Each year staff chooses an area of focus for deep professional development, collaborative learning, and action research. Last year was Executive Functioning Skills and the year before that was Deepening Literacy. This year we began a two-year focus on mathematics.
As we do in Montessori, we are moving from the concrete to the abstract. We started with a staff book discussion around Montessori Math, a book designed to help Montessori educators create crosswalks between Montessori curriculum and their state’s standards to look for any gaps that may need to be addressed to help students be successful on standardized tests or in their next placements. Teachers led peer groups in discussion of the book and set goals on areas of the curriculum they would like to more fully develop, centered in content and materials.
A common thread in this work was observation around students’ ability to generalize what they know to new formats, which led us to our next level of abstraction: the language being used. Jess brought back research and activities from the Mathematical Mindset Leadership Summit at Stanford (January, 2026) and gave a presentation to the staff on our recent professional development day (February 16th). The learner objectives for this session were to deepen our understanding of conceptual vs. procedural knowledge and how to reinforce conceptual understanding for students through the language we use in lessons and during scaffolded support.
We began our exploration of inquiry in math, and will continue our professional learning throughout this spring and next school year on:
- Mathematical inquiry and problem-based learning
- Finding the sweet spots for productive struggle and productive ambiguity
- Practicing embedded formative assessment
- Assessing and completing action research around ensuring conceptual understanding of math, not just procedural understanding for our students
We usually share our learning by including it in our annual parent forum, so on April 8th at 5:30pm we will host parents here at school who would like to learn more about the Montessori curriculum and also hear about the teachers’ critical analysis for continuous improvement areas and action researches they have tried or will try in response. We believe that Montessori is a strong curriculum that aligns well with modern research, and we also believe in lifelong learning and a growth mindset…there is always room to improve and new ideas to explore! It’s an exciting journey–we hope you will be able to join us to hear more about it on April 8th!
