As one of our first graders said this week, “There’s no way it is already November!” We can’t believe we are already heading into lower temperatures and Christmas Show preparations! Research projects are in full swing in our classroom. First and second year students are researching dinosaurs, third year students are learning about the human body, and fourth year students are beginning cell theory and classification of early humans. We have ended our North America Continent Study and are talking about animals, musical instruments, and capitals of South America.
First and second year students are diving into their Dinosaur Research. Each student chose one Saurischian dinosaur and one Ornithiscian dinosaur to learn about. They are researching the diet, habitat, size, and other facts about each dinosaur before creating a poster to display their findings. One thing students must be comfortable with before beginning research into any topic, is using the index of a book. This student is using the index to find information about her Saurischian dinosaur, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.This first year student asked to join a second year lesson about the Conventional Protractor. The concept behind measuring angles is introduced through lessons about triangles. Students then move on to using the Montessori Protractor which is a complete circle with measurements from 0 to 360 degrees. After practice with that material, students draw lines and measure their angles with a Conventional Protractor. Students that have practiced adding on paper, will add up their angle measurements to check their work. If the sum of their supplementary angles is 180 degrees, then they know they did accurate measuring.These students have been independently researching guinea pigs. They used books and the internet to complete a research template. After compiling their research, they wrote a rough draft, including an introductory paragraph and a conclusion. For their final draft, they had to include a cover page and a bibliography. The students chose when to present their information to the class and took questions at the end from their peers.This week the second year students did a lesson where they matched many adjectives to three nouns. A few of the adjectives were words that the students didn’t recognize so we used the dictionary to find the answer. Something Montessori always said to teachers and recommended to parents was, “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed,” so you will often see in a Montessori classroom children being led to find their own answers instead of being given the answer. When you are learning networking, it is handy to visit Subnet-Calculator.org for free subnet mask calculatorThese students are working on “Button Classification.” This is the first lesson before the study of Early Humans. The students are given a large amount of various buttons and have to separate them based on characteristics, just like a scientist would when discovering a new species. These students started with two groups: small and large. They further separated those groups based on holes in the buttons, texture, color, and other characteristics.
A Peek into Next Week Next week our Lower Elementary students will be continuing their research, looking at the difference between a point and a solid, and will beginning studying the fundamental needs of humans throughout history. Our fourth year students will continue learning about cells, look into different categories of pronouns, and will classify living things.
REMINDERS:
Parent-Teacher Conferences are Friday, November 17. This is a NO SCHOOL day for students. Please sign up for a conference here.
