Montessori Search Results

5 Common Teaching Practices I’m Kicking to the Curb

…strategies recommended by Carol Ann Tomlinson in her book, The Differentiated Classroom, including learning stations, tiered assignments, orbital studies (3-6-week independent investigations), and learning agendas, where students are given a list of tasks to complete in whatever order they want over a period of several weeks, much like the kind of personalized agendas given to students in Montessori classrooms. Learn more: My View: Ten Myths about Gifted Students and Programs for Gifted, by Carolyn Coil, CNN Schools of Thought What It Means to Teach Gifted Learners Well, by Carol Ann Tomlinson, National Association for Gifted Children Stick around. I would…

How to Turn Rubric Scores into Grades

…an assignment, while others are re-doing it. Most teachers want their students to be learning the same skills at roughly the same time, and unless you are running a very personalized, Montessori-style classroom, you’ll want some kind of consistency from student to student. Consider whether you might be willing to spend only part of your class doing the more lock-step, everyone-on-the-same-page kind of work, but set aside other times for students to work on improving past assignments or doing independent work like genius hour projects. Need Ready-Made Rubrics? My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and…

Guest Blogging Workflow

…you are doing a “Day in the Life” piece, please provide 5-7 good-quality photos that will give the reader a clearer understanding of the topics you write about. Here are the kinds of photos I’m most interested in (each post does NOT need each of these types…it depends on what your topic is): ♦ Photos that help the reader understand something unusual or specific to the work you’re talking about (see the photos from What We Can All Learn from a Montessori Classroom for good examples of these. This is not a “Day in the Life” piece, but the photos…

How to Create a Self-Paced Classroom

…of self-paced learning in Montessori schools, alternative schools, and cyber schools, but it has yet to reach the mainstream. The one-size-fits-all model churns along, leaving far too many students behind. Today, I’d like to show you how to infuse self-pacing into your own classroom without lowering expectations for your students or replacing yourself with mindless technology. The blended, self-paced, mastery-based instructional model we built at the Modern Classrooms Project offers a framework for self-paced learning regardless of where and what you teach. If implemented properly, the model can increase the rigor of your students’ learning, enhance human connection and interaction…

OMG Becky. PD is Getting So Much Better!!

…if they feel their current project has run its course.” 5. Voluntary Piloting How it Works Rather than requiring a whole school to adopt some new initiative, a small group of committed, interested teachers volunteers to take on the task of trying out the new approach. Example Krista Taylor and her colleagues at James N. Gamble Montessori High School in Cincinnati, OH, launched a voluntary piloting program to get better at differentiation strategies. In this post, she explains how the process worked and how much everyone involved benefitted from it: “Those of us in that original pilot group have achieved…

How HyperDocs Can Transform Your Teaching

…studying them and hearing to what level are they understanding a concept. I have the ability to pull a small group. I can work with my language learners during that time. The whole time I’m doing formative assessment in the classroom, which will then really be my basis for the next part of the lesson.” Agenda: This model, borrowed from the kind of planning done at a typical Montessori school, provides each student with a planner listing out their assignments for the week. Students decide how they want to use their class time each day, but are expected to complete…

Episode 42: Kindergarten Redshirting

…certain level. Students pick up on this. It’s all based on really more maturity, not ability. Gonzalez: It’s interesting, because when—you’re right, and I saw this too—because when my kids started formal schooling, they went to a Montessori pre-school. When they started real formal schooling – whatever, public school, and now I’m going to offend somebody by saying that. Anyway, I felt like they needed, my son needed a lot of work on motor skills. His handwriting and that kind of fine-motor stuff still really needed work. And I hated that he was spending so much time on letter recognition…

Should My Child Skip Kindergarten?

…My husband and I explored some options but ultimately allowed him to complete his kindergarten year there while supplementing him with know at home, the library, various museums. Before he started 1st grade we moved about 10 miles which put him into another school district. Hoping that we would have a better experience, we eagerly sent him off on a bus to school. It quickly became apparent that this was not going to work. This first grade was repeating lesson he had been bored with the year before. A friend suggested we try a private school; Montessori. We visited, were…

What is an Innovation Class…and Why Do You Need One?

Sarah Does this borrow ideas from the Montessori learning model? The personalized, student driven learning sounds similar. Youssef Abdalla Hassaballa Kazzan Road – Tameen Ahlya Compound Build (2) Flat (301) May I translated the article into Arabic and published for the benefit of Arabic speakers and fluent in English with the commitment of all the details Holly Burcham Hi! This is Holly, a Customer Experience Manager. It’s wonderful to hear that this Cult of Pedagogy resource will be reaching an Arabic-speaking audience! Yes, you have permission to reprint the article in Arabic, as long as proper attribution is given to…