Pupils
attending Montessori schools start their first stage at three years of age. The
first stage contains pupils between the ages three and six. This is the age
group I am teaching in my teaching practice. I was very nervous about working
with pupils at this age as it is a lot younger than I have ever taught before
and the pupils wouldn’t start school until they’re 6 or 7 in Denmark. Some of
the thoughts going through my head as I was on my way to the school on my first
day were:” Will these pupils be able to speak?”, “Will they be able to go to
the bathroom by themselves?” and “Will they even be able to understand what I’m
saying as I have a foreign accent?”
I was pleasantly
surprised by the pupils the young pupils as I saw them working. As I mentioned
in a previous blog the greatest achievement of a Montessori teacher is to
develop a sense of independence in their pupils, so it is very rare that all
the pupils work with the same things. The pupils work with whatever materials
they want to and decide themselves if they want to work individually or in
groups. The teachers usually walk around the classroom helping the pupils who
need them or get the pupils that don’t have any serious work to do something.
Then there is also the daily lesson. Most days the main teacher has something different
prepared for the children to do: one day it was making clowns out of cardboard
paper another day it was making cards for their parents.
The pupils don’t
need that much help with their work as most of the Montessori Materials have what we call control of error so the pupils can see if they have done the task right.
However some of the materials like spelling and the harder maths materials don’t
have this control of error, so the pupils need help when working with these
materials and if I don’t know how to use the materials, the pupils know and are happy to
teach me.
The youngest
ones are mostly drawing and colouring as well as using the sensorial and daily
life materials, while the older ones were using more of the language and maths
materials.
It is very
informal when helping the pupils, sometimes they know how to do the work but
just want to sit and talk while doing it which I enjoy very much. They have
very different takes on life and the different stories they tell. The headline
for this blog “Boys are Always Stronger than
Girls... But Girls are Always Smarter than Boys” is a quotation from a 4
year old who didn’t want me to help him lift something because he was obviously
stronger than me.
However amazing
I find the Montessori Materials for this age and much I enjoy working with
these small children I find it very young to start school at 3. The pupils are
not allowed to run inside and they don’t get to bur much of all the energy they
have as they do not have recess in this school. When the weather is good they
get to go outside in a garden for 15 minutes right before they go home. I think
that they should be able to enjoy playing with dolls and cars or what every
they would like to do a little bit longer as they don’t always understand the
reasoning for the work they are supposed to do.
But it
might be worth it in the long run though as the pupils within the ages of 9-12
already know how to use the Pythagoras formula and how to calculate square roots
without a calculator.
