Learning contexts - Montessori schools

Montessori schools

Maria Montessori was an Italian theorist in the early 20^th century, Montessori observed children and discovered that they were individual active learners and would learn better through active involvement rather than being formally taught as each child is unique and so are their learning styles.

“Every child is a unique person with creative potential, the drive to learn and the right to be treated with respect as an individual.” (School, 2014)

Maria Montessori built her education system on children learning through play and how they model and imitate the actions of the adults around them, throughout her theory she focuses on children’s independence and that the child sized furniture would help the children to become more independent small equipment such as sponges, brushes and bins allow the children to imitate adults whilst still progressing their independence and self-realization.

 She believed that by having child sized equipment it would help meet a Childs learning and care needs, this is shown throughout Montessori schools and also shown in other settings all around the country and can be seen in the foundation phase as they all have small tables and chairs as well as small cupboards so the children can access them with ease.

Her work put an emphasis on self determination and self realisation there for throughout her schools you can see children learning independently through their own discoveries and choices  in an open plan space so that the practitioner could still supervise and support if needed.

Here is a video of a Montessori class in action At 2.36 there is a quote from Montessori. 

Montessori believes that children went through periods of learning this stated that a child had to learn a citron aspect of development by a cretin time otherwise they would only learn the skill with difficulty if they learn the skill at all ‘these intervals are called Sensitive Periods. During each of these periods, the child appears to be working on one specific area of development while ignoring all of the others (Lillard, 1996).  According to Standing (1962),’ some people believe this to be true for instance a child can learn multiple languages easier when they are a child to when they are an adult.