Montessori Elementary & Middle School
The fundamental tenet of our Montessori-based schools is that students will learn to direct and manage their own learning. Child development is a process of stimulation and enrichment with cognitive and manipulative materials as well as hands-on activities. Our private elementary and middle schools offer classes where students individually and in small groups, plan and assess their goals in learning.
Curriculum
Our Elementary and Middle school program incorporates an individual curriculum that continues and expands upon the Montessori curriculum employed in the preschool program. The specific components include:
Language Arts
Students develop skill and fluency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, the basics of the language arts. Reading skills give them independence in learning and the joy of exploring appropriate literature. Students are involved in extensive writing, including creative writing and research projects appropriate to their abilities. They use their language arts as enabling skills throughout the curriculum.
Mathematics
Students gain a further understanding of the use of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through manipulation of concrete materials. Their self-directed explorations and applications lead them naturally to the learning of fractions, geometry, weights and measures, estimation, and word problems. Older students will progress to algebra and high school math subjects. Further understanding and mathematical skills come through appropriate software and other learning technologies.
Science
Through guided observation and exploration, students discover the basic elements of both the scientific method and the domains of the natural and the physical sciences. The school encourages the “doing” of science by means of hands-on activities that lead to concept development. Field trips help integrate real experiences into the science program. The three grand science cycles, each covering a year of study, include the life science (biology), the physical sciences (chemistry and physics), and the earth sciences (geology and astronomy).
Social Studies
History, geography, and anthropology stand foremost in the school. Teachers invite and guide students to become familiar with the heritage of the world, to learn of its significant figures, its cultures, its epochal events, and the places where history was and is being made. Students move to more advanced study through project-based explorations, leading to the areas of economics, politics, and business. This group of disciplines helps increase students’ appreciation for various cultures, ethnicities, and traditions. The three grand cycles, each covering a year of study, include the early period (through the Renaissance), the middle period (Reformation through the Industrial Revolution), and the modern period (World War I to today).
Global Languages
The school offers basic foreign language training in both Spanish and Chinese, which is intended to produce limited fluency by age 9 and conversational fluency with peers by age 12.
Arts
Students have ample opportunity and strong encouragement to express their creative talents in the visual, plastic, kinesthetic, musical and dramatic arts. Performance and museum attendance, theory and history of the arts, and the development of an aesthetic sensibility are integral parts of this curriculum. Lower elementary students learn both rhythm and melody as part of the foundational “Orff Music Program.” In third grade, students learn to read music and play recorders. In fourth grade, students move into band and learn to play a traditional instrument.
Physical Education
Playful and imaginative physical exertion is integrated into the daily activities. Students acquire increased body awareness, control, and wellness through stimulating games and sports calling for cooperative and competitive efforts. An outdoor program with walking, hiking, and camping plays an important role in students’ development.
Computers and Technology
Students utilize information technologies such as computers and multi-media as learning tools in many of their curriculum activities. They acquire competence in the creation, production, and utilization of simple technologies by planning and building them. Students learn how things work and how to make them work, and invent new things that incorporate their skills and knowledge. Keyboarding is taught in the lower elementary program, and most school assignments are computer processed.
Thinking Skills
While not a distinct subject, students learn the lifetime skills of how to learn, process information, solve problems, make decisions, and plan and complete tasks. Through modeling and encouragement, they learn to develop and manage their interpersonal skills and to cooperate and become effective, courteous, and happy members of a learning community.
Life Skills
Food preparation, gardening, animal care, technology maintenance, and care of the environment are essential components of each student’s growth and development.
Students develop skill and fluency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, the basics of the language arts. Reading skills give them independence in learning and the joy of exploring appropriate literature. Students are involved in extensive writing, including creative writing and research projects appropriate to their abilities. They use their language arts as enabling skills throughout the curriculum.
Take The Next Step
If you are ready to experience the difference in our Montessori Elementary and Middle school programs, visit our schools or apply online today.
