Supporting Montessori Education Online
Adolescent practitioners share stories and updates from their own schools in this series. If you’d like to share an update with us, please send an email to Kari@IMTIOhio.org. We’d love to hear from you!
Orientation graduate John Buzzard shares how he’s transitioning his Upper School Integrated Humanities projects to a distance learning model at Hershey Montessori School in Huntsburg, OH!
Because we value face-to-face, social interaction and hands-on learning in Montessori education, we must strive to keep these as key elements of the learning process, despite our current social distancing situation. This requires some adjustments but can still be accomplished. As we consider our move towards working with our students in an online environment, we should pause to consider how to make this approach as true to the Montessori pedagogy as possible. Even using technology and new methodologies, we know that the truths of Montessori remain valid and will want to design our educational program with them in mind.
For the adolescent, it is critical that we make our learning child-directed and that we continue to make student choices a priority. Our choice of strategies in the online environment can be shaped by philosophy, and just as in other environments, we find teacher-centered learning and student-centered learning occurring. Because students are working more independently, there are many ways to structure the learning to be student-centered, and we want to take advantage of the computer and the students’ home environment to emphasize these possibilities.
Creating social elements is also key to making the experience truly meaningful to adolescents. So don’t merely focus on academic interactions – think closely about how to use video, dialogue, discussion, and activities to build connection and social dynamics with the group. Although we accept that this will be a less authentic community experience than actual face-to-face interaction, we must continue to make that element of adolescent development primary.
As always, there is a tension between the need for student-centered learning and the need for a prepared environment. In a Montessori school, guides know that maximizing student choice often begins with carefully constructed environments and experiences. We must shift this thinking to the online world, creating prepared virtual environments and experiences that continue to support student learning without superseding it.
This approach maximizes student choice while providing the prepared environment structure that students need to do their best work.
Ultimately it is the three-stage learning cycle that shows us the way to structuring our online learning environment. This approach maximizes student choice while providing the prepared environment structure that students need to do their best work. This three-stage cycle is built on three natural stages to the learning process – key lessons, individual research, and meaningful presentation.
First Stage – Key Lessons: The first stage focuses on key lessons given by the guide and providing experiences to students to help frame their learning around a topic. These can be presented in a synchronous or in an asynchronous environment. In a synchronous approach, the teacher is leading a live classroom, with students logging into a meeting, watching a power point or other shared content, and having those key lessons given to them, with opportunities for live Q and A as well. In an asynchronous approach, the teacher provides power points, articles, or other media and students review them at their own pace and provide responses. Either format can be valid depending on what you hope to accomplish. Particularly valuable would be adding in experts to a synchronous environment by providing students with a virtual experience. They could interview an expert in a field, watch a live demonstration, or otherwise engage with real world experiences. Asynchronous learning allows students to work at different paces, to be able to give their own take on presented material and may allow for collaboration and discussion (similar to a Socratic Seminar). Journaling student responses through class notebook or other media (like FlipBook video) provides opportunities for student-teacher interaction.
Second Stage – Research: Clearly this stage is well-suited to the online environment, as students can pursue individual research and exploration. Make use of class notebooks to maintain an ongoing dialogue with students (like a journal), keeping them talking about what they are working on, what information they are discovering, how their topic is developing as they go. Socratic discussion is also a valuable tool here with students able to do small, static presentations for classmates to provide feedback, or by having students respond to prompts. Requiring a certain amount of response may be helpful to push students who are more reluctant to jump in. This online discussion is very similar to Socratic Seminar in many ways – you will want to steer conversations back on topic as needed, encourage everyone to participate, be clear about our code of conduct around discussion, etc. Take advantage of the online format to break larger assignments into small chunks that they can be working on in a daily manner – find a source, find a few sources, create an annotated bibliography, develop a topic, write an outline, rough draft, and final draft (as one example).
Third Stage – Meaningful Sharing - The online environment provides many opportunities for student presentation and, just as in person, this can be emphasized as much or as little as you like. Using many of the same presentation approaches you used as the teacher in the first period, students can present to each other in synchronous and asynchronous ways (or perhaps both). An initial step might be to share power points, videos or written work with classmates for mutual feedback. This allows students to see the full array of possibilities of work created by their classmates, and to receive valuable feedback on their own work. This could be stepped up to be a live sharing out of presentations with leadership of the class being handed off to each student in turn to present. Just as in person, this could also be developed to include expert evaluators, both synchronously and asynchronously. Rubrics and feedback forms are always valuable, and may be even more so online to ensure consistency of interaction and that all bases are being covered.
In general, you will want to prepare your virtual environment just as you would your classroom environment. Use the file storage options to provide access to readings, videos and other key resources. This should include not only resources connected to your key lessons, like power points and outlines, but also more broadly reaching resources that provide students opportunities to explore the main topic in a variety of ways. You can use Microsoft Sway to create a website that organizes or sequences resources if that is helpful for your topic. Use Polly to conduct online polls of your students – useful both for doing quick content-related sound outs as well as getting student feedback on class structures and opportunities as well.
Remember to incorporate hands-on activities for students to be working on at home. This is not only valuable for keeping students active and energetic, but is also valuable educationally. Some possibilities: Take measurements, cook a meal, build an artifact, conduct an experiment, take photos, train your dog, do a craft, paint a picture, etc. Check out this multiple intelligences list for more ideas! You can use video formats (like Flipgrid) to have students share out their dance, their cooked dish, etc. These can be great social activities for students when they are separated.
These hands-on, multiple intelligences activities are a rich mine for building social interaction with the students, despite their being separated. If they cannot physically share in activities, we must make activities that allow for a physical commonality. Seeing your peers dance and cook and living their lives helps us all to learn better how to manage in this current social landscape. Let their natural playfulness come out through these fun interactions. Use fun questions to get discussions fired up – favorite Girl Scout cookie? Cake or pie? You can also use social check-ins to see how students are doing, what may be worrying them, or how you can better respond to their needs.
Although the online world may be unfamiliar to some, and the technology can feel daunting, you may be surprised at just how communal and interactive it can be. Many of our students are accustomed to socializing online and may have friends that they have never met in person. Try to hold on to best teachings of Montessori practice while embracing a new world of interaction, and when in doubt, follow the students – they will know the way better than you.