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This is our annual FREE community event, open to the public. Come and celebrate fall!

- music
- face painting
- food and drink
- games
- activities for children

We look forward to seeing you there!

FALL FEST SPIRIT STORE

Educational data and statistics can be confusing and overwhelming for parents, but an understanding of a child’s academic assessment will help parents decide which educational opportunities to look for as children transition through different school settings. Montessori schools assess children’s academics in a variety of ways from progress reports to testing. Some states require private schools to administer standardized testing, while others do not. Where not required, a Montessori school may choose to introduce the experience, especially to older students in Elementary or Secondary programs. A state school system releases funding based on standardized testing, but parents of Montessori children have a unique opportunity to choose a different path. Parents might decide on a system with or without testing, but a clear understanding of Montessori vs. traditional student assessments will allow parents to know if a prospective school will meet their child’s learning needs.

Formative vs. Summative Assessment

Montessori teachers act as observant guides to students in their classrooms. Maria Montessori believed that children intrinsically know what they are ready to learn and when: a child has an innate knowledge of their developmental level and needs. Montessori teachers prepare an environment where these learning needs can be met on an individual basis for each student. A child’s teacher will observe and keep records of which classroom materials each child engages, has mastered, and when they are ready for another activity. This type of observation and record keeping is called formative assessment. It is a way for teachers to track individual children’s learning. In higher grades, students of Elementary and Secondary programs might be given quizzes and tests to measure their understanding of more abstract concepts in science and math. This feedback is then used to tailor student lessons.

Summative assessments generally come in the form of annual report cards or progress reports. They look at the whole of a student’s achievement, knowledge, or skill. How this is measured will differ from school to school. Before enrolling children in a new school, parents should ask how academic growth is measured and review the template used for end-of-year reports.

Standardized Testing in Private vs. Public Schools

Private schools are not required to participate in standardized testing; however, some will administer the tests to prepare students for traditional schooling. It’s important to understand that standardized testing is used as a metric not only for governmental assessment of educational benchmarks, but also to gauge how well individual teachers are performing. The data is used as a comparative tool for government agencies to decide where aid should be allotted and to whom.

In Montessori, teachers focus on individual students’ progress; it is not a teacher’s duty to make sure all students master the same set of skills at the same time. However, a Montessori school can introduce standardized testing in its Elementary or Secondary programs to meet the needs of its student population. For example, if most students move on to public schools rather than attending a Montessori high school, accustoming them to standardized tests will be beneficial. A recent survey showed that students in urban public schools face an average of 112 standardized tests from Kindergarten through graduation. Introducing Montessori students to the testing process in a low-stress, familiar environment will normalize the testing experience for them. The Mayo Clinic offers a list of strategies to combat test-taking anxiety here.

Reviewing Your Child’s Educational Assessment

When receiving progress updates or end-of-term report cards, it’s important for parents to put this data into the context of their child’s learning development. If a parent reads at home with their child or practices math informally through board games (cooking, gardening, etc.), they will have a realistic view of their child’s academic strengths and weaknesses. This information transforms parents into active participants who are able to ask pertinent questions at parent-teacher conferences. In following children’s learning progress through the year, parents will be less likely to be surprised by an end-of-year report. An informed parent is a child’s best advocate in navigating their educational experience.

What Next?

Parents who oppose the idea of standardized testing can keep children on an educational path that does not require it. But they must be aware that their child might miss some opportunities. For instance, some specialized high schools require testing to admit teens. Parents can initiate frank conversations with their teens to discuss potential opt-out consequences like those. If parents decide to send their child to a public school, they should double check state testing requirements. Many states have adopted third grade reading legislation wherein students will be held back if they do not pass a reading test. Knowing which tests a child must pass will alert parents to the skills their child should practice. While parents must navigate testing requirements in elementary grades through high school, many colleges and universities no longer require standardized testing.

The decision to pursue schooling with or without testing affects a child’s future for many years. Parents who thoroughly review their child’s academics and involve themselves in their child’s learning progress, become advocates and active partners in their child’s education.

Habits are actions or practices identically repeated at predictable times. They can be as simple as washing your hands before meals or as complex as a holiday celebration. The routines become not just part of us but they become us. A love of reading can be instilled in a child from infancy and become part of their lives as well, becoming as natural as any other routine.

Love of reading is fostered at home by creating a language-rich environment for children. Before setting up this environment though, parents and parents-to-be must have an honest conversation with themselves and each other about their own relationship to reading, whether for pleasure or for learning. As a parent or caregiver, you are your child’s first role model. You are the one they will emulate. Being truthful to yourself and your partner about your relationship to reading will help you choose ways to make a language-rich home for your child that works for you.

The Importance of Shared Reading

The first step in becoming a reader is learning oral language. We instinctively talk to our babies for a good reason: to teach them one of our primary means of communication. Grandparents and other relatives telling stories around the holiday table is an example of not only the spoken word, but also of the structure of a good story. Through storytelling experiences, children absorb the fundamentals of story and through shared reading connect the spoken word to text. Sharing board books with your baby is a first step to help them connect words to pictures. For toddlers and preschoolers, reading aloud is the bridge from a child’s understanding of oral language to the written word. If you make one-on-one story time with your child special it will only increase the joy of your child’s experience.

When shared reading time is approached as a chore, an adult unfortunately models that reading is an unwelcome necessity. Those negative messages will be absorbed by the child: reading is not a welcome pastime. Even if you yourself are not a big reader, shared story time for ten to fifteen minutes a day can set the stage for a child’s love of reading as long as the experience is enjoyable. That means putting social media and work aside, for a complete immersion into story sharing. Asking questions throughout the book is okay. It can start a dialogue between you and your child reinforcing the connection between oral language and text. Ask simple questions like how did that story make you feel? Sharing your own feelings about the story with your child also helps start a conversation.

Bring Reading Into the Home

In addition to shared reading time, having readily available language activities in the home makes it easier for your child to interact with story. Here are some ways to do this.

1. Create a reading nook with a comfy chair, favorite books, and even a tablet loaded with digital books.
2. If you’re not a book reader, are you a magazine reader? Consider subscribing to a children’s magazine. If your child loves nature try one of the nature magazines. It’s imperative that you yourself be interested in the topic. Ask your child to share what they’ve read or read it together.
3. Fill your phone with age-appropriate digital books. Language game apps can be fun and educationally appropriate, but it is “teaching” children to read through games. It is not reading. Download fascinating children’s books with stories you think your child will enjoy, either to read or listen to.
4. Listen to audiobooks in the car. If it’s your turn to take everyone to and from sport practice, choose a book with stories related to sports. The shared conversation around an audio book is just as important as listening to the book, especially for younger children as they begin to comprehend stories, characters, and structure.
5. Read the book before watching the movie. Again, this leads to great conversations about the differences between the two. With discussion, children can practice elaborating their opinions.
6. Go to the library and allow your child to choose and check out books even if they can only look at the pictures.
7. Attend library story times and other activities.
8. Allow books to be left around the house. You want books to be the easiest thing for a child to reach for. Books scattered around the house are not messy clutter, but rather tools to help your child develop into a well-read critical thinker.
9. Read your child’s favorite books over and over. Try not to act bored. For young children, especially, rereading books is age-appropriate: they are learning something new every time they hear the story.
10. Try to read more. For some parents this might mean reading a magazine a week, while for others it might mean listening to an audiobook while making dinner. Showing your child that there is entertainment beyond a phone or video is important.

Create an environment to help your child become aware of his bodily functions

• Put your child in cloth nappies from birth. When your child wears cloth nappies he is helped to become aware when he is wet much quicker than if he is wearing disposable nappies which have been specifically manufactured to make your child feel dry for long periods of time, even when he has wet them.
• When your child wears cloth nappies he is exposed to the feeling of wanting to eliminate followed by the feeling of being wet. This soon helps the two sensations to be linked in the child’s mind. The biological feedback sent to his bladder helps him to gain control over his bladder much faster.

Link your child to his bodily functions

• Change wet nappies as soon as you detect them and as you do talk about what you are doing so your child starts to gradually become aware that the wetness of the nappy has come from his body.

Allow time

• After a while your child will start to become aware of when he is wet.