Montessori System

Maria Montessori is a world-famous Italian teacher, scientist and thinker. About her merit, at least, says that in 1988UNESCO recognized it as one of four teachers who defined the way of pedagogical thinking in the 20th century, along with John Dewey, Georg Kershensteiner and Anton Makarenko. The Montessori system, developed by her in the late 19th century, has become one of the most popular methods for the early development of children in Western Europe.

The Montessori system is based on principle "Help me to do it myself". Maria was sure that the child should learnall by himself, and the task of the teacher is to provide him with the most comfortable conditions for this. At the heart of Montessori put the individuality of the child, his self-worth. In her opinion, children should learn freely, without external interference, coercion and criticism. For learning is not important external motivation, and internal - a natural joy from learning new.

To create optimal conditions for the child's harmonious self-development, specially prepared didactic environment. The Montessori system uses study rooms divided into several zones, each zone serving specific purposes. Practical zone (zone of real life) It is intended for teaching elementary domestic skills (tying of shoelaces, fastening of buttons, etc.). The main way of learning is mutual imitation. AT zone of sensory development the child gets acquainted with the properties of objects (size, shape, color, material, density). AT zone of motor activity children perform exercises to coordinate movements. Depending on the program of the particular school in which the Montessori system is used, additional zones: language, mathematics, geography, music, art, dance, etc.

Each zone has its own a set of didactic material. The child is free to choose that material,which is more to his liking, the maximum that the educator can do is once to show the child how to use it. During classes the child can move freely around the class and do what he likes most. It may seem that during such lessons the group is noisy and chaotic, but it is not. The Montessori system teaches children to respect the interests of others, helps them understand that their personal freedom ends where the freedom of another person begins.

So, it turns out that the Montessori systempractically does not leave room for a teacher? This is not true. Simply the role of the teacher in the Montessori system is special - but this is no less important than its role in traditional pedagogy. The main task of the teacher - prepare the children an optimal environment for classes, show them how to properly work with didactic materials and neutralize external factors that prevent children from doing.

The teacher does not interfere in the learning process, notcriticizes the child, does not force to engage in, does not control the fulfillment of tasks. The Montessori system calls not to touch the child until he himself asks for it. But at the same time the teacher should always be on the alert and as quickly as possible to respond to the child's requests for help. He also needs to constantly monitor the successes of the pupils and, if necessary, gently offer them more complex assignments.

The Montessori system has both pluses and minuses. Let's start, perhaps, with the pluses. This technique helps the child to become independent, learn to know yourself and the world around, to orient yourself in life without the help of adults, to respect others. Development of the child is as natural as possible for him. But with the Montessori system emphasizeson the development of the left hemisphere (analytical abilities, motor skills), and the creative functions of the right hemisphere are almost not affected. Montessori schools do not use role plays, books, or drawing. After training on such a system the child will be hard adapt to the conditions of modern school.

Therefore, the Montessori system is rarely used in its classical form. But with skillful combination of the principles of pedagogy Montessori with other systems of education you can achieve impressive results.