Magnet Program
Curriculum
Drachman uses Montessori curricular materials from the North American Montessori Center (NAMC) in our classrooms. Our teachers receive Montessori training to follow the curriculum through instruction provided by the school’s principal/director (AMS trained), a Montessori consultant (AMS trained), and during teacher learning groups. For more information on the curricular materials from NAMC, please click below:
NAMC Montessori Classroom Guides
Kindergarten Curriculum
Lower Elementary (1st-3rd) Curriculum
Upper Elementary (4th-6th) Curriculum
Our Middle School Program is following the American Montessori Society model, as described in this document.
NAMC Montessori Classroom Guides Kindergarten Curriculum Lower Elementary (1st-3rd) Curriculum Upper Elementary (4th-6th) CurriculumOur Middle School Program is following the American Montessori Society model, as described in this document.
About Montessori
The following links provide detailed information about the history, materials, and overall benefits of Montessori education as written by the American Montessori Society.
Dr. Maria Montessori believed movement and cognition are closely related and enhance thinking and learning. Students and teachers collaborate to design individual work guides, which facilitate the children’s ability to choose appropriate learning materials. Allowing students to collaborate and assist one another increased academic and social learning. This builds community and promotes high expectations of scholastic achievement, maturity, and empathy. The children benefit from an aesthetically pleasing and organized learning environment, and they proudly take an active role in maintaining it. Students who have experienced a Montessori education become peaceful, responsible, caring citizens.
Montessori materials are essential to our student’s success. With the use of hands-on Montessori learning materials, abstract concepts become more concrete. Children experience higher level learning at a younger age, moving toward abstraction with fluidity.
Understanding Montessori
Understanding Montessori
Montessori education is very different in theory and execution from traditional public school. Maria Montessori based her entire practice on the physical, psychological, and developmental needs of children within stages she called “Planes of Development,” instead of setting up a sequential curriculum that gets all areas taught by the end of the senior year in high school. Specific areas of study fit these developmental stages, and the presentation of materials is geared toward each child’s physical ability to get the most out of the materials.
On this website, under the topic of “Montessori Curriculum,” we have aligned traditional Montessori curriculum to standards-based curriculum found in traditional public schools here in Arizona and more broadly in most districts throughout the US. Although there is complete alignment of all subject areas, there is an “uneasy” correspondence, not because of the material covered, but because of misaligned timing that is a consequence of the emphasis on typical testing such as AIMS and Stanford 10, which are routinely given nowadays.
Montessori uses an educational model where presentations are given with an overall “big picture” approach. She believed that for children who are approaching, or newly reaching, complex thinking and logic skills, the overview approach – which relates information to what the child already knows – makes other information fit into the picture in an easier way. Subsequent lessons fill in the details as a broad range of subjects are related to each big topic. Montessori covers, in this detailed manner, many more “subjects” than are generally part of traditional education. Not only are additional subjects covered in an organized and rational method related to 5 “GREAT LESSON” stories, but they are repeated, expanded, and enhanced as the students progress over their years in Montessori and their ability to process the information gets more sophisticated. At the lowest (youngest) levels many lessons are presented as basic stories in the most fundamental way, with a combination of stories and manipulatives being typical.
Montessori education, at its most basic level, is child centered. The premise is that all children want to learn and please the adults around them. The teacher-adult role then becomes supportive, more of an advisor, mentor and facilitator to the developing child who ideally applies him or her self to exploration and inquiry of the prepared room and provided equipment. This expectation requires a very different mindset than traditional education where the teacher’s responsibility is to continually present curriculum with the expectation that the children will do problems in a book and homework to learn the material. In a Montessori class the children need to be active explorers of the rich environment and learn to focus their attentions on the materials, which teach them the skills they need to learn. Research shows us that people who engage their interests with deep involvement have richer and more productive lives. Montessori education, in this age of many competing distractions, such as TV, video games, and entertainment, engages the child, unlike the more passive modes of entertainment mentioned above and often similar style of traditional education, commonly found in textbooks and lectures. Montessori education develops thinking children who relate concepts and foundational knowledge with its curriculum and manipulatives, when presented at the psychologically and physically appropriate times. This kind of education takes time – years of more and more complex thinking, inquiry, projects, and organization of thoughts.
With trained Montessori staff, parental support of our “non-traditional” approach, and the resources to apply Montessori properly, we can give students a real opportunity to develop to their true highest capacity and go into the adolescent and adult stages of their lives with a true humanitarian outlook – something Montessori called “Cosmic Education.” This concept encompasses not only the academics addressed above, but also the rich practice and application of thinking about the life of others, past and present, who have contributed to our knowledge and, in turn, the responsibility each and every one of us carries into adulthood to preserve and protect life on our planet, be it people, other species, or the very earth itself.
On this website, under the topic of “Montessori Curriculum,” we have aligned traditional Montessori curriculum to standards-based curriculum found in traditional public schools here in Arizona and more broadly in most districts throughout the US. Although there is complete alignment of all subject areas, there is an “uneasy” correspondence, not because of the material covered, but because of misaligned timing that is a consequence of the emphasis on typical testing such as AIMS and Stanford 10, which are routinely given nowadays.
Montessori uses an educational model where presentations are given with an overall “big picture” approach. She believed that for children who are approaching, or newly reaching, complex thinking and logic skills, the overview approach – which relates information to what the child already knows – makes other information fit into the picture in an easier way. Subsequent lessons fill in the details as a broad range of subjects are related to each big topic. Montessori covers, in this detailed manner, many more “subjects” than are generally part of traditional education. Not only are additional subjects covered in an organized and rational method related to 5 “GREAT LESSON” stories, but they are repeated, expanded, and enhanced as the students progress over their years in Montessori and their ability to process the information gets more sophisticated. At the lowest (youngest) levels many lessons are presented as basic stories in the most fundamental way, with a combination of stories and manipulatives being typical.
Montessori education, at its most basic level, is child centered. The premise is that all children want to learn and please the adults around them. The teacher-adult role then becomes supportive, more of an advisor, mentor and facilitator to the developing child who ideally applies him or her self to exploration and inquiry of the prepared room and provided equipment. This expectation requires a very different mindset than traditional education where the teacher’s responsibility is to continually present curriculum with the expectation that the children will do problems in a book and homework to learn the material. In a Montessori class the children need to be active explorers of the rich environment and learn to focus their attentions on the materials, which teach them the skills they need to learn. Research shows us that people who engage their interests with deep involvement have richer and more productive lives. Montessori education, in this age of many competing distractions, such as TV, video games, and entertainment, engages the child, unlike the more passive modes of entertainment mentioned above and often similar style of traditional education, commonly found in textbooks and lectures. Montessori education develops thinking children who relate concepts and foundational knowledge with its curriculum and manipulatives, when presented at the psychologically and physically appropriate times. This kind of education takes time – years of more and more complex thinking, inquiry, projects, and organization of thoughts.
With trained Montessori staff, parental support of our “non-traditional” approach, and the resources to apply Montessori properly, we can give students a real opportunity to develop to their true highest capacity and go into the adolescent and adult stages of their lives with a true humanitarian outlook – something Montessori called “Cosmic Education.” This concept encompasses not only the academics addressed above, but also the rich practice and application of thinking about the life of others, past and present, who have contributed to our knowledge and, in turn, the responsibility each and every one of us carries into adulthood to preserve and protect life on our planet, be it people, other species, or the very earth itself.
History
History
Dr. Maria Montessori believed movement and cognition are closely related and enhance thinking and learning. Students and teachers collaborate to design individual work guides, which facilitate the children’s ability to choose appropriate learning materials. Allowing students to collaborate and assist one another increased academic and social learning. This builds community and promotes high expectations of scholastic achievement, maturity, and empathy. The children benefit from an aesthetically pleasing and organized learning environment, and they proudly take an active role in maintaining it. Students who have experienced a Montessori education become peaceful, responsible, caring citizens.
Materials
Materials
Montessori materials are essential to our student’s success. With the use of hands-on Montessori learning materials, abstract concepts become more concrete. Children experience higher level learning at a younger age, moving toward abstraction with fluidity.
Benefits
Benefits
Drachman Montessori’s multi-age classes result in student collaboration and peer teaching. Children are challenged and motivated by witnessing higher-level learning. Students hone their academic and leadership skills by teaching others. Drachman Montessori’s current program is made up of Kindergarten, 1st – 3rd grade, 4th – 5th grade, and 6th – 8th grade classrooms.
Helpful Links