This article is the second in a series of posts on facilitating independence for children who are homeschooling or in remote learning. Read the first post here.
"Ok,here is what is currently baffling me. What are the kids supposed to do after you give them a presentation? For instance, say I present the grand layout of the Golden Beads to my daughter (because we need to do a little remedial math). What, on her own, would she then be doing with the material? I'm pretty clear on what to present and when (scope and sequence) and how to present each lesson, but it's still not clear to me what the students are doing with the material in-between…So far, my kids haven't really wanted to get out the material unless I'm presenting a lesson on it, with just a few exceptions. Are there certain materials that they just only work with if you're presenting something to them? Thank you!"
This was posted by a parent in a facebook group, and I thought it was a great opportunity to keep thinking about the nature of work in Montessori.
Some lessons really don’t have much natural follow up except for the next lessons. These lessons are meant to leave an impression in the child’s mind, but not necessarily lead to a lot of activity on the child’s part. Some examples include the great stories, the introduction to the Wooden Hierarchical Material, or some of the impressionistic charts. Of course, all of these can lead to follow up, generally further research or repetition, but this may be more appropriate as the child gets older (for example, you can revisit details of the Great Stories as the start of a research project).
Here’s an answer specific to the grand layout of the golden beads. This is a primary lesson that doesn’t necessarily translate well to elementary children. The grand layout of the golden beads is a fine introduction or review, but elementary children won’t be engaged by simply trying to repeat what you did, because it doesn’t match their psychological needs. While preschool aged children will repeat an activity many times, elementary children want variety.
Instead of expecting the children to repeat this work, I’d jump right to games (which actually do come from Primary, too, but are appropriate for elementary children). Put the golden beads on the shelf, and ask them to bring you 2 hundreds and 3 tens. Make these more complicated as time goes on. For elementary children, you can write it as a command (“Please bring me 2 hundreds and 3 tens.”). They love getting their own personalized commands like this. Don’t even prepare it in advance, just write them as you go.
Once they figure this out and you start introducing them to numeration, yo can begin giving them quantities to bring in numeral form (i.e. please bring me 230"). At first, I would do this using the decimal cards, if you have them. Later, you can switch to writing the numbers instead.
I hate to give an answer to a very specific question without trying to extract some principles that you can use in other contexts, so here we go.
Elementary children aren't satisfied by simply repeating activities. They do need repetition, but they seek variety. This is why games and alternate activities are important.
Sometimes elementary children are more responsive to taking a step towards abstraction and then returning to the more concrete material as needed. For example, you may want to pull out the stamp game or the large bead frame first, and then take out the golden beads when the child gets confused and you need a more concrete demonstration.
For many lessons, you can start the followup right in the lesson. For example, you can show the child how to make a timeline, a booklet, or a report, and get them started right then and there. This can be merged right into the lesson, for example, you can start making a booklet illustrating different nouns right in your lesson on nouns, or you can create a simple timeline together about a history story or a book you’re reading. All of these need teaching too: children will not magically know how to make a timeline. Some good, broadly applicable follow up activities include:
Make a timeline
Write a report
Create a booklet
Make a poster
Draw pictures and label them (for younger children, older elementary children should be expected to write more)
Imagine something related to the lesson and draw a comic or write a story about it
Build something
Do an experiment
Write your own problems and solve them
Make up a game to practice the lesson
Write a song
Write a poem
Write a letter, real or imaginary
Plan a Going Out related to the lesson
The habit of following up on lessons takes time to develop. Especially for children who are new to a Montessori environment, it may not magically happen right away. You can support follow up work by always discussing it. You can ask, “How would you like to practice this?” or simply say, “Let me show you something you can do to learn more about this,” and then demonstrate a good activity. This is especially important in a homeschool environment, because children won’t have the other children in the classroom modeling follow up.
As children get older (say around age 8), you can also introduce them to the idea that they have certain responsibilities for learning, and give them the key school standards for your area, rewritten in child-friendly language. (Shameless plug: I have these for sale.) I like to explain that society has decided there are certain things all children should know. In a Montessori school, children have lots of freedom to choose their work, but this also means they have a special responsibility, which is to make sure they learn everything in the school standards. After that, I make the standards available on a shelf, and I make a point of telling the children whenever a lesson is part of the school standards and letting them know that they are therefore expected to follow up on it. In my experience, the children love to rise to this responsibility, and more often than not, they come to me demanding lessons in the standards.
Follow up doesn’t always look like work. One year, after I told my children about the lives of early humans, I didn’t see much work around the topic happening in my classroom. But then I noticed that they were playing “Early Humans” at recess every day. We had extended outside time just about every day for a week or two, while they gathered acorns and tried to grind them between two rocks, built houses out of fallen branches, and developed a rudimentary trading system. The game didn’t produce anything, but you can bet those children remember their lessons on early humans. (Actually, the game did produce some big work: later they held an “Early Humans Day” for their parents and the primary children. My classroom morphed into a cave and a neolithic village for a week!)
Sometimes, the learning is invisible until it pops out fully formed. I recall an incident after teaching some students about the water cycle. One student really didn’t say much during the lesson, and didn’t do any obvious follow up work. A few weeks later, the children noticed that the puddle that had been on top of the sign in front of our building was gone. Several children proposed that the water had run down inside the sign. This child said, “No! It evaporated!” before proceeding to give an absolutely perfect explanation of the water cycle. Call me a Montessori contrarian, but the materials are just tools. They are beautiful, well-designed tools, but the point is the learning in the child's mind, not the use of particular materials, and this child was obviously learning, even though there was no obvious work.
If the child is showing no interest, your timing may be off. The child's interest takes precedence over any scope and sequence. You need scope and sequence when the child isn't showing any obvious interests and you're flailing to discover what will inflame their passions. Remember that "education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire"--(attributed to William Butler Yeats, but probably originally came from Plutarch).
Remember also that COVID-19 is a strange time; elementary children are very social creatures, and they like to explore with other children and away from their family. When the opportunities to work with other children are limited, work may not always happen the way you want it to. Engagement isn’t always as deep or as easy.
If the child is avoiding all work, there could be some other obstacle. This could be a developmental delay or learning difference, feeling too much pressure, not having access to the right tools, or not having peers to work with. This is a big topic, and is much too complicated to get into here.
Finally, remember that the lessons we give are gifts to the children; just as we can't force someone to accept or use a gift, we can't force a child to accept or use a lesson. Our job is to offer the lessons, and then do our best to observe with humility as the children choose what to take from it. Offer lessons, offer opportunities for follow up, and then watch with curiosity, joy, and a sense of adventure!