In a Montessori Elementary classroom, planning and record-keeping form the backbone of a personalized and dynamic educational experience. Effective planning provides a structured yet flexible framework that honors the principles of freedom and choice.
Planning and record keeping are among the most important yet elusive tasks you will tackle as a Montessori Elementary teacher throughout your teaching career. This is especially true if you are a new teacher! It can be challenging to determine where to start, as we often lack a clear roadmap from our training or schools. Our planning should be responsive rather than rigid, and yet also clear and detailed. How do we make plans, while also allowing children to follow their interests?
Table of Contents
- The Purpose of Planning and Record Keeping
- The Basics of Planning: From the Macro to the Micro
- Year-Long Planning
- Monthly Planning
- Weekly Planning
- Daily Planning
- The Importance of Record Keeping
- Final Thoughts
Any article, talk, or podcast on the topic of planning tends to capture the attention of many teachers because there is no universal approach or definitive solution. As of yet, the code for “This is how we do it” has not been cracked. The reason for this, I believe, is because the variability of planning and record-keeping styles, procedures, and templates created and used by Montessori teachers stems from the Montessori method’s inherent responsiveness, as well as an underlying awareness that a system that works for one teacher won’t work for all teachers.
Planning and record-keeping must adapt not only to the needs of your students but also to your personal style. Whether you prefer a loosely structured plan or a highly detailed plan, you can develop a strategy that effectively supports your students’ progress while also exposing them to all the topics in Cosmic Education.
The Purpose of Planning and Record Keeping
When considering planning and record-keeping within a Montessori Elementary environment, it is helpful to view these tasks through a lens of intentionality and reflection. The planning aspect represents your aspirations and goals for your students, ideally created in collaboration with each child. It’s where you articulate the vision for each child’s growth and development, serving as a roadmap for the educational journey ahead. This roadmap is not static but evolves in response to the children’s emerging needs, interests, and progress. It embodies the principle of following the child, allowing for the flexibility and adaptability that are hallmarks of the Montessori approach.
On the flip side, record-keeping acts as a mirror, reflecting the achievements and milestones reached as each child progresses. It provides a tangible account of each child’s work, capturing moments of discovery, challenges overcome, and skills mastered. It also shows where more repetition is needed.
Planning as a reflective practice is not just an administrative task but is deeply pedagogical. It offers insights into the effectiveness of your teaching methods and how the lessons meet the child’s growing needs. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging you to reflect on your practice, celebrate successes, and identify areas for further exploration and support.
Together, planning and record-keeping in a Montessori environment involve a dynamic process of setting intentions, observing outcomes, and refining approaches. This process is infused with respect for the child’s agency, a commitment to providing a prepared environment that nurtures curiosity and a love of learning, and a dedication to the craft of teaching that is both art and science.
Elementary Classroom Planning Bootcamp
This online course by Letty Rising is designed to help Montessori Elementary educators prepare their classroom environments and systems and get ready for a successful school year.
Why is planning important?
Planning is an essential part of your teaching practice because when you plan, you ensure that children are exposed to all areas of Cosmic Education. You also ensure that they are exposed to the knowledge and skills that society deems children should know by a certain time in their lives. Through planning, you can collaborate with students on setting goals, crafting learning experiences that fit their individual needs.
While plans provide a structure, they also allow you to be adaptable. By having a plan, you can make informed adjustments based on student progress, individual student needs, or unforeseen circumstances.
Being well-prepared through planning boosts your confidence in delivering lessons. It also reflects professionalism and a commitment to the educational development of students.
Planning also helps in the effective use of resources, making sure that materials needed for presentations and follow-up activities are ready and utilized efficiently to enhance learning experiences.
A well-planned lesson is often more likely to engage students and cater to diverse learning styles than an “ad hoc” lesson, leading to better understanding and success in achieving learning objectives.
As a teacher, there were many times when I had a plan in my back pocket, only to abandon it either in favor of a lesson I felt more inspired to give on a particular day or because the children had different and equally valuable ideas on how they wanted to spend their time. Since the classroom belongs to the children and the experience is ultimately theirs, I at times needed to set aside my preconceived notions of what I wanted them to do and instead gave them the time and space to construct themselves.
Also read: Why Planning and Record Keeping are Essential for Montessori Schools
How does one make plans for children doing different things all at the same time?
Here’s the secret: You as the teacher are making YOUR plans, and through your plans, you offer interesting follow-up activities to your lessons. A work plan should not be the main driver of the child’s day. Your lessons and their subsequent follow-up activities are. Therefore, you are not creating a work plan with the goal of keeping them busy and working independently during the work cycle while you spend the work cycle walking around and monitoring them to ensure that they are working independently. You are planning lessons and delivering them each day, and then giving meaningful options for follow-up work that keep them engaged for long periods of time.
During the work cycle, your students are either in a lesson, working on follow-up work from a previous lesson, practicing a skill, or working on an independently chosen project. The follow-up work is clearly articulated and agreed upon before the children leave the lesson, and the skill-based work and independent projects are clearly articulated as goals when you conference with your students. Thus, children aren’t choosing work off the shelf just for the sake of being busy; they are guided towards their work, giving them a sense of purpose. This may or may not involve random shelf-selected work from previous lessons but will include reinforcing recent lessons, skills, and work that is inspired. You make your plans, and then the students are responsible for choosing and recording their work based on agreements and collaborations you make with them.
The Basics of Planning: From the Macro to the Micro
When planning for your students, start with the big picture. This mirrors the approach you take when teaching with the Great Lessons in the Montessori elementary environment. The Great Lessons are the framework for Cosmic Education, sparking curiosity and a sense of wonder about the universe, life on Earth, human civilization, and the intricacies of language and mathematics. From this expansive viewpoint, you then zoom in to more specific learning objectives and activities according to the needs and interests of each student.
Just as you transition from the big picture to details with your students, you will apply the same approach to your planning. This way, you can make sure that your educational goals are not only aligned with the broad themes of interconnectedness and discovery that characterize the Montessori elementary years, but also focus on each child’s unique potential. By starting with the overarching themes, you establish a cohesive framework that supports a deeper exploration of subjects. This approach encourages students to draw connections across different areas of learning, enhancing their comprehension and retention of knowledge.
As you progress from the macro to the micro, your planning becomes more detailed, focusing on the specific skills, concepts, and activities that will support the students’ journey from curiosity about the grand narratives to mastery of the particulars. This gradual narrowing down from the big picture to detailed planning allows for a fluid and adaptable learning path, where the immediate educational activities are always in service to broader learning goals. It ensures that every lesson, and every activity, is a step toward a larger understanding, making education a coherent, interconnected discovery for each student.
Bringing it All Together
Developing a comprehensive plan for the children that embraces all areas of Cosmic Education allows you to experience a sense of ease and confidence in allowing children to explore their interests. This ensures that, even as students explore their chosen topics, they are not missing out on essential knowledge expected for their age and developmental stage. Without such a plan, you might experience some underlying anxiety regarding honoring student agency in selecting their work. This agency is intertwined with the responsibility you carry as an educator to make sure that all topics are covered, thus balancing both freedom and responsibility.
In the Montessori setting, freedom and responsibility are not just educational concepts but are lived experiences that shape the learning environment. Freedom in the classroom empowers students to follow their natural curiosity and engage deeply with subjects that resonate with their interests and passions. However, this freedom comes with a dual responsibility: ensuring students are using their “tools of accountability” to monitor their progress across all areas, and guiding them through a curriculum that offers broad and balanced exposure in every subject. By planning to cover the essentials of Cosmic Education, you provide a structure within which students can productively exercise their freedom.
Looking Ahead
The next sections will give you practical tips on making plans for your Montessori classroom. You’ll get some insight into how to make sure your lessons fit what each student needs, and how to plan for every day, week, and month. These suggestions are meant to help you make your classroom a place where students are excited to learn, feel free to explore, and grow to love learning. It’s also important to stress that while the following suggestions are some ideas, there are many other valid methods and approaches to use. You will need to experiment with the style of planning that works best for you, while also ensuring that students are getting what they need.
Year-Long Planning
During a typical school year, there are usually about 36 weeks or 180 days of classes. Through the 36 weeks you will be planning for approximately 32-34 weeks of actual teaching. The reason for this is that certain weeks will be dedicated to standardized testing, class trips, and special events, which means regular lessons will not take place during these times.
Planning Tools
To effectively organize your teaching year, consider creating or purchasing a template that outlines the months of the school year. This tool will help you plot out the basic concepts you aim to cover each month. You can easily create one in a Google document, and there are numerous online resources where you can find a variety of templates, and one might work for you! Some teachers find that a regular calendar that they designate as a “lesson planning calendar” works well for them.
Subject Planning
While math and language lessons are generally presented based on grade level and/or ability, cultural subjects like history, biology, geography, art, and music offer more flexibility. These can often be taught in mixed-age groupings, and as the cultural subjects are often “story-based lessons,” rather than “procedural lessons,” they can be delivered in larger groups than math or language.
Some teachers or schools opt to present cultural subjects in 3-year cycles. For instance, the first year might focus exclusively on history, the second on biology, and the third on geography, with the whole class concentrating on the designated topic. After completing the cycle, it repeats, so every child in a 3 year mixed-age classroom would be exposed to each topic. Others may dedicate a set period, such as three months, to each subject within a single year. For example, 3 months for history, 3 months for biology, 3 months for physical science/geography. And then there are also teachers who craft a varied and randomized plan, integrating all topics throughout the year while timing some lessons to coincide with seasonal events (e.g., studying biology and parts of the flower in spring).
Starting the Year
Beginning your year-long plan by plotting out your approach to cultural subjects is an excellent strategy. It offers a solid foundation for your planning and provides a sense of clarity on when and how you’ll teach these topics.
You can also use your yearly plan to plot out 6-8 key concepts in math and language that you will want to cover for the year for each grade level. Because this is a big-picture overview, you won’t want to get too detailed, but want to have enough information so that you can look at a snapshot view of your year-long plan.
Curriculum Framework
Your Montessori albums represent the curriculum framework you will be using, so you’ll want to surround yourself with your albums when making a yearly plan. If your school requires the use of other curricula, have that curriculum accessible as well.
First Step: Take a good look at the table of contents in each of your albums. This is where you’ll find a roadmap of what each album covers, from the big ideas to the specific details.
Next Step: If you haven’t done this already, it’s a great idea to create a new document that includes just the table of contents from all of your albums. Think of this document as your planning guide. It’s something you can quickly refer to, making it easier to see the big picture of what you need to teach over the school year.
Why Do This? Having a document that lists all the topics and areas you plan to cover makes planning much simpler. It ensures you don’t miss out on any subject areas. Plus, it helps you spread out your lessons evenly throughout the year, so you’re not trying to cram too much information into too little time.
This approach helps you stay organized and focused, making sure you give your students a well-rounded experience. It’s like having a map for the entire school year that guides you on what to teach and when to teach it, ensuring that every student gets a chance to explore and learn about all the subjects you have planned.
Common Core Standards in Montessori Planning
Love them or hate them, Common Core Standards will likely play a role in your planning, even within private schools. Maria Montessori herself emphasized the importance of aligning children’s learning with the knowledge society expects them to acquire at certain ages.
Reviewing Standards
It’s beneficial to review the Common Core Standards for the age groups you teach, identifying key skills expected to be mastered by the end of each grade. Planning this way initially involves delivering math and language lessons that correspond to grade level, while differentiating follow-up work based on individual abilities.
Observing student progress
As you get to know your students, you’ll notice variances in student progress—some may require additional time, while others advance more quickly. This necessitates occasional reorganization of groups to accommodate varying speeds of learning.
Example: Third Grade Math Standards
For instance, it’s widely expected that children understand the concept of multiplication by the end of third grade. To meet this expectation, you should introduce multiplication lessons by the start of third grade to foster this area of growth. Upon examining the third-grade Common Core Standards, you’ll find that multiplication, the distributive law, introduction to fractions (including identifying, naming fractional parts of a whole, and understanding equivalency), area, and polygons (more specifically, quadrilaterals), and beginning division concepts form the core math themes. For students who are more advanced, introducing them to squaring binomials can offer additional multiplication practice while introducing a new level of challenge.
Strategy
Begin introducing relevant lessons at the beginning of the year and moving forward to support growth in expected areas, while continuing to reflect upon the key standards. This will ensure all students are prepared to meet or exceed expected benchmarks for their grade level.
This approach allows teachers to structure their curriculum in a way that aligns with both Montessori principles and Common Core Standards, ensuring a well-rounded educational experience that meets societal expectations.
Assessment and Observation
Review past observations and assessments of students to identify their strengths, interests, and areas for growth. This will guide you in what to focus on. If you have a class of new students, you may not have records for them. Check with your school to see if you have access to their previous school records, which are usually sent by the former school when students transfer.
Montessori Materials
Inventory and organize your Montessori materials, ensuring they are complete, in good condition, and ready to support the year’s lessons. There’s nothing more frustrating than to plan a lesson and realize that you have some materials missing for a lesson you were hoping to deliver!
Themes and Projects
Decide if there are any overarching themes or long-term projects that you will want to integrate into your plans. Does your school have a yearly camping trip? Maybe you will want to integrate some of your biology lessons into that trip.
Monthly Planning
This stage involves refining your annual plan by transforming the broad concepts into specific lessons to be delivered throughout the month. Here, you’ll outline the lessons you intend to teach over the coming weeks.
First Month
You will want to over plan for your first month to ensure that you have plenty of lessons to deliver at your fingertips! Whether it be a new class of children or a new year with a third of your class being new students, you will want to have carefully planned lessons and an assortment of interesting follow up activities incorporating writing and illustrations to keep them busy and concentrating for long periods of time.
Observation Review: At the start of each month, review recent observations to adjust plans based on the current needs and interests of the students. You will start noticing patterns. Maybe your students are gobbling up your math presentations, but seem to be lagging in their writing skills. This might be the month to deliver more writing lessons and give them the opportunity to practice math materials from lessons they’ve already received.
Curriculum Focus
Select specific curriculum areas to emphasize, based on the year-long framework and the progress of students. As mentioned previously, maybe this will be a month of lots of writing and/or sentence analysis lessons to support your students’ writing. Maybe you were focusing on history last month and now it’s time to turn your attention towards biology.
Material Preparation
Ensure all materials related to the month’s focus areas are prepared, accessible, and organized to facilitate small group lessons. As mentioned above, maybe you will be shifting to biology this month, and it’s time to look at your shelves to see if you have all of the materials needed for biology lessons, experiments, and follow up work.
Scheduling
Draft a flexible schedule that allocates time for small group lessons, individual work, and larger group activities, allowing for the fluid movement of students between different types of engagement. What does your monthly flow look like? Are there times of the month where special events are happening? If it’s February, you might be talking with your children about Groundhog Day, Black History Month, the Lunar New Year, President’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. Any of the above may lead to a lesson (or even a series of lessons!) and a special event. Your monthly calendar needs to make room for these things!
Weekly Planning
Weekly planning in a Montessori elementary classroom is a thoughtful process that balances the individual needs of students with the overarching goals of the Montessori curriculum. This approach ensures that each child is engaged in activities that not only cater to their current level of development and interest but also gently guide them toward new challenges and discoveries.
Aiming for 5-7 lessons per week for each child ensures exposure to most of the key lessons within the Montessori elementary curriculum. This means that each student will ideally receive a formal presentation once or twice a day, depending on the classroom schedule and the individual needs of the child. These lessons are carefully planned and presented by the teacher, covering a wide range of subjects including math, language, science, and cultural studies, as well as practical life skills and sensorial activities.
The rationale behind this recommendation is to provide a balanced and comprehensive educational experience that aligns with the Montessori method’s emphasis on holistic development. By receiving 5-7 lessons per week, students are given the opportunity to explore new concepts and ideas, while also revisiting and reinforcing previously learned material. This frequency ensures that learning is both consistent and varied, keeping students engaged and motivated.
Structure of the Week
Using a weekly template for scheduling can be very beneficial! It allows you to blend the culture of your school with the unique atmosphere of your classroom. The image above is an example of how lessons might be scheduled throughout the week. Keep in mind, this schedule outlines when lessons are delivered and does not detail all the activities children will engage in during the work cycle. Many teachers find that having a consistent schedule for lesson delivery helps in planning and ensures a variety of subjects are covered.
Weekly Focus
Determine the specific concepts, skills, or materials to introduce or reinforce in small group lessons for the week. Is it time to progress to the next lesson on fractions, or could the small group use more practice adding with uncommon denominators? Or maybe you’ll invite 4 children to the lesson, and two of them need extra practice, so you’ll invite the two who have mastered it to join you later in the week.
Group Formation
You will be forming your weekly groups based on observations and assessments, forming small groups that reflect a range of abilities, interests, and social dynamics, promoting peer learning and collaboration. Sometimes you will teach the same lesson twice or even three times, to 2-3 different groups, because you’ll want to break them into two groups of 4 instead of one group of 8.
Lesson Preparation
Review your planned lessons for each small group session, including objectives, materials needed, and potential follow-up activities for individual work. Practice the lesson if need be! If you have it on your plan but feel anxious or resistant when it’s getting close to presenting the lesson, it probably means that you aren’t feeling as confident as you would like. Practice!
Time to Reflect
The following are some general questions you might want to ask yourself as you start making your more detailed plans.
Daily Planning
It’s a good idea to plan to deliver about 6-8 lessons per day. Personally, I have found the sweet spot for me to be around 7 a day, but everyone is different! You might present 4 lessons in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, or 5 lessons in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. It’s important to note that this planned lesson count doesn’t include the numerous spontaneous, on-the-spot lessons that occur throughout the day, both formally and informally, during the work cycle. Also, a good rule of thumb is to try to ensure that every child receives at least one lesson a day. It’s not only important as a way to ensure exposure to all areas of Cosmic Education but also to make contact and build relationships. The beauty of our small group lessons is that they provide a time for children to feel “seen.”
Material Readiness
Verify that all materials for the day’s lessons are ready and accessible to students. This is a part of your planning process and one that helps your presentations run smoothly! There’s nothing worse than planning to present a lesson on fluid and viscous, only to realize that you have run out of vegetable oil!
Observation and Adaptation
Begin each day with a brief review of the previous day’s observations to fine-tune the day’s plans as needed. Does someone need a repeat of a previous lesson? Based upon lessons from the day before, will you need to change or adjust your plan for today?
Reflection and Documentation
End each day by documenting the outcomes of small group lessons (and ideally do this right after the lesson!), noting observations, student progress, and any adjustments needed for future lessons.
This structured approach ensures that planning for small group lessons in a Montessori elementary classroom is dynamic, responsive, and grounded in the developmental needs and interests of the students, facilitating a rich, engaging learning environment.
The Importance of Record Keeping
Record keeping in the Montessori Elementary environment is a detailed process that captures both the planning and the activities accomplished within the classroom. This process reflects the dynamic nature of the Montessori approach, where what was learned may deviate from the initial plan, emphasizing the importance of flexibility and responsiveness. To manage this complexity, you will want to use both macro-level and micro-level record-keeping systems.
Macro-Level Record Keeping
For big-picture record keeping, modern electronic systems have significantly eased the burden of tracking the overall progress of each student and classroom community. One system I’ve found to be particularly effective is Transparent Classroom. It allows educators to catalog each student’s progression through the curriculum, marking stages such as lesson introduction, progress, mastery, or the need for additional practice. While this is a comprehensive and effective record keeping system, it is not the only one available! Here are a few more suggestions for electronic record systems:
There are several other electronic systems available, as well as paper and pencil options for those individuals and schools who prefer to track by hand.
Regardless of what macro-system you use, weekly updates to these records are essential, as they not only facilitate progress tracking and future lesson planning but also preserve the educational history of each student for their subsequent teachers. Without diligent record-keeping, the next teacher faces a much steeper challenge in understanding and meeting the needs of their students.
Micro-Level Record Keeping
On the micro level, it’s equally essential to document the day-to-day activities and individual progress of each student. In my practice, alongside the students’ work journals, I maintained a personal work journal. This journal served multiple purposes: it was where I recorded the lessons I delivered each day, made notes and reflections on student responses, and planned future directions based on students’ mastery or needs for further instruction. In fact, it served as a daily planning and record keeping tool, where I would record the lessons I planned to give, then indicate whether or not they were delivered by checking them off. This detailed, daily record not only helped in personal reflection but also streamlined the process of updating the macro-level system. By keeping such comprehensive records, educators can ensure a consistent and personalized learning experience for every child, highlighting the fundamental importance of record-keeping in the Montessori educational philosophy.
Record keeping, though perhaps one of the less highlighted aspects of Montessori education, is crucial for ensuring a customized and effective learning experience for each child. By employing both macro-level and micro-level systems, educators can maintain a comprehensive overview of each student’s progress, facilitating a seamless educational experience and setting the stage for future success.
Final Thoughts
In a Montessori Elementary classroom, planning and record-keeping form the backbone of a personalized and dynamic educational experience. These practices, deeply rooted in the Montessori philosophy, ensure that the learning journey of each child is carefully mapped out and conscientiously followed, allowing for adjustments based on the child’s evolving interests and needs. Effective planning provides a structured yet flexible framework that honors the principles of freedom and choice, essential to Montessori education. Meanwhile, diligent record-keeping captures the unique developmental trajectory of each student, facilitating a tailored approach to instruction and support. Together, these processes embody the meticulous care and attention to detail characteristic of Montessori education, affirming its commitment to nurturing independent, motivated, and thoughtful learners.
Letty Rising has been involved in Montessori education for over 15 years. She holds a B.A. in Sociology, a California State Teaching Credential, and an AMI elementary diploma for ages 6-12 and an M.Ed from Loyola University in Maryland. She has held positions as a Homeschool Education Specialist, Montessori Elementary Teacher, School Director, Principal, Montessori Coordinator, and Consultant in several public and private Montessori school communities throughout the years. Letty currently supports schools around the world through professional development offerings, consulting, and mentoring.