Montessorian

Now that Scantron testing is finished I have been able to meet and work with my students. I absolutely LOVE planning lessons and materials to teach concepts to my students. I have been having so much fun all week pulling out resources and planning and giving mini lessons! Words cannot describe how satisfying and...fun it is for me. I am meeting with students four days a week in groups of three or four. I have divided my week up with math on Monday, writing on Tuesday, reading on Wednesday, and the remaining math students on Thursday. Friday is my open day. I also teach a computer class on Monday and Wednesday afternoons!

Just for grins I would like to share with you one of the Montessori math materials that are used to concretely teach the abstract concept of multiplication:


This is called the Multiplication Checkerboard. It is used to do short and long multiplication. The first green square on the right is the ones place, the blue square to the left is the tens, the red is the hundreds. The next green is the thousands place, then ten thousands, then hundred thousands. These colors represent the place value system throughout Montessori math. The numbers are placed on the right edge and bottom edge of the board. Numbers are multiplied and bead bars are placed in the appropriate squares. The only rule is that at the end, only one bead bar can be in each square. There is a lot of combining and exchanging, and sometimes sliding. When a student begins to move toward abstraction, the process is recorded in the form we normally see it written out in. This is a little tricky to learn in the first exposure especially if you have already been taught the abstract way. It is quite fun to do though!