Montessori Education
The curriculum helps to develop professional and social skills. This includes critical thinking, organization, planning, cognitive structures, leadership skills and fine motor development.
Students actively participate in collaboration with the teacher in understanding and developing their individual study plans based on their own interests & abilities.
Advancement is individually determined and occurs only after a student has mastered a skill. Students may advance as rapidly as possible in any subject.
Instruction is tailored to each child’s learning style.
Older students are encouraged to tutor each other as well as younger students.
All academic subjects are integrated to provide meaningful context.
Students explore intellectual concepts from self-
Students are taught organization and time management.
Classroom time is strictly devoted to academic instruction and developing professional and social skills. All subjects are taught in a single class throughout the day.
Traditional Education
The teaching process focuses on developing memorization strategies and single task acquisition.
The teacher has a dominant role in most classroom activities. The child becomes a passive participant in learning as lessons are pre-
Advancement is age determined and may occur with only a partial understanding of the subject matter. Advanced students become bored, while remedial students continue to fall behind.
Instruction is determined by the teacher’s style.
Most instruction is given solely by the teacher, and collaboration is usually discouraged. Competition results from grade comparisons, which limits group learning opportunities.
Subjects are often taught without the meaningful context of relating them to other subjects to engage the students interest.
The teacher guides the students as a group to prescribed concepts at a predetermined pace.
Planning resides with the teacher and focuses on group.
Valuable academic time is lost in administrative tasks involving taking roll, changing classes, taking and grading tests.