The Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca
120 East King Road, Ithaca, New York 14850
Phone: (607) 277-7335, Fax: (607) 277-0251, Email:
The Upper Level Curriculum
Practical Life
As at the junior level, students continue to refine their practical skills and to learn and improve in the areas of caring for themselves, socialization and interaction with others, and caring for their environment. Children assume more responsibility for classroom governance (officers are elected for a ½ year term) and management. These older students put what they've learned about dispute resolution to work in their own classroom, and also by serving as mediators for their younger peers in the junior level. Skills of performance and public speaking continue to be honed. Business management skills are taught through several projects, including running a Unicef carnival for the younger children at Halloween, and conducting a "Pizza Lunch" program on Fridays throughout the school year.
Cultural
As the older child's mind develops, so does the ability to think more abstractly. The child's imagination can now understand what is not directly observed by the senses: ancient civilizations, acceleration and inertia, viruses and bacteria. Teachers present ideas, motivate, and introduce materials that allow the child to access the depth and breadth of the world's knowledge. At this level, the cultural subjects also serve as a means to develop a variety of language skills including research, outlining, report writing, and public presentation.
The Great Lessons continue, as students' understanding of the creation of the universe, the time line of life, and the history of writing and mathematics is refined and broadened. Focus shifts to the development of civilization, from the early humans, to the first farmers, and into U.S. and world history. These studies are complemented by inquiry into more detailed geographical topics, such as map skills, economic geography, and in-depth study of countries.
Students also explore physical science, physics (motion, forces, and energy), earth science, and botany, with a focus on the process of scientific inquiry and the scientific method. Biological studies continue, as the internal functions of animals and of the human body are considered in more detail.
Language
With a more sophisticated level of language comes greater refinement in its use. While students continue to benefit from concrete experience with concepts in grammar and usage (parts of speech, verb tenses, subject, predicate, adverbial phrases, sentence analysis/diagramming), they use cultural subjects as the primary source for expanding language skills. As students learn about history, biology, and geography, the study of language becomes an on-going creative process of research, ideas, imagination, and expression.
Vocabulary and word study (synonyms, antonyms, homographs, homophones, idioms, metaphors) help students understand and process the wealth of information that has become available as their reading skills have expanded. Study of literature and poetry provides a counterpoint to factual research, and sparks the creative spirit, which is expressed as the students are provided with ample opportunity to craft their own short stories and poetry. They also spend a substantial amount of time learning (through doing) about different kinds of expository writing, and improving their research and organizational skills. The importance of mechanics such as bibliography writing, editing, paraphrasing, proofreading, punctuation and spelling rules becomes clear as the students learn to use the skills they've learned to improve the quality and clarity of their writing.
The study of Latin and ancient civilizations provides a further context for the understanding of word origins and etymology (including the terminology used in math and the sciences). This is but one example of how and why the "integrated curriculum" approach works to give the students a more comprehensive understanding of the topics they study.
Math and Geometry
The use of mathematics arose thousands of years ago as a tool to meet a fundamental need for order and as a practical aid in daily life. Only later were rules applied (or discovered). Students follow this paradigm, by using materials to work from the concrete toward the abstraction of math concepts, gradually formulating rules and formulas themselves. The rules are points of arrival, not of departure. The Montessori approach to math thus differs from the traditional approach, which starts with the rules and follows with drills. In our math program, the students' own effort leads naturally to the internalization of abstract concepts.
At the upper level, students continue to explore the decimal system, basic operations, measurement, as more advanced concepts (multiples, factors, prime numbers, exponents, squaring and cubing, percentages, bases, and ratio) are introduced. Problem solving and exploration are emphasized, through word problems and use of mathematics in daily life. Study of fractions is expanded, as students consider such topics as performing operations using fractions with common and unlike denominators, and simplifying. Pre-algebraic concepts are also introduced.
Although sophisticated in content, geometry at the upper level continues to be well-grounded in concrete experiences with manipulative materials. In this way, relationships and concepts are explored and researched, and the child's own conclusions provide a basis for theorems, proofs and formulas. Study centers on angles (and their relationships), plane figures (advanced study of triangles, quadrilaterals, polygons (regular and irregular), and circles (parts, radius, circumference, tangent, secant). Students use protractor and compass to explore concepts of perimeter, area and volume. More advanced ideas of congruency, similarity and equivalence are also introduced.
