Montessori Classroom Observation

541 Words3 Pages
Today, I went to local school here for an observation day for one hour. I should say that it was so wonderful to be able to sit and watch the inner workings of a true Montessori classroom. Initially, I had a pre-notion that Montessori classrooms are in general fairly quiet. But it was quite different when I entered the class room. Later found out that, that was because the head teacher was away for some time and they had a substitute assistant teacher. When the head teacher came back the class became much quieter. Most of the children knew what to do and worked with their respective materials. But there were also few children wandered and seemed unsure of what they wanted to do. Especially, this one little boy looked quite disturbed and often got into disagreements with his friends. I got to see how all of these situations were handled with kind, respectful and in a structured environment by the master teacher. I observed that though children were free to do anything , yet teacher maintained a structure and followed them silently .Like – before the circle time , children were very busy with their works but the moment head teacher sang a beautiful song(to put away their materials) , children immediately but slowly and steadily started putting away their materials . It was very impressive to see that. Another thing I observed is how older children initiated activities with younger ones. One girl (looked like a kindergartner) helped the younger ones either by reading a book to them or helping them in counting beads. The next thing I observed was the math area. Seeing all the bead materials made me realize how much children were enjoying while learning .I saw four to five children working on math area. Some were counting beads while others were counting number rods. But of course there were some conversations going on in between their works but assistant teacher
Open Document