of the children to do their work is one indicator of a classroom that is working well. It is not something that occurs 100% of the time with 100% of the children but if it is not happening it is one of the most significant tasks of the Montessori teacher to figure out how to create an environment for each student that unleashes their desire to learn. This does vary from child to child and often includes very individual motivations such as a modeling one of their peers or siblings or, in the case of reading, to get to read a favourite story. For my own son one of his motivations was the read more stories of knights and castles. So again the theme of following the child to find areas they want to explore is key. In our classroom there is currently a number children who do want to model their peers (not in an envious or jealous way, but, because reading is exciting). That excitement is another area that teachers and parents can contribute to. For instance, in our classroom you don’t “have to do math and language and culture” every day. You only “get to do one math and language and culture” until you have done a variety of work. This is not strictly the same idea with a better marketing department: The learning and work in the classroom truly is exciting to them and taking away the assumption that school is unpleasant allows that to shine through. Parents, in particular those new to child centered learning such as Montessori, most often ask “how do you get the children to do work they don’t like” and reversing the idea to the concept that learning is really what comes natural and can be seen as exciting is one significant part of the answer to that question.

While we do avoid the myth of school work as unpleasant we don’t avoid the concept of work being challenging or significant, though we are as we have discussed in other posts careful around the concept of praise. By recognizing the task the child can begin feel the internal sense of accomplishment. The phrase “those are such big words, you are such a good reader” tends to emphasize the difficulty accomplishing and external acknowledgement for accomplishments so we tend to use language more like “being able to read is exciting, do you like being able to figure out the stories?”.

In terms of challenging work that is a constant balance for each child, to ensure they have the tools to be successful for the next step in the process while ensuring interest is maintained: the tasks should remain both significant and attainable. In terms of reading and word building this is the second significant implication I want to explore from the experience of reading in our classroom: The inversion of “writing” and “reading”. Outward verbal communication (in education jargon known as “expressive language”) and inward verbal understanding (in education jargon known as “receptive language”) are useful to consider separately, but, they are not truly separate. For instance, much of an infant’s ability to understand language comes from the process of creating their own noise, initially babbling then seeing and hearing feedback and moving to creating the sounds they hear and through that process beginning to attach meaning to the words. It would be difficult to learn language without the opportunity to produce language and hear feedback. This observation on verbal language underlies the Montessori approach to written language that begins with building words from the sounds of the letters. This process takes advantage of the fact that the children typically already have verbal language so the process of attaching meaning to words is much simpler than an infant learning to talk. However, the feedback process involved in building words is foundational to reading as it assists with recognizing a word by reconstructing it during early reading which initially involves phonetically sounding it out in this process. This same process also explains the unusual habit of teaching letter sounds rather than letter names as it becomes easier to directly produce words from the letter sounds rather than having the extra step relating sound and letter name.

All the children are working on important activities in the classroom and this fall so far has been very exciting for many of the children who have passed the very visible milestone of beginning to read. I hope that this post has explained a little more about how that excitement happens and the process we use in allowing children to explore language. We have been very excited to see them enjoying their success.

“We need schools for ‘Artists’”

Guest blog written by Craig Dunk .

I had the pleasure of hearing Seth Godin passionately and humorously explain the concept “We need ‘Artists’” as a keynote speaker recently. If you are in the Information Technology field you may be familiar with Seth as an author and speaker and if you get a chance to hear him speak I strongly encourage you to do so.

The thesis resonated very well with me and many of the audience members hearing the keynote at Educause (an Information Technology conference targeted at Higher Education). You’ll note that the word “Artists” is in quotes because for the purpose of the keynote Seth did not mean visual artists or performance artists per se. He used the phrase “artist” to distinguish the activities from those tasks which are proscriptive or perform functions with a known outcome.

In talking about this Seth was adding his voice to the observation that the future needs of the societies in our world are unlikely to lie with repetitious tasks. So while many economists and pundits take the position that this means we should be educating children to work in computer science or other knowledge economy jobs rather than manual labour Seth and others are pointing out a more subtle point and that is the work people will do in the future is likely work that is being done for the very first time. Therefore it is not enough to learn how to perform a particular task in school: you have to learn how to adapt and learn how to do something for the first time. In Seth’s words to learn how to be an artist.

I was pleased to see he also acknowledged that being an artist was not an ivory tower or even a core academics type skill that is often promoted to the neglect of other courses or pursuits. He noted for example that the reception staff have two sets of function, the repeatable one of routing calls would have been for him “not art” and is often seen as replaceable by technology, but, the other function of solving problems and making people feel welcome was a dynamic problem and required a new response to each person and situation. So he explored briefly the concept of “Receptionist as Artist”.

However, while Seth is a great speaker his domain of expertise is marketing and internet technology and a 30 minute presentation does not allow time to fully explore the topic of how the idea of being an “artist” relates to different jobs, careers and interests. In fact one of the best explanations of this is by the author Matthew Crawford in Shop Class as Soulcraft where he talks both about what kinds of pursuits can be unexpectedly gratifying and immune to repetition (and therefore as a side effect remain economically viable; though the core thesis is about fulfillment rather than economics).

Being the conference was directed to teachers Seth also tied this concept back to how and what we teach children. In doing this Seth echoed many of the concepts of "factory education" explored by Sir Ken Robinson in a video on the origins of our education system. What both speakers suggest is that we are often working in an education system that provides answers and not skills to ask important and hard questions. Seth cites an example of speaking to a class of grade 4 students and bringing in a “drinking bird” toy. When he asked them how they thought it worked, they all pulled out their pencils and then waited for him to impart the answer. An “artist” to Seth would not wait to be told about something; they would explore.

For me Seth Godin and Sir Ken Robinson and Matthew Crawford make a compelling case that social and community resilience and individual fulfillment is served better by taking a lot of different paths to education, embracing a variety of approaches and encouraging questions over answers.

And that is our challenge as teachers and parents, how do we create environments that are not just about the facts and the specific skills but the ability to be independent to explore your own world and feel comfortable taking the risks that artists need to take.

Menu Online

We are using Oryan Catering for our meals. Orayan provides a variety of meals to fill a 5 week cycle. We have posted the full menu cycle so you can checkout the meal plan for the day. We have started this cycle at week 1 but you can also always ask and we'll let you know the current week number in the meal plan. Lastly, you can of course check it out at the school where this list is posted. Note there may be some changes in snacks that we prepare based on logistics or availability of seasonal fruit and we always make milk and juice available at snack.

Providing healthy and delicious meals and snacks is very important to us so please let us know any feedback and of course any special dietary needs.

Official Grand Opening

On September 1^st, 2011 we held a small ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate Echo Montessori’s Grand Opening. It marked the official start to a plan that was conceived 4 years ago. A year ago we opened the doors of the school house to 5 children. We spent the winter renovating the building while we rented space at St. Matthias Church. On April 16^th, 2011 we excitedly returned to our newly renovated classrooms. By the last day of school we had 14 students who joined us throughout the week. On the first day of school this year 30 children walked through our doors.

We are so excited with the rapid growth of Echo Montessori and are pleased to have such a wonderful group of children, families and staff.

Luckily the weather cooperated as we all collected on the front lawn. Jan introduced new staff and thanked parents and family for their support and upon declaring the school officially open Ben and Nic cut the ribbon. All the group joined together in a celebration with food and drinks.

In addition, the beginning of year open house began with the children and their families touring the school and visiting with each other. (It was also a great opportunity to show your older siblings your class.)

We already have a couple of days of classes since our celebration and everyone is settling into the new routines easily. We are all looking forward to the year ahead as we build our community and our successes.

Great Partners, Great Results

This year we used an online photo album company to manufacture our yearbooks. At first we were a bit worried that this process would work out well but it was the best option for the number of books we needed; too many for most companies, too few for printers. And we have been so pleased about the outcome.

www.photobookcanada.com has been wonderful to deal with. They have specific software that we downloaded so that Mika could design the book and for those of us without design knowledge it is user friendly and a quick learn.

Not only did they negotiate a discount with us for the larger book order but they also sent us a proof so that we could make sure all was well. During that process we found a spelling mistake and a grammar problem!! YIKES!! They were great, allowing us to edit the book and resubmit.

Thank you photobookcanada for all your help and allowing us to have such a beautiful keepsake of our first year!!

OH DEER!!!

Left, Photo of a deer captured with a cell phone camera during forest school.

Since September the children have been playing a wonderful game at Forest School called 'Sleeping Fawn'. The children lay low and quiet in the long grass pretending to be a sleeping fawn and the coyote has to try and find them. A themed version of hide and seek. Today as the older children were decending the big hill they came across a real sleeping fawn curled up in the long grass. They were so excited!! They were able to stay and observe for several minutes before deciding to let the baby return to his nap. Their experience gave new meaning to the game they have been playing. By the time the younger group went out the fawn had moved. They were however treated to two adult deer walking through the park.