• In this method, children of a particular age group working with a large variety of materials designed for the needs of that age group, under one space is called an “Environment”. The environments are divided into age groups of 3 year called “Vertical grouping” where the children between these ages will work together in the same space.
• An environment is made up of an open room with shelves along the periphery that match the children’s height approximately (for easy and independent access) and holds the materials that the children will work with in their age group. They use “Work mats” on the floor and bring their choice of material to their mat, work with it as long as they wish and when they are done they put it back.
• These materials are specially designed keeping the child’s developmental needs in mind. The teacher here is a Specially Trained Adult who has learnt to trust in the child’s innate potential for natural development and therefore intervenes only when required by the child. All our teachers undergo a rigorous training process to be certified as Montessori Guides.
• An environment will host around 30 children of a mixed age group of 3 years (3 years to 6 years in a Pre-primary environment) led by two Montessori-trained adults and assisted by two assistants.
• Each child is individually introduced to (shown how to work with) a material that is appropriate for his/her age and then allowed to work with it independently with the adult observing from a distance. The adults intervene only if the child faces difficulty in understanding the material. Then the child works with it to his/her heart’s content; children naturally resort to repetition in their activities to understand it in detail and once they have soaked in all the learning from it, automatically move on to the next material.
• There are group activities which involve small groups of children (3 to 5 in number) in which they learn from materials designed to encourage collaboration and social skills. It is often observed that younger children like to learn from the older ones and the older children love to help and excitedly jump-in to help the younger ones.
• Each child’s progress is monitored individually and the required assistance is planned by the adults to make sure every child is making full progress with the materials. Here the progress of one child is not compared with the progress of another child. Therefore there are no bifurcations like class-toppers or children lagging behind.