RISEN LORD LUTHERAN CHURCH
Montessori Education
Over 100 years ago in the San Lorenzo district of Rome, a brilliant scientist began her search for the keys to human learning.
Maria Montessori’s approach to education was groundbreaking, as she brought the scientific method to the classroom. Through years of tireless observation, experimentation, data collection, and planning Montessori developed what eventually became the world-renowned educational approach known as the Montessori Method.
Although its respect and prominence are unquestioned among education leaders across the globe, it is still frequently misunderstood.
As you explore Montessori and ultimately what’s best for your child, we hope to help you understand what happens at Risen Lord Montessori by focusing on the five key guiding principles of our school:
Child-Centered
Montessori can be best described as child-centered education. All schools claim this, but it means something different in a Montessori school.
It means the school itself was designed around the child. During work times (known as work cycles), teachers are not the focal point; they are quiet guides who learn in conjunction with the children, allowing them to develop all aspects of their character -- social, emotional and academic.
Most childcare centers are focused on social development and preparing children for school. Risen Lord Montessori IS school. Students are taught about cultures, math and language in conjunction with executive function skills that encourage creativity and self-discipline while learning to socialize and interact peacefully.
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“Follow the child:” this popular Montessori quote means giving the child the guidance or freedom they need at that moment of their development.
Montessori observed that children need an academic environment that is safe, calming, secure and home-like to function at their highest level.
The shelves are meticulously set up to serve in some ways as the curriculum for the children. Each area of the room represents a content area, and the materials are leveled from left to right and top to bottom to allow a child to independently find items and return them when complete.
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At Risen Lord Montessori School, the classroom itself becomes the most important educational tool.
The Prepared Classroom
You won’t find many worksheets and coloring pages in a Montessori classroom.
Students spend the bulk of their time developing skills with simple and artistically created materials. Montessori observed what modern science has proven: that people learn through experience.
So she meticulously designed Montessori materials so that children create experiences that all later learning can build upon.
Multi-Age Classrooms
The Montessori classroom breaks the chains of traditional age-based education and frees children to learn and excel through multi-age classrooms and teachers trained in identifying a child’s readiness to learn.
In a Montessori classroom, there are no limiting factors for children who are ready for acceleration or those who need remediation as there are in age-based programs.
At Risen Lord, a child advanced at letter identification can move up to elementary levels, even though in counting they may still need support. Age-based programs only offer one level of instruction and support, leaving a gap where children may become frustrated or bored.
The Montessori classroom is set up to address the social, emotional and academic needs of each child regardless of age or capabilities.
Experience over worksheets
Child Driven Learning
As neuroscience now supports for people of all ages, Montessori discovered that learning is not a linear process.
Instead of learning things in “order,” the mind moves in and out of periods of readiness, or sensitivity, where it enters an optimal level of openness to learn a particular concept or skill.
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A simple example is when your child suddenly became interested in walking and talking, nothing could stop them! Yet all children begin walking and talking at different times.
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When age is not a limiting factor, a major issue with traditional education is solved. Instead of teachers simply presenting a turn-key curriculum to the whole class, Risen Lord's teachers identify through continuous observation the point when a child enters a sensitive period.
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With careful planning, the teacher maximizes the child’s development through one period into another with individually crafted lessons.
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A child is taught not according to a majority of their peers or to prewritten lesson plans but to their own individual readiness to learn.
