Bannockburn | Leading in Montessori Education

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why Do Bannockburn's Montessori Classes Group Different Age Groups?

Bannockburn's Montessori classrooms are organized to encompass a three-year age span which allows younger children the stimulation of older children who, in turn, benefit from serving as role models. Children stay in the same class for three years and with two-thirds of the class returning each year, the classroom culture remains quite balanced. Working in one class for three years allows students to develop a strong sense of community with their classmates and their teachers.

2. Why Does Bannockburn Ask Children To Attend Five Days Per Week?

Bannockburn School requires children to consistently attend five days per week. This program creates consistency of environment that is so important to the young child. A sense of stability and comfort comes from attending every day class. One of the primary goals of the Montessori philosophy is creating a culture of consistency, order and empowerment.

3. Why Does Bannockburn Want Children To Enter At Age Three?

The Montessori environment for children three to six years of age is designed to work with the "sensitive periods" of the child and the different tendencies of children at this stage of their development. Learning that takes place during these three years comes spontaneously, without effort, leading children to enter the elementary classes with a clear and concrete sense of many abstract concepts. This process works best when the child enters Bannockburn around their third birthday. Children entering at four or five do not consistently come to the end of the three-year-cycle with the degree of skills, work habits or values seen in children who begin at three.

4. How Can Bannockburn Teachers Meet The Individual Needs of So Many Different Children?

Lessons are taught individually and since two-thirds of the students have already been in the classroom for two and three years, the guidelines are in place and the children know how to work individually. These older children are the role models for the first year students. The teachers' ultimate goal is to help their students to learn independently and employ their curiosity, creativity and the intelligence with which they were born. Bannockburn teachers closely monitor each child's progress through observation of their work. Because they work with each child for two or three years, they get to know their children's strengths and weaknesses, interests, and personalities, extremely well.

5. What Does The Term “Normalization” Mean?

Normalization is a Montessori term that describes the process in which young children who typically have a short attention span, to learn to focus their intelligence, concentrate their energies for long periods of time and take tremendous satisfaction from their work. The following are characteristics of normalization in the child three to six years of age: a love of order; a love of work; profound spontaneous concentration; attachment to reality; love of silence and working independently; obedience and initiative; spontaneous self-discipline; joy; and the power to act from real choice and not just from idle curiosity.

6. Is Montessori For All Children?

Bannockburn has successfully used the Montessori method of teaching children from all socio-economic levels, representing those from normal to gifted intelligence, and in some special cases, children with developmental delays and children with emotional and physical disabilities. There are certainly children who may do better in a smaller classroom setting with a more teacher-directed program that offers fewer choices and consistent external structure. Children who are easily over-stimulated or those who tend to be overly aggressive may be examples of children who might not adapt easily to a Montessori program. Each situation is different, and at Bannockburn we find it best to work with each child and their families individually.

7. Is Montessori Unstructured?

Our Montessori classes may look unstructured, but they are actually quite structured at every level. Students cannot and do not do just
whatever they want. Montessori students live in the cultural context that involves the mastery of skills and knowledge that are considered essential. In the Primary years external structure is limited to clear-cut ground rules and correct procedures that provide guidelines and structure for three, four and five year-olds. Elementary students work with a written study plan for the day or week that indicate tasks they need to complete allowing them to choose when they would like to undertake each piece of work and decide how long to spend on it.

8. How Does Bannockburn Report On Student Progress?

We believe in individually-paced academic progress and do not assign letter grades or rank students in relationship to their peers. Student progress, however, is measured in different ways, which include: Narrative Progress Reports, Teacher/Parent Conferences, Parent and Teacher Observations, and, at the Elementary level, Student Self-evaluations and Student Portfolio work.

9. Is Montessori Opposed To Competition?

Montessori is not opposed to competition; Dr. Maria Montessori simply observed that competition is an ineffective tool to motivate children to learn and work hard in school. Rather than have students measured against the performance of their peers, Montessori students are considered for their individual progress. At Bannockburn, students learn to collaborate not compete; to discover their own innate abilities and develop a strong sense of independence, self-confidence and self-discipline. They learn at their own pace, compete only against themselves and discover that they do not need to be afraid to make mistakes. Bannockburn allows competition to evolve naturally among children, without adult interference unless the children begin to show poor sportsmanship. The key is not to use competition to create an artificial motivation to get students to achieve.

10. Is It True That Montessori Children Never Play?

All children play! They explore new things playfully. They watch something of interest with a fresh new mind. They enjoy the company of treasured adults and other children. They make up stories, they dream, and they imagine. The impression that Montessori children don't play, stems from parents who do not know what to make of the incredible concentration, order, and self-discipline that we commonly see among Montessori children. Bannockburn students take the things they do in school quite seriously. It is common for them to respond, "This is my work," when adults ask what they are doing. They work hard and expect their parents to treat them and their work with respect. But it is joyful, playful and not anything like drudgery.

11. Will My Child be Able to Adjust to a Traditional School After Montessori?

There is nothing inherent in Montessori that causes children to have a hard time if they are transferred to a traditional school. Most adapt quickly, making new friends and succeeding within the definition of success in their new school. There will naturally be trade-offs if a Bannockburn student transfers to a traditional school. The curriculum at Bannockburn is more enriched than that found in other schools following the Ontario curriculum. The values and attitudes of the children and teachers may also be quite different. Learning will often be focused more on adult-assigned tasks done more by rote (the forced memorization and testing of facts) than with enthusiasm and understanding. Our students have shown us that the best possible way to approach this challenge is to have faith in your child and in the Montessori approach, by allowing them to continue at Bannockburn until grade six.