Montessoris last revolution (unified)

Montessori's last revolution (unified) eBook: Shigeyuki Kuriyama: leondumoulin.nl: Kindle Store.
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As has been recognized since the time of the Ancient Greeks, math serves as the best model for, and the best practice for, core aspects of human reasoning. These are critical skills that students will need in their future workplaces, in their personal lives, indeed in every aspect of navigating a world increasingly characterized by demanding, rapid change. A deep understanding of the way numbers work and relate to each other, as well as the ability to manipulate them quickly and easily;. Explicit competence in foundational domains of mathematics see below for a content list , along with an intuitive number sense;.

The ability to organize knowledge into an integrated, hierarchical structure e. The ability to deploy highly abstract knowledge in solving particular problems e. The ability to participate in discussion and debate with others using clear, step-wise reasoning and truths such as measurements and prior axioms.

Students who study math, in short, gain the ability to better form and deploy complex knowledge—in general. Whether its solving a difficult engineering problem or solving a thorny personal problem, one needs to be able to: These are the skills that our elementary programs impart when teaching mathematics. Our approach to math in the elementary years is guided by principles of intelligibility through hands-on learning, precision through thoughtful curricular materials, and mastery through engagement and practice.

Our math curriculum begins with hands-on materials that foster an intuition of quantity, place value, and geometry. By manipulating these scientifically designed examples of abstract ideas, students build a library of experiences that develop into mental models of mathematical principles. A set of developmentally and mathematically refined hands-on Montessori learning materials, along with unique learning materials developed by our pedagogy team, forms the backbone of the math curriculum. Each learning material not only concretizes but isolates an aspect of mathematics.

The cleanliness and objectivity of math is manifest in the learning materials, and reinforced in the more abstract presentations. Definitions are clear and concise, statements are correct and precise, and problems are solved by laying bare every step. The precision and isolation in the materials allows students to practice one skill or concept at a time, repeated as often as needed for mastery.


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As the result of a thoughtfully ordered curriculum, the approach is intelligible to the student at each step. Math is no exception. Each material, lesson, and activity builds on the strong foundation of the previous ones, and seeds are continuously laid to facilitate integrations years later. The binomial cube, for example, presented as a puzzle for Montessori preschool students, leads to a geometric-algebraic integration of binomial expansions.

Math lessons are most often presented to individuals or pairs of students. When students need more time or support in a particular area, they have as many lessons and as much time as they need; for students who grasp an area quickly, there is the opportunity to swiftly move ahead. And so, children progress at their own pace, consolidating a deep conceptual understanding of mathematical ideas while creating a solid foundation for future, more complex studies. The materials, again, are designed to be thoroughly engaging so that repetition, a requirement of mastery, is not punishing but enjoyable.

The material grounds more abstract mathematical work, such as word problems, facilitating the ability of students to apply it to the real world. The materials and approach allow them to think in a way that is both fully conceptual and also visual, intuitive, sometimes even literally physical. Students can thus explore and practice the math they are learning to the point where it represents real understanding that can be independently and creatively applied.

The basic implementation of mathematics follows a sequence of teacher presentations and student activities in accordance with the guidelines above: In addition, key units are punctuated by group discussions, guided by the teacher in a way that clarifies and unifies the knowledge of the students. The highest-level goals of mathematics education in our elementary program are the cognitive ones listed above. The specific mathematical content that represents the realization of those goals in elementary are:.

Fluency with non-negative rational numbers and operations. Students in our programs develop a clear concept of non-negative integers, fractions, and decimals and can abstractly manipulate them in any combination using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

In addition to providing important material for mathematical reasoning and discussions, this content paves the way to fluency with all real numbers in algebra. Basic skills and knowledge in equations, algorithms, and geometry. These topics prepare students for algebra, coding, planimetrics, and stereometry. Combined with non-negative rational number arithmetic, these constitute the foundation of all higher-level mathematics.

What is necessary is that the individual from the earliest years should be placed in relation with humanity. Every map speaks eloquently of the work of explorers and pioneers, who underwent hardships and trials to find new places, rivers and lakes, and to make the world greater and richer for our dwelling. The human world into which our children are born is bewilderingly complex.

It boasts countless and often conflicting institutions, ever-evolving technologies, and contradictory norms and practices. But even elementary-aged children want and need to start to make sense this cacophony, to understand the world they live in, to learn to appreciate it, and, ultimately, to be empowered with the knowledge needed to participate in it, affect it, change it. The critical key for understanding for a student to understand, appreciate, and change the culture of their world—in all of aspects—is history.

Conversely, the key learning outcome of history is the ability to understand, appreciate, and ultimately change their world. History, in our elementary programs, is not a list of dates, nor is it a collection of topics and themes. It is a unified story of the development of the modern world—the explanation of the world of the student.

It is a synoptic, rich timeline of its arts and inventions, its people and institutions, its arc of events, conflicts, and, most of all, ideas. Students in our elementary history program learn, across the six years of elementary, the unbroken chronology of Western history, from early civilizations through the present.

History is infused into our Montessori elementary classrooms. There are three major aspects of the history curriculum:. The Great Lessons are big-picture history lessons that serve as the integrating and framing context for the entire elementary curriculum. They are given every year, in both lower and upper elementary with older students who have mastered the lessons assisting in their final years.

The Coming of the Universe: The Coming of Life: The Coming of Humans: The Coming of Writing: The Story of the Great River: Lower elementary students, with a combination of charts, presentations, and other learning materials, start to learn history at the earliest stages. They study a variety of early civilizations and come to understand the full range of fundamental human needs a civilization evolves to serve, from material to political to spiritual. Building on these foundations and hungry for ever-more abstract and relevant explanations, upper elementary students begin a more systematic study of history.

They receive monthly presentations, 24 over the course of three years, that cover key topics and epochs in history in sequence. Students build a timeline based on these 24 key lessons as they move through the program. Moreover, each of these key, high-level lessons provides the opportunity for extensions—more detailed, sub-timelines that unfold under the heading of the broad timeline.

For example, all students learn important basics about Columbus and Magellan in the key lessons on the Age of Exploration—but there is a more detailed sequence of lessons that follows the establishment of the entire Columbian exchange in the 16 th and 17 th centuries far beyond the initial excursions from Europe, establishing a worldwide, closed circuit—one that included trade between Asia and the Americas, further exacerbating the conflict between global trade and mercantilism, and setting the context for modern globalization.

There are even opportunities, for the interested student, to go into controversies over how to understand particular epochs in history. Not every student will go into this much depth on this particular topic—but all students will go into that much depth on some topics in history, and have a robust sense both of what they know and what there still is to learn. Because of the focus on intellectual history, presentations are often followed by rich discussions, with students engaging in a mixture of historical fact-finding and philosophical debate.

Writing is a critical part of solidifying understanding in history, and history is often grist for our writing curriculum.


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These three elements add up: The context of historical knowledge to go into much more depth on any topic in history Western or otherwise ;. A particular understanding and appreciation for intellectual history, for the development of enduring ideas that shaped and continue to shape our world. Reading and writing are critically important—as key means for accessing the entire world of human culture, self-expression in an enduring way in almost any context, and the practical work of performing virtually any complex job or task.

And, more fundamentally, reading and writing are tools of thought. It is by learning to read and write well that we learn how to, for example,. Make a thought precise—from word choice to sentence structure to paragraph to multi-page work—in a way that is difficult or impossible without the written word;. Apply objective thinking and reasoning to any domain, producing and evaluating structured arguments, justifications, and rationales for conclusions;.

In our elementary program, students learn to read and write—to analyze and understand written works and to express themselves—and they do so in a way that is consonant with learning how to think. To those ends, our elementary program approaches literacy in a systematic way, integrated across the whole curriculum.

An education administration blog by Dr. Gary Houchens, Western Kentucky University.

Elementary students are motivated by their newfound capacity for intellectual work, to know causes and reasons for things, to understand and imagine things beyond their immediate experience, and to do all of this with their peers via the medium of language. What students read and write about is thus the entirety of their learning—their academic work in science, literature, history, and even math, their outside-of-school field trips, their goings out, and more.

Moreover, students learn these things with a variety of tools. See below for the specific curriculum we provide our students—which include systematic instruction in grammar, reading skills, reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, and all elements of the writing process. At the earliest elementary years, a mastery of foundations such as phonemic awareness and phonics instruction; on an ongoing basis, mastery of spelling, vocabulary, and grammar;.

Treating reading as a way of learning , by coupling reading comprehension skills, such as identify context and analyzing unfamiliar content, with engaging and challenging topics across all subject areas;. The need to develop a love of reading in children, via a variety of motivated, engaging reading material, such as that provided in our literature circles.

The need for mastery of the physical mechanics of writing, handwriting and keyboarding, to the point of enjoyable efficacy;. The recognition that complex writing is not a product, but a multistep process outlining, drafting, editing, revising, etc. The connection between clear writing and clear thinking, so that students fully experience the power of clarifying and expressing their own thoughts. Because literacy is so important, substantial reading and writing occur every day in the classroom.

Beyond the integrated, motivated approach described above, our elementary programs teach literacy systematically, area by area:. But to understand how grammar works is a greater challenge, requiring us to understand the function of words, word groups that make up sentences, and the structure of sentences themselves. A robust understanding of grammar enables children to express themselves through the written word with sophistication and clarity.

When children learn about grammatical concepts, this knowledge can be integrated into the writing process—particularly the revising and editing stages—helping students to see the relevance of grammar to their own writing. The study of grammar also aids reading comprehension, enabling students to analyze the complex thoughts of others and to make sense of them. Grammar is initially presented as a multisensory, hands-on approach through Montessori learning materials such as the Grammar Box, Sentence Analysis and Verb Tense materials.

Once children are presented with the materials and the essential knowledge required for each particular grammar activity, they can explore the grammatical concept by matching, moving, and manipulating words and symbols to create patterns and sentences. This provides an open ended and often playful exploration of grammar, that prompts children to think critically about language:. In the upper elementary environment, children transition from working with the hands-on Sentence Analysis materials to sentence diagramming on paper.

Sentence diagramming is a formal, visual-pictorial representation of the grammatical structure of a sentence. Sentence diagramming allows children to move beyond the confines of the Sentence Analysis material, and allows them to parse every element of sentences of unlimited length and complexity. Specific words are the instruments by which we do our thinking, and through which we understand the thoughts of others. And, critically, a rich vocabulary comes into play in the classroom in reading comprehension.

Readers cannot comprehend the meaning of a given text without knowing what most of the words mean. A large vocabulary opens students up to a wider range of reading materials across all areas of the curriculum. Students acquire vocabulary indirectly through exposure to a language-rich prepared environment, reading good literature, and conversing with adults and peers. The Montessori Word Study curriculum is a more direct approach to vocabulary, with lower elementary students examining, classifying and manipulating the properties of words: In the upper elementary, students study Greek and Latin roots.

More than half of the words in the English language have Latin or Greek roots, and this is especially true in content areas such as science and technology. This work helps children become more conscious of words and their origins, giving them keys which they may use to unlock the meanings of many words in their language.

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Emphasis is also placed on etymology across all areas of the curriculum, drawing children's awareness to the fact that words have a history, and that both the form and meaning of these words can change over time. Some children enter the elementary classroom with phonemic awareness and phonic skills firmly in place. Others enter ready to learn phonograms and more advanced phonics with multi-syllabic words. Timely, individualized, explicit reading instruction is essential to ensuring children can access all subject areas of the prepared environment, and work collaboratively with their peers.

Systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics improves children's reading and spelling skills. Guided oral reading helps students further develop fluency, decoding skills, recognize new words and comprehend what they read. Ongoing assessment of children's reading skills are crucial to ensure mastery of the basics, the continuous challenging of each student, and to inform appropriate instruction. Beyond the basic mechanics, more abstract reading comprehension skills are imperative across every area of the classroom.

Without comprehension, words have no meaning and reading is simply sounding out the words on a page from left to right. When children struggle to comprehend meaning from text, explicit strategies can be taught, modeled and practiced:. Making inferences by putting together clues from the text and making evidence-based guesses about character motives, the plot, the problem, the solution;.

Synthesizing the text by summarizing what has happened and stating the most important aspects of the text. One way we help students develop and practice these skills is through Literature Circles. Literature Circles pose targeted discussion questions requiring students to share their perceptions and ideas with their peers, consistently requiring textual support for their responses. They help student become close, insightful readers. Preparing key word outlines to summarize nonfiction text is another way children can develop and practice reading comprehension skills within an authentic context.

As with reading mechanics, reading comprehension is formatively assessed by the teacher on an ongoing basis. Reading aloud to children plays an especially critical role in developing children's vocabulary, their knowledge of the natural world, and their appreciation for the power of the imagination. Reading aloud introduces the language of books, which differs from the informal language heard in daily conversations and in the media.

Literary language is more descriptive and uses more formal grammatical structures. The value of reading chapter books to elementary children therefore exposes children to a linguistic and cognitive complexity not typically found in speech. Reading aloud introduces books and types of literature—historical fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies—that children might not discover on their own.

History, science, and geography come alive through our elementary read-aloud selections, from Ancient Greece Black Ships Before Troy: Reluctant readers observe the joy their teacher and peers receive from reading and discussing literature, and can be motivated to pick up a book on their own. Time is put aside during the weekly schedule for students to read books or other material of their own choosing, purely for pleasure.

Providing a well-resourced, age appropriate classroom library is key. We offer students a program for the systematic study of literature that bears heavily on all aspects of reading comprehension and writing. Please see this page for a full description of that program. We emphasize writing as an essential way to develop, organize, clarify, and communicate thoughts and ideas.

As students attempt to write clearly and coherently about increasingly complex ideas, their writing serves to propel their intellectual growth. Children come to understand that writing is a process, not just a product, and that by using specific writing techniques, and following the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing—they can produce consistency high quality writing. Not every piece of writing the child produces needs to, or indeed should be subject to this process.

Much writing in the elementary classroom is everyday writing, such as work journals, taking notes for a science experiment, and so on. Particularly in Lower Elementary, our teachers are cognizant of the balance between holding children accountable for using learnt knowledge and skills in their writing, and creating a culture of joyful self-expression, free of the pressure of constant correction and feedback. Writing is omnipresent in our elementary classrooms. Our approach to writing instruction is based on the following principles:. The need to hone, step by step, specific aspects of the writing process.

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We offer students specific lessons on each stage of the writing process, from initial brainstorming all the way to the final draft. This pattern did not hold if the applicant was affiliating with an existing charter school network. The researchers recommend that, rather than simply reject charter school applications with these risk factors, authorizers think about how to mitigate against these risks and increase the likelihood that such schools can actually succeed.

For example, authorizers can insist that applicants provide a carefully crafted rubric and strategic plan for recruiting, selecting, and retaining high-quality leadership applicants, and ask applicants who intend to work with at-risk students to intentionally elaborate on their intervention and student support plans.

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Regarding the issue of schools that want to use experiential models of learning, the authors of Three Signs point out that charters are intended to be innovative and try approaches that would be more difficult in traditional school environments, and that percent of existing charters utilize such models. But such programs require extensive and specialized training for teachers, and the researchers speculate that some of these charter schools may have lacked sufficient supports so that child-centered strategies can be implemented with fidelity. Moreover, some of these methods involve multi-age grouping of students which may, if learning is not personalized to students' individual readiness levels, result in a misalignment of curriculum with materials assessed on state tests.

Three Signs suggests authorizers take care to ensure that charter school applicants who intend to use innovative methods take these issues into careful consideration. I appreciate the researchers' thoughtful discussion of these issues, and I certainly hope charter applicants and authorizers are not discouraged from pursuing child-centered philosophies. Some of the most exciting example s of education innovation I've seen are where schools are attempting to integrate a rigorous curriculum with Montessori methods, especially with at-risk learners.

But I have also observed how difficult it is to implement such approaches with fidelity. Such resources and supports do exist, however. The National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector is devoted specifically to helping public Montessori programs, whether in charter or district-run schools, implement the Method with fidelity. The other findings from Three Signs also suggest that, to enhance the success of charter schools using experiential models of learning, applicants and authorizers must take careful steps to ensure strong leadership and thorough plans for student interventions and supports.

Other research data, while limited, indicate that when Montessori is used with fidelity student achievement can be enhanced. All views expressed on this website are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of Western Kentucky University my employer or the Kentucky Board of Education where I serve as a member. A version of this review has been published in the Bowling Green Daily News.

Hirsch is well known in education circles as a long-time advocate for " cultural literacy ," the notion that there is a body of knowledge all educated people should master to be effective and virtuous citizens. Hirsch's latest book, Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing our Children from Failed Educational Theories , is a blistering indictment of this trend away from rigorous content and its effects on the most disadvantaged students. Hirsch vividly describes how the over-emphasis on skills to the exclusion of knowledge coupled with vapid state standards and problems with standardized reading tests have exacerbated achievement gaps.

His call for a renewal of rich content in the early grades based on social justice concerns as well as research on student achievement and learning theory is extraordinarily timely and makes Why Knowledge Matters , in my estimation, the most important education book of the year. Parents, educators, and policymakers should read it closely. The basic problem, as Hirsch describes it, is that elementary schools have shifted toward an overwhelming emphasis on reading as a skill.

Students spend hours each day learning reading techniques like how to sound out words, how to find the main idea of a passage, or how to do "close reading" of a text. In turn, time spent on social studies, science, the arts - essentially everything except reading and math - has been drastically reduced in the early elementary grades. The effect on reading tests in the short-term is positive: But achievement levels are stagnant or even declining at the middle and high school level, and Hirsch argues that's because students have been denied access to the kinds of rich content knowledge they need to read widely across a variety of subject areas.

This effect has relatively little harm on students from affluent families who absorb knowledge by osmosis through their lives outside of school. But for students of poverty whose parents can't take them to museums or on vacations or expose them to the wider world through reading and cultural opportunities, the impact is to make them fall further behind and deny them the information they need for economic and academic success. The system is unfair to children, but also to teachers, who are often given the blame for lackluster student achievement. Hirsch argues that reading tests are invariably tests of content knowledge.

Hirsch cites a wealth of data from U. French educators are now calling for the return to a clear and common curriculum that will give all students the content knowledge they need for long-term academic success. Why Knowledge Matters lays part of the blame for these trends on educators themselves who have become enamored with the idea that, in our age of instant information access, specific content learning is no longer necessary. Instead, students should learn critical thinking and problem-solving skills and can "look up" anything else they need to know.

In some of the most compelling passages of the book Hirsch dismantles the idea that content knowledge can ever be separated from skills in this way. All skills are domain specific, including the ability to read and thus, there is actually no discrete "main idea finding" skill; if students know what a passage is talking about, they automatically know the main idea:.

Two texts that are rated at the same difficulty level are rarely of the same difficulty for an individual student A student can be an excellent reader about dinosaurs and a terrible reader about mushrooms No matter how widely-skilled people may be, as soon as they confront unfamiliar content their skill degenerates. Hirsch is generally supportive of the Common Core Standards as an improvement over what preceded them in most states, but believes they reinforce this over-emphasis on skills to the exclusion of knowledge and must be supplemented accordingly including with specific literary texts that all students should study.

And he rejects as a false dichotomy the tension between informational and literary texts that characterizes some of the debate over Common Core: And good informational texts can be literature. And Hirsch concedes the political difficulty of getting school stakeholders to agree on a common curricular canon that all students should master. But he believes such a transformation can happen at the local level, and he cites the efforts of many hundreds of schools that have adopted his Core Knowledge curriculum as examples, though emphasizing that Core Knowledge is but one approach to a well-crafted body of content knowledge that can guide instruction.

Furthermore, Hirsch argues that reducing time on reading skills and bolstering time on domain specific knowledge will increase student achievement scores, so schools have everything to gain and little to lose by doing so. In future posts I'll react to some of Hirsch's arguments in greater depth including what should be included in such a curriculum , but his core thesis seems exactly right to me.

Our Elementary Community | Guidepost Montessori | Charlotte, NC

I've long been a proponent of more personalized learning approaches. Learning tasks should meet students closer to their actual readiness levels and give them more opportunities to work through standards at their own pace. But I'm increasingly wary of the tendency to take this a step farther and individualize the content that students learn. There are certain things that students do actually need to know, and Why Knowledge Matters shows why you can't simply look things up when you don't know them: I am discovering from my own experience as a parent that I can personally supplement a lot of what my children learn at school through learning experiences at home and in the community.

But what about those children whose parents lack the knowledge, time, or resources to do this for them? As I've argued before , closing achievement gaps will require a much more comprehensive approach, involving more drastic changes in what students learn, and how, and where, than we are currently offering. The learning Hirsch describes in Why Knowledge Matters , with its emphasis on more whole-class instruction, will strike some educators as very traditional.

But, using many examples from Core Knowledge schools, Hirsch stresses that a rigorous curriculum does not have to mean boring learning experiences. I am hopeful about this, and have been greatly encouraged by schools that are attempting to blend a rich and detailed curriculum with various student-centered approaches to pedagogy. Libertas School of Memphis is one example. I correspond regularly with the director at Libertas and hope to visit there soon and write about their experiences.

I have enormous respect for pioneer educators who are successfully implementing project-based learning and other innovative strategies. I want them to read this book with an open mind and weigh in from the standpoint of logistics: I have been regularly arguing that good curriculum and good pedagogy are not mutually exclusive , but there may be a dynamic tension here - or we may need to have deeper discussion about what really constitutes "good pedagogy" in light of what we want students to really know and be able to do as a result of their schooling.

At any rate, Why Knowledge Matters , if read with the care it deserves, should have parents, educators, and policymakers engaged in a whole new level of discussion about the direction of our schools. Opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not reflect the views of Western Kentucky University my employer or the Kentucky Board of Education where I serve as a member. His point was that we no longer need to teach kids what to think, because there's a virtual compendium of all human knowledge in our smart phones.

The problem with this approach is that you can't teach kids how to think especially how to think critically, globally, and wisely without giving them something to think about. And the content of what they think about really does matter. I've been thinking about this issue of "what" content versus "how" pedagogy , and have paid a lot more attention to the pedagogy side, for some time now. As I wrote last summer:.

The digital natives who occupy America's classrooms now have the entire body of human knowledge at their fingertips. What they need are thinking skills that help them process this wide world of information and use it to solve problems. In response to these concerns, my interests have turned toward Montessori , Sudbury , homeschooling , personalized learning , and other methods that place a much heavier emphasis on the agency of the individual child in the learning process. I still believe schools must move beyond their 19th-century, industrial, one-size-fits-all model of education.

Teaching must become far more personalized and sensitive to the vast differences in children's readiness levels and preferred pace of learning. But at the same time, I've become convinced that curriculum does matter immensely if we want students to not only to be critical thinkers and successful competitors in the global economy, but also good citizens and virtuous people. The world's factual knowledge may be in our smartphones, but that doesn't mean the collective wisdom of Western civilization can be accessed, understood, and lived out via a Google search.

At last year's annual Visible Learning conference, I wrote of Hattie's opening talk:. He [Hattie] discussed how we need to be striving for a much greater balance between acquisition of surface-level knowledge and deeper processing skills.

Universal Adjunct Paradigm

Schools should be criticized for over-emphasizing surface-level learning though this is a product of what standardized tests really measure. But likewise, today's educational innovators should be careful not to also over-emphasize "21st century thinking skills" in the absence of meaningful content knowledge. He presented a framework that categorized various instructional and intervention strategies along a continuum of learning that starts with the introduction of new knowledge surface then proceeds to deep acquisition and consolidation of knowledge - all geared toward helping students transfer that new learning to new contexts and situations a skill that is virtually unaddressed in most schools.

He offered examples like memorization - a skill that is highly-frowned upon today - but noted that memorization is an excellent technique for embedding new information into memory; but if the student does not move immediately into deep processing of that new information, the value is minimal. Likewise, higher-ordered activities like problem-based learning are often ineffective when students are lacking sufficient content knowledge, but for the purpose of deep consolidation of information and transfer - it is a powerful tool.

And, I believe, not just any content.

The Montessori Method: An Education For Creating Innovators

I've become convinced that a classical education - one that focuses on the training of a child's mind by using the great ideas of history and literature - is essential to developing critical thinking and the kind of character and virtue necessary for navigating the politically and economically volatile 21st century.

Perhaps it won't matter if students don't know the significance of General Washington's decision to take his army across the Delaware River though they will be ignorant about an iconic piece of American art. The same speaker who said kids don't need to know about the American Revolution lamented the emergence of Donald Trump as a leading presidential candidate. Trump's candidacy challenges Americans to not only think about the role of the state and its executive powers, but to make value-laden decisions about such matters. And the same applies to what we teach them about mathematics, science, literature, art, and more.

American, classical, curriculum, education, Hattie, history, pedagogy, Revolution, schooling. See reflections on Day Two here.


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    • The conference features Hattie as a keynote presenter, along with a host of other Corwin authors also associated with his work. This post will capture my thoughts at the end of the first day of the conference. I was pleased that in Hattie's opening keynote today he picked up with some of the key concerns I shared with readers after his February talk in Kentucky. Hattie noted in February that the vast majority of learning in schools is surface level - because that's how we teach and assess our students.

    At the same time, he seemed to speak disparagingly about "deeper" learning strategies like problem-based learning and giving students choice in the learning process. I observed that, to maximize the power of Hattie's work, teachers and should leaders should carefully study the original research as it applies to particular contexts and the impact of how a strategy is used.

    In his keynote this morning, Hattie expounded upon this issue in a way that finally made sense to me. He discussed how we need to be striving for a much greater balance between acquisition of surface-level knowledge and deeper processing skills. Beginning at an early age, Montessori students develop order, coordination, concentration, and independence.

    Students are part of a close, caring community. Older students enjoy stature as mentors and role models; younger children feel supported and gain confidence about the challenges ahead. Teachers model respect, loving kindness, and a belief in peaceful conflict resolution. Montessori students enjoy freedom within limits. Working within parameters set by their teachers, students are active participants in deciding what their focus on learning will be.

    Students are supported in becoming active seekers of knowledge. Teachers provide environments where students have the freedom and the tools to pursue answers to their own questions. Self-correction and self-assessment are an integral part of the Montessori classroom approach.