Teaching Tips

I recently returned from the AMI Elementary Refresher Course, and I enjoyed it so much that over the course of the two days I took 25 pages of notes!  Alison Awes, the presenter and a Montessori trainer, was a very inspiring and engaging speaker, breathing fresh life into some familiar concepts, lessons, and theories, while […]

A second-grade teacher in a public school environment is well aware that, by the end of the school year, their students should be able to add and subtract fluently with numbers less than 100.  However, in a Montessori environment, children begin to learn place-value into the thousands beginning in the 3-6 children’s house.  At the […]

by Karen Federice We talk about connection all the time in the Elementary classroom.  Our cosmic curriculum lends itself to the intrinsically interwoven nature of all things.  Jennifer Morgan says it beautifully in Mammals Who Morph, “Little by little, land, sea and air began to shape the mammals to come – Trees sculpting hands for […]

Teacher Choice, Student Choice  Educators who follow the Montessori approach know that Maria Montessori placed a lot of emphasis on the idea of “choice.”  However, while the notion of choice is universally celebrated and held sacred for young children up until around the age of  6, this idea sometimes falls to the wayside when children […]

The youngest elementary children…the beginning of a new cycle.   When the 6 or 7-year-old child enters into the elementary classroom, teachers sometimes struggle with understanding this newly emerging second plane child.  When I was teaching and had the benefit of observing my students in their primary classroom environment before they transitioned into elementary, it was […]

Identifying the True Need Under the Request Throughout my years of teaching and leading schools, I have witnessed certain personality characteristics surface and resurface again. There’s a particular one that I want to address and that has cropped up a few times during my career in education. Though the children are different, the script is […]

Telling a Story vs. Giving a Lecture in the Elementary Classroom Environment Have you ever been spellbound by a captivating storyteller spinning a thrilling tale that had you propped at the edge of your seat, eagerly awaiting the next piece of colorful imagery to pique your curiosity and tantalize your imagination? If so, you likely […]

If you have taught elementary, you surely have noticed that your youngest community members have a tendency to tell on one another, otherwise known as “tattling.”  I remember when I was a teacher, I always had at least a couple of 6-year-olds who tattled frequently, and I also clearly recall feeling some annoyance with this […]