The Joy Of Learning

Do our chidlren fare better than the last generation?

For young parents or experienced parents alike, very often I saw them panics when they heard their cousins/neighbors/colleagues are sending their children for mental arithmetic, language enrichment, …, you name it.

They get even more panicky when they heard 4 years old Susan can read above his grade level or 5 years old Johnny can do multiplication. Do our children fare better? You may say the public examination results are getting more excellent each year.

As an educator that familiar with the system, I knew that the biggest lies the results tell us is: “Our children are doing better academically”. Ever heard of “curve fitting”? Or the university I worked at previously called it “adjusted score”.

It’s a statistical lie, the translation of the terms is: you decided how many children should pass, and how many children should get ‘A’s and then adjust the percentile accordingly, that means those who score 45% may get an A, and those who score 10% may pass !! Which is normally the case for subject like mathematics!

As a teacher who have run a preschool and a former university lecturer, I have seen too often unhappy children and young adults who have lost their joy of learning. They started to rebel when they were old enough to do so at 10-12 years old. Many got into drinking and drug problem when they leave home for university and end up in the drug rehab.

Why my child won’t listen?

I get asked this question quite often.

Are you interested to know what Maria Montessori’s view on this?

I have a 4 years old joined my class in January, he was what the Cantonese called “gao jin” —literally a “stubborn cow”:-)

He broke a glass pitcher, spilled the beans and refused to pick them up on the first day.

We played walking on the line, he couldn’t walk in straight line and wiggled like a worm on the chair, pushed the chair with his butts and gave out loud noise, couldn’t solve a 10-piece puzzles and wouldn’t pick them up when he didn’t want to continue.

When we played silence game, he couldn’t hear his name being called even though I called his names louder and louder for about 10 times.

Should we have started “teaching” him, do you think he can absorb?

We make sure we play silence game and walking on the line with him everyday, sometime twice a day. By the third or fourth day, he jumped up when I just whispered his name from another corner of the classroom.

One of those paradox of Montessori education. If you want your child to listen, you don’t speak louder and louder so they can hear, but to bring him silence and quietness, so that he learned to listen carefully.

Dr. Montessori invented this game when she was working with children who were partially deaf. She found that partially deaf children’s hearing was often improved when they learned to listen carefully to sounds.

Today is the last school day of his third week, he has not broken anything since the last pitcher, he is also able to sit down for 20 minutes, completing a 20 piece puzzle, all by himself. To me, that’s a big achievement for the child.

The Idiosyncrasies

This is one of those days.

This morning, I was awoke by a student’s mum, she was asking impatiently “Where are you teacher? I am at your school, how come you are not here yet?”

My! Where am I? I were in my dreamland one second ago, before the telephone rang!

Apparently, she needed to drive her father in law to see a doctor early in the morning and decided to drop her kids early at 7.15 a.m.

Well, my regular school hours start at 9.00 a.m, but parents can drop their children at 8.20 a.m. Though I maybe there earlier some days, but it’s crazy to expect me to be there at 7.15 a.m without prior notice.

This evening, I was supposed to attend a bridal shower, my cousin is getting married tomorrow. My “Spell to Write and Read” class ended at 6 p.m. One of the mums didn’t come to pick up her kids until 45 minutes later. I had to rush like a mad person because my dad was coming over to pick me at 7 p.m. This mum actually had the cheek to call me later in the evening and questioned me how come she didn’t see me or another adult with her 10 and 12 years old when she picked them up. Yeah, I was trying to take a quick shower and refreshed myself before going for the party and she came.

I tried to remember “customers are always right”, else I would need a plasma tv mount  to hang her on the wall.

Rational of Sensorial Activities

The aim of sensorial materials is the education and refinement of the senses: visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, thermic, baric, sterognostic, and chromatic.

These activities assist the child in the development of his intelligence, which is dependent upon the organizing and categorizing of his sense perceptions into an inner mental order.

Again, you don’t really need a prescribed set of materials to do this, it’s impractical to buy the whole set of Montessori apparatus to educate your own kids.

Rational of Practical Life activities

These exercises involve simple and precise tasks. The child has already observed adults/parents perform these activities in their home environment. The child wishes to imitate. It can be cleaning the prepared environment, setting the table or prepare simple snacks. Of course nothing as complicated as cooking or preparing cornbread dressing, just slicing bananas, washing the baby carrots and such. :-)

The desired imitation is intellectual in nature because it is based on the child’s previous observation and knowledge.

 There can be no prescribed list of materials involved.

 The purpose is not to master these tasks for their own sake i.e. you don’t really hope to train your child to be a plumber by letting him play with PVC pipes, nuts and bolts. :-)

 It is rather to aid the inner construction of discipline, organization, independence, and self-esteem through concentration on a precise and completed cycle of activity.

 Maria said “The exercises of practical life are formative activities. They involve inspiration, repetition, and concentration on precise details.”

The 3-period lesson

Introduction of a Three Period Lesson
(1) First step…associates the name of an object with the abstract idea the name represents…this is blue, this is red.

(2) Second step…test to see if the name is still associated in the child’s mind with the object…which is red…which is blue?

(3) Third step…the child is asked to pronounce the appropriate vocabulary himself/herself…what is this…what is this?

Maria said this about repeating a lesson:
“But when the child has failed, we should know that he was not at that instant ready for the psychic association which we wished to provoke in him and we must therefore choose another moment.”

Maria said “..In such cases, the children experience a joy at each fresh discovery. They are conscious of a sense of dignity and satisfaction which encourages them to seek for new sensations from their environment and to make themselves spontaneous observers.”

Development Required Before a Child Can Read

What is developmental appropriate activities? Making 2-3 years old holding a pencil with the wrong grip is setting her up for lifelong hatred of writing. Flashing cards to wigglers who can’t sit still for 20 seconds is setting ourselves for frustrations.

Parents came to me and said their 4 years old is “slow” because the academic progress is not as satisfactory. Usually, almost everytime, it’s because the developmental needs of the child were not addressed. If a child can’t concentrate for 20 seconds, he won’t be able to read and sit still to learn, and that is the underlying reasons why he is not “performing” academically.

In an authentic Montessori classroom, we prepare the children by allowing them to develop the right skills required for academic success, namely: ability to focus/concentrate and love of learning.

What are the developmentally needs and how do we prepare them?

Developmental Preparation
1. Sensorial development to receive information
2. Perceptual development in order to organize, understand and integrate information.
3. Neurological(tactal, stereognostic, etc) to utilize information in a physical manner.
4. Social development of interpersonal relationships to relate to people and events.
5. Symbolic development in order to decode.
6. Concept fromation
7. Verbal language
8. Visual language reading

Development Needed
1. Gross motor control
2. Fine muscle control
3. Eye-hand coordination
4. Ability to perceive figure in space (walking on line, etc)
5. Directionality (top-bottom, right-left, etc)
6. Ability to organize a temporal, spatial relationship (understanding, difference between in and on)
7. Ability to differentiate contrasting symbol and sound i.e. “a” and “t” is a good contrast in sound and symbol “b” and “p” are too similar .
8. Ability to classify
9. Ability to udnerstand conceptions presented in text (content meaning)
10. Well developed auditory discrimination
11. Ability to focus and listen to verbal instructions
12 General ability to focus on the task on hand.

Reference: “what’s involved in being Able to Read” Ellen de HArt Young Children, March 1968

Some of the activities and games that we used in the Montessori classroom to help to aid this developmental needs and develop the necessary skills.

http://joymontessori.blogspot.com/2007/01/sound-cylinders.html

http://joymontessori.blogspot.com/2007/01/visual-discrimination-cards.html

http://joymontessori.blogspot.com/2007/01/pre-reading-exercises.html

What is Montessori Education?

Dr. Fleege and his associates conducted a study, Montessori Pre-School Education, with two groups of children, one from a Montessori preschool and the other from a non-Montessori preschool. The children were from the same community, with the same socio-economic and cultural environment, and the educational background was similar for the parents. The traditional preschool was a very good school and the Montessori school was average to slightly below average.

Check out this article by Dr Fleege:

Montessori Method by Dr. Urban H. Fleege