Andressa Witek

Professor Jennifer Myers

Education 111

October 26th 2018

3) Define:

Multi-age grouping: The Montessori classrooms have a mixed age group of children, so the children will
have in their classroom older children, younger children or children at the same age. The classroom is
compose like that because Montessori philosophy believes that younger children will learn with the older
ones and the older children will teach the younger ones, giving them more confidence and boost their
self-esteem.

Classroom Design: The classroom design is very important for the Montessori philosophy. Everything
needs to be low and small to be accessible to the children, the color needs to be a lighted-color decoration
and the environment needs to be organized to help with the harmony. The classroom needs to have
flowers and small animals so the children can take care of them. Typically is organized in five curriculum
areas: language, math, practical life, sensorial and culture.

Prepared Learning Environment: Teachers prepared the learning environment based on observations and
interests of the children.

Teacher Role: The teacher role is to prepare the environment, observe the children, and demonstrate
materials, but not interfere with the natural exploration. Teachers are more like a facilitator and their
interaction with the children are very intentional.

Montessori Learning Materials: The materials follow the approach “Hands-on”, which every material are
design to be manipulated and investigated by the children until they master the activity. Each material
teach a skill or concept at a time.

Practical Life Activities: The purposes of the practical life exercises is to provide the children with
equipment in an environment that supplies to their developmental needs at the stage of life.

Sensorial Exercises: The Montessori approach uses a lot of sensory activities to let the children explore
their senses and Maria Montessori believed that those kinds of activities could help the intellectual
development. They are separate in 6 lesson sequences: 1- visual (Broad stair), 2 – Auditory (Sound
Cylinders), 3 – Haptic (Rough and smooth boards), 4 – Olfactory and Gustatory (Smelling bottles and
tasting bottles), 5 – Stereognostic (Mystery Bag) and 6 – Visual (Triangle Box).

Caring Community: The Montessori classroom emits respect and harmony, where children and teachers
show respect to each other. Their voices are used in a normal volume, they never raised their voices and
they never are rude to each other. Everybody works together, take turns caring for the classroom pets
and plants and everybody do their part to maintain order to the environment.
4. I think the similarities are that the teachers from both philosophies observe the children and plan by
their interests and necessities. They both have some similarities on their classroom design, such as the
language, math and dramatic centers and lower chairs and shelves to make easy and accessible the
materials to the children.

The differences are how the centers are arranged and named, where Montessori has practical life and
culture center. The classroom is a child-centered environment always at the Montessori classroom, where
in the normal approach there is a mix of teacher-centered and child-centered activities. The teacher role
at the Montessori is more like a facilitator, where in the normal approach the teacher play a big role on
interactions with the children.

The class which I observed is a mix of Montessori and creative curriculum, so the teacher used a lot of
materials from the Montessori philosophy. I was able to see a not so strict Montessori classroom, but a
classroom where the children were still being present to sensorial and natural materials that are the key
point to this philosophy, but also learning by the project base and teachers interactions.

I really prefer classroom that uses mix approaches, because brings the best of all to the children. The
teachers can use what is most beneficial for the learning styles of the children and teach them in different
ways.