Contract Work

This too is an area that I find hard to explain to people who do not understand Montessori. Again I use a quote from Avery who had nailed it on the head:

"My students set weekly goals.

The younger students have a chart that they fill in indicating the number of works in each area they plan to do for a week. This helps them reach areas that they know they would like to avoid, as well as give them a written plan that can help keep them from wandering through the week.

Their goals are approved by a teacher- mostly to ensure that they reach a variety of subjects and so that they will choose challenging work. It also ensures a one-on-one meeting with a teacher in which they have the opportunity to say something like, "I'm really into this math you gave me right now and I think I want to do 5 works in that area this week. Can I just do 1 or 2 grammars while I'm so excited about this math?" (Don't we wish they all spoke this way to us? But often when I listen to their enthusiasm it sounds like this to me!) They carry their goal sheets on a clipboard to every work they do. As they complete each work they note it on the goals sheet.

It's been a lifesaver- they set their goals and create their own work plan. Then I don't feel as though the work is teacher-directed, but I have some measure of accountability too. At the following goals meeting the students bring both their completed goals sheets to us and their new goals sheets to us and we use the old ones to see what adjustments should be made on the new week's goals sheets. We can then use the completed sheets to make notes in our records about lessons they had and whatnot.

It works very well and is helpful given that we have 4 teachers in the classroom- this is very user-friendly. We also do a lot to make our works sequential and labelled with numbers and letters so that the emergent readers don't struggle with what to note on their goals sheets. For instance, upon completing an addition card the student may write: + #15. Grammar may be N #4 for noun 4. Makes it easy.

My older students do the same thing only in a notebook that they keep to cut down on paper and xeroxing. I think it is a good life skill to be able to plan and organize your work for the week and create a system that will help guide yourself through it." - Avery

This is it in a nutshell! Thank you Avery for your expertise.

I meet with the boys as I do "my lesson planning", I say this loosely of course...LOL They tell me what they like what they don't, I explain what they need to know and ask how they would like to learn it. Of course in the back of my head I have the presentations lined up for the month and note what materials will need to be made to facilitate their goals. I always have a wealth of books on the subjects for their choosing. We write down 4 weekly goal sheets and revise it as we go along. (With the 2 little ones I have to do things in monthly increments to make my life easy during the week.) Then they choose how they get it done. One son wants it broken down in daily bits 1 subject a day, the other does the week in subject increments, such as, he will get on a roll and do 2-3 days of language on one day and then math on another.

We have the weeks of "down time" where our week is full of co-op classes or other obligations and those are our free choice weeks. I observe their choices which are oddly enough the 3-6 material but as Montessori said.....Children need to revisit the old material and trust that they are getting something new from it or reinforcing something old.

The last thing we do are independent studies that end in a presentation for the family. It is so delightful to see how different the "props" are, from subject to subject and child to child.

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