Within her educational method, Dr. Montessori developed the concept of different developmental planes or stages that people pass through. The first plane is between the ages of 0 – 6. The second plane is the elementary-aged child of 6 – 12 years. The American Montessori Society shares this insightful information about the characteristics of children in the second developmental plane.
“The older child is interested in the reasons for things. They are in the process of consolidating their knowledge and making connections between the ideas and impressions absorbed during the first plane” (Brunold-Conesa, 2024). Children in this plane enjoy using their new rational thinking skills to categorize and classify information. “This switch to reasoning things out involves abstract thinking, which is facilitated by the spiral curriculum and may be best illustrated with the Elementary math materials. The materials are designed to be used in a sequence, from very concrete to more and more abstract, until the child learns the algorithms for solving different kinds of math problems. These algorithms are not taught by the teacher but are discovered by the child as a series of steps they have taken with the materials. In this way, they do not merely memorize an algorithm, but, because of the embodiment of the steps in the materials, they learn to understand the function of and reason for each step.
The Elementary-age child has developed a new awareness of social order, and the Montessori multi-age classroom increases the child’s range of sociability. New lessons come along, and interests shift over time. Dynamic peer groups within a three-year age range increase the chances that the child will find another, or others, who share their interests and skill level with whom to work. With increased social awareness, the second-plane child is also concerned with rules and what’s fair; that is, their social sensitivity is closely tied to their emerging sense of morality and ethics. The child’s interest in social order necessarily includes the rules that govern social groups; and following the rules is governed by their developing awareness of right and wrong, of perceived justice and fairness. We begin to see in the second-plane child ‘the beginning of an orientation toward moral questions, toward the judgment of acts’” -Montessori 1949 (Brunold-Conesa, 2024).
Brunold-Conesa, C. (2024, Nov. 18). Planes of development and sensitive periods: Foundations of the Montessori multi-age classroom (part 2 – elementary). American Montessori Society.
This week in the classroom:
1st grade: Students used prepositions in sentences, changed the value of numbers by changing the tens place, practiced subtraction facts, performed static subtraction with the Golden Beads, and reduced fractions to their lowest terms.
2nd grade: Students used pronouns in sentences, changed the value of numbers by changing place values from units to thousands, practiced subtraction or multiplication facts, performed dynamic subtraction, and added and subtracted mixed numbers with a common denominator.
3rd grade: Students used conjunctions in sentences, had a new lesson on changing decimals to fractions, performed mixed operations in math, found the least common multiple using the Pegboard, and reviewed units of measure with weight.
All students enjoyed writing acrostic poems using the letters in their names, learning about more notable peacemakers, and researching marine animals that live in different layers of the ocean. In addition, students practiced separating words into syllables and changing singular words into their correct plural form. We also appreciated a sneak peek at the school play, Finding Nemo, Jr. Please join the school community this Friday evening for the final performance.





























