Thurs. Seward Insider: Understanding Montessori Terms

I still recall how lost I was at the start of my child’s first year at Seward, so I want to try to help others in that situation with a few fundamentals I’ve learned along the way, and that’s what this occasional column will be about.

If Montessori is new to you, you may be a little puzzled by (or just getting the wrong impression from) some terms your students may be bringing home from school, like "work" and "lesson." A Montessori "work" (or "material") is a self-contained educational toy. Well, not really a toy, but like a toy it is designed to engage a child: to be something they want to interact with, and in the process learn from. A Montessori "lesson" is a demonstration of how to take out, interact with, and put away a work. While Seward students do get some formal lessons on subject matter, usually when they "get a lesson" they are just being introduced to a new work, and only beginning to learn the subject matter that work helps them become familiar with. So do not be disappointed when your child tells you they got an addition lesson that day in school, but still seem to have a poor grip on what addition is. They are just beginning to explore it for themselves, the Montessori way!

Your head may also be spinning from some of the terms your child is using on those rare occasions you can coax them into telling you about what they did at school. Perhaps they have mentioned the "Golden Beads," the "Stamp Game," "Sandpaper Letters," or even the "Great Lessons." Not understanding these terms can make it hard to carry on any kind of meaningful conversation with your kiddo about their education. The good news is that these days you can search for these terms online and get a pretty good idea of what they refer to. The bad news is that kids often mispronounce or otherwise get these terms a little wrong…and even if they do not, what you find about them on the internet is often not that great. So I started putting together an illustrated glossary of Montessori terms. In the process, I found that someone had beat me to it, and done a good enough job that I do not feel compelled to try to improve on it: https://montessori-ami.org/resource-library/facts/glossary-montessori-terms.

Finally, it can be disorienting to encounter the names and abbreviations for the grade levels used at Seward, since they are not so familiar to most of us as are K and 1–12. Seward groups students of different ages and educational levels together, something the Montessori method has very good reasons for doing. (See globalmontessori.com/school/grade-levels/ if you want to know more!) Kindergartners at Seward are not grouped with other students only because the Montessori framework would have them grouped with younger, pre–school-age children, and such kids have only recently started attending Seward. But Kindergarten at Seward is usually referred to as “Children’s House” because that is the name for their age group in the Montessori system, and they use “works” (learning tools and activities) designed for that age group.

Pre-K: Seward's "High Five" program for kids under 5 years of age

Children’s House: Kindergarten

E1: Grades 1–3

E2: Grades 4–5

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