I'm often asked what advice you can give a beginning teacher.  This happens a lot in Taiwan since people tend to come here just after college to spend a year teaching English.  There are no requirements for the type of degree or experience you need, just that you either have a 4 year degree or a 2 year degree with a TEFL Certificate. 

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to start learning Bloom's Taxonomy and start to really look at childhood development.  Some of my readers might not be familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, but a basic overall introduction to it is that children first learn higher learning concepts through first being able to recall information, then understand it, then analyze it....it goes all the way up to creating through 6 steps.  (In the newer version..there's an older one out there that is slightly different).

Today, I had something that showed me how important it is to understand childhood development.  You take the class in your Montessori training, then sometimes forget about some things (or not really look at it too much).  Remember, I don't work in a Montessori school now, so forgive me for saying I gave the kid a test...I have to do it.

So I gave a kids a test last week.  The last part of the test is a writing portion.  The basic idea of the story we were reading had to do with being nice to others so that's what I had them write about.  One boy wrote how he likes to be nice to others because they are, then, nice to him.  If they aren't nice to him, then he won't be nice to them.  Immediately, I thought of Kohlberg's stages of moral development.  With no physical resources to look this up, I quickly went to the internet to double check what I thought I remembered.  There it was...right before adolescence, kids are in an "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" concept of morality.  (At least according to this theory, which has its controversies).

2 other students wrote about how to act if a new person is at school and people are mean to him/her (a topic I gave them as a suggestion).  It ended up similarly - be nice and in the end, they'll be nice to you, too.

I wrote on their paper what an excellent essay that was, but imagine if I had not known this idea of development and expected them to be where older students, or even adults, are.  If I demanded more from them than they should be able to produce, I would be doing the class a disservice.

It is critical that we learn to understand where our students are and see that through the eyes of many developmental levels.  Once we do this, our understanding of student's ideas will become clearer and we can relate to them more.

A recommended book is this one.  BUT LET ME WARN YOU!!!!  The amazon.com price is really high.  Look at the link on this page to buy them for "New and Used" starting at a much lower price:

http://astore.amazon.com/monteblog-20/detail/0205150187


 



This book doesn't really go into Kohlberg's stages much (if at all), but gives you a good understanding of a child's development without getting too technical or boring.  I'm in the middle of reading it now and it's brought me a lot of insightful ideas.

..__________________________.._
Did Dr. Montessori develop a method for teaching children a language in addition to their native tongue?

From what I have learned about Montessori so far, it seems to me that another language could be optimally learned during the sensitive period for language, but the "traditionalist" in me says "no way - that's too young!"

Our M school (AMI) offers spanish in primary as an extracurricular, but it's only once/week. I'm not sure that's enough exposure. What has been your experience? How does your school teach other languages?

I appreciate the insights. Thank you!
__________________________..__________________________..__


It's really not enough exposure, to be honest. I've been living in Taiwan for three years and have planned out a whole curriculum to teach ESL. The best way to learn a language in the Montessori environment centers around several things.

First off, an understanding of Maria Montessori's ideas of language development is really important. Begin by looking at the chapter(s?) on language she wrote in the Absorbent Mind. There's a chart in there that is particularly helpful. What I have realized is children learning a foreign language follow pretty much the same pattern that is in that chart, just at a different rate. This is important because if you ignore a developmental stage in the learning process of a foreign language at a young age, it will be difficult to get it back. For example, many teachers often jump right into simply teaching phrases. The children often simply parrot those phrases without really knowing what they mean. What's important in the beginning steps is to allow the child to understand that the foreign language has a purpose. The first two months of Montessori's ideas of language development show us that the child is simply listening to the language. It's not until about 6 months that the child begins to make syllable sounds and it's often repeated. To really follow this developmental stage, the most important parts of the language development in the beginning involve:
1) A teacher the child trusts who speaks the foreign tongue to them. This allows the child a reason to want to understand the teacher. It often takes a little more time with some children to develop this trust with someone that doesn't speak the language (not true of all children), so that teacher must step back a little bit until the child feels more comfortable.

2) A lot of exposure to books and songs. If the books and songs have repetition in it, even if it's just a phrase or two, it's much better. This way, the child hears the same language over and over again and is beginning to understand what the language is about.

3) Patience. The hard part about a foreign language is people do not really understand it. Often times, parents are very Montessori-minded and willing to give their child a little more time in reading, writing, math, or other skills, but think foreign language should just be an easy thing to pick up. It's going to take many children more time to feel ok with the idea of learning another language.

If you think about it, your average 4 year old does not quite think about how important a foreign language is on a global scale so a direct instruction method with simply the thought of "this will help them in the long run" is not going to get many children very far. Once a child has reached the level of understanding the idea of a foreign language and has built a relationship with someone that almost always speaks that foreign language to them, they have a reason for more direct "traditional" instruction.

The Montessori classroom is filled with a lot of language opportunities. I've found that most conversational learning happens in the practical life and sensorial areas. In the classroom I set up, these were the favorite areas for the children when they came into my ESL classroom. With the practical life areas, they learned so many words that they could use around the house. In sensorial, and this may be a big difference between our AMS and AMI training, I allowed them the ability to dip more into their imaginations. At the school I worked at, the kids were pushed into math and reading rather than allowing it to happen on the child's time. (Not an AMS nor AMI thing at all...just this school's ideas). So when they came to my classroom, I had so many 6 year olds that simply wanted to use the sensorial materials. They already knew "big" and "small," they just wanted the opportunity to use the pink tower because they almost could not do it in their regular classrooms. If they already knew that language, I could transfer it into something different for them. Rather than just learning "big" and "small," I had them imagine it was, for instance, a building. Then I could bring in the idea of different jobs and ask who works in that building? What do they do? What floor do they work on? Any question the child is ready for so I can instruct them in it. I'd take VERY careful notes and write down what we worked on so I can use it the next time that work is out.

As far as actual language learning goes, I looked at the child's language development through two different concepts:
--The language that we can naturally use in the classroom.
--Language that we might not normally use in the classroom, which involved primarily a lot of conversation. (We're not going to ask each other, "What country are you from?" on a daily basis in the classroom).

The first one is the most important because it provides the basis of so much of their language. By the time they get through the sensorial materials, they know, better than any other curriculum, almost all the adjectives they will need to know. The entire curriculum is full of nouns. Through natural uses, they pick up on how the phrase structure works with articles. Within a short time, they can usually easily say something like, "a blue car" if they used the color tablets and have done a material regularly that has cars involved (such as a transportation object-picture matching material).

The more traditional instruction should come AFTER the child has had a decent amount of exposure to the classroom materials in the foreign language. This helps them understand using the language beyond the classroom. This instruction should be engaging still and suited to the child's interest in some way, but it does take on more of a traditional method in terms of planning out the curriculum, group lessons, and instructional methodologies.

What I've noticed is a child naturally goes through the following stages of interest with language development:
--Learning to listen to the language.
--Trying to sound out what you say. This is important because it's delicate at this point. If we try to correct too much, they may lose interest. EVERY child is different on how much correction they will take. Don't be afraid to let them say it wrong for a little while. They're still learning.
--Learning to name things (nouns) and learning how to ask, "What is this?" At this time, they also love repetition with stories and songs. Conversation repetition is important at this stage, too.
--They can move from just nouns into noun phrases. Like the example above, "car" can become "a blue car."
--They begin attaching verbs to the phrases. I stick to simple present tense the whole time at this stage. "A blue car drives." "A tall man runs." A lot of the verbs they can use were used during the three period lesson ("GIVE me the red tablet." "HIDE the blue tablet.") and games/songs played during group time.
--A lot of conjunctions are just learned naturally, but I make sure to give specific lessons at this point just in case the child has not noticed them.
--Prepositions can be learned naturally after verbs are used in sentences.

I kept a paper with the child's name on it and wrote down what the child was learning overall in those different grammar areas. This way, I could meet the child exactly where they are and move them forward a little more every time when they were ready to move forward.

One more thought - bring the songs to life with materials in the classroom. If you sing "5 little monkeys jumping on a bed," make a material with 5 monkeys, a mom, a telephone, a bed, and a doctor. Present how to sing the song, once they know it well, and use the materials to act it out. I had a wake up call when I realized, despite the children knowing the song REALLY well, when I introduced a bed in a lesson on furniture, they had no clue what it was.

Phew...I wrote a lot. And yes, I have been planning on writing a book about this since there are none out there.