Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
In fact scientists have found that variety boosts both attention and retention. –Patti Neighmond on NPR’s Morning Edition (2011): Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely Morning Edition has an excellent piece that points out that there is little or no actual experimental data supporting the idea that teaching should be … Continue reading “Learning from Multiple Perspectives Works Better”
Energy cannot be either created or destroyed, just changed from one form to another. That is one of the fundamental insights into the way the universe works. In physics it’s referred to as the Law of Conservation of Energy, and is the basic starting point for solving a lot of physical problems. One great example … Continue reading “Global Temperature Model: An Application of Conservation of Energy”
Elegant in its simplicity but profound in its application, the Pythagorean Theorem is one of the fundamentals of geometry. Mathematician Alexander Bogomolny has dedicated a page to cataloging 93 ways of proving the theorem (he also has, on a separate page, six wrong proofs). Some of the proofs are simple and elegant. Others are quite … Continue reading “93 Ways to Prove Pythagoras’ Theorem”
Perhaps it’s cultural conditioning, or maybe it’s genetic a predisposition, but adolescent boys to seem to have more of a predilection for war games than their female peers. The games they like tend to be first-person-shooters, like Call of Duty, and, given the trends toward improved video game graphics and remote, kinetic military action, real … Continue reading “Cyberwar”
Molly Backes, an author of young adult fiction, considers the question from a mother about her teenager, “She wants to be a writer. What should we be doing?” Her first answer was, “You really do have to write a lot. I mean, that’s mostly it. You write a lot.” But then she thought about it, … Continue reading “Molly Backes on How to Be a Writer”
Our bread-baking enterprise was quite popular last year. In the afternoons, just as the loaves were about to come out of the ovens, we’d get the occasional visitor poking their head into our room for “aromatherapy”. Students also liked the freshly baked bread. Some favored the crust while others liked the insides; which worked out … Continue reading “Bread Baking”
Jenny Anderson has an interesting article on a New York school that changed from the typical 45 minute class periods to longer 130 minute “blocks” (thanks to Kara D. for pointing this one out). The whole idea of set class periods is one I’m having to get used to again as I move out of … Continue reading “Block Schedules”
With students working on different things at the same time, sometimes collaborating, sometimes working individually, a fluidly function Montessori classroom is somewhat akin to a complex but well-oiled machine: there are lots of individually moving parts that sometimes interact and sometimes not, in an ever-changing configuration. As a result, the job of the middle school … Continue reading “Building the Machine: The Role of the Teacher in a Montessori Middle School”