Presentation of pur primary school
Osnovna šola montessori (Primary montessori school) creates a place where children can develop their potentials and build their personality. Everyone in our community has responsibility towards themselves and others. Community offers a place where everyone is accepted and each individual’s goal of respecting life and environment is supported.
It is listed the register of elementary schools at the Ministry of Education under sequence number 457. The school implements a Montessori program for elementary schools that has been officially recognized at the 129th conference by the Council for General Education on February 4 2010. Therefore, the elementary and andolescent programs are co-financed by the Ministry of Education.
First generation of children started attending the school in 2010. The Ministry of Education had been monitoring the first generation of students as well as the program itself, and the results were approved annually by the Council for General Education. Frist generation finished school in 2019, so the complete Montessori school program was evaluated in 2020 and is since then recognized as equivalent to traditional programs in Slovenian Republic. Therefore our students don’t need to do any additional tests to go to high school or to transfer to traditional scools.
Montessori classroom
We learn better if we are actively involved in the process. Good teachers encourage activity of students by asking questions during presentation of certain topic. It ie even better if children have opportunity to work, discover and learn by themselves, using their hands or search information in books or online by themselves.
Montessori school model seems like a small research lab at university. Children in our school do their projects like researchers and they can choose the topic they are interested in, and want to learn more about. Withing the curriculum children attend presentations (lessons), which reminds of scientists meeting in research group or conferences, to learn more about new techniques or about a specific area. Students talk to eachother about their choices and pass on their new knowledge by doing a presentation in front of their classmates, peers from another school or writing about their work. This is a way for children to stay motivated and really work towards their areas of interest, while keeping the research spirit active.
Curriculum
Curriculum in our school does not have a specific time frame. There are materials available in the classroom and they have hierarchy which a teacher knows. Each material is precisely made and set on a shelf for a child to use, when he is interested in certain topic. Material needs an aim and purpose to be in the classroom. Besides basic use, each one has different extensions and variations for further practice. We offer different levels of materials to children: for some to see the concept from a different point of view and learn it better, to others because they need more repetition and for some to learn more about a topic of their interest.
“The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential.” -Maria Montessori
We know that children do not need external gradification for learning and maintaining the interest in lifelong learning through exploration and that is why there are no exams or grades in a montessori school.
“It is a child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child.”
– Maria Montessori
