In the early childhood Montessori classroom, assessment is happening constantly. However, our methods largely stray from typical metrics such as rubrics or letter grades. Most of the time, student assessment takes the form of a teacher simply observing a child as he works. Montessori materials are designed to be self-didactic, allowing the child to learn by doing; it could be said that in the Montessori classroom, the child's learning begins after a lesson from the teacher, when he is practicing independently. With this philosophy in mind, the teacher observes a child to gauge his progress in a skill or curriculum area, and to determine next steps. As Dr. Montessori wrote in The Discovery of the Child, "a teacher must make a distinction between two different periods. In the first she puts the child in contact with the material and initiates him in its use. In the second she intervenes to enlighten a child who has already succeeded ... through his own spontaneous efforts." This method of assessment is fully intended to serve the child, focusing solely on what he is learning, what draws his interest, and what will come next.
As we observe children working, it is helpful to take objective data to inform our decisions. As such, many Montessori classrooms keep written records of children's work choices and progress. In my experience this has typically taken the form of a printed spreadsheet, and can contain very lengthy, in-depth lists of skills and materials for the child to master. This collecting of data is crucial to our ability to assess, as we can look for patterns about the child's work to draw conclusions. However, when applied to a class of 17 children or more, record keeping can become a challenge in terms of both upkeep and readability.
To try to alleviate the clutter of pre-printed spreadsheets, I have turned to Google Sheets as an alternative. Through this service, I have created a table that can be used as a weekly log of a student's chosen activities, with color-coding to label the child's progress. This page can be copied any number of times and added as a new sheet for each student in the class. This way the children's data is kept separate, but can be easily accessed from the bottom of the window. A sample sheet can be seen below:
The columns represent a day of the week, and each curriculum area is grouped into four rows. I decided to leave three empty cells per curriculum area per day, as the child is not likely to fit more than that into each day's work cycle. If they do choose more than three works from a certain area, however, the sheet can easily be adjusted to provide more spaces. The blank cells are used to track which activities were chosen, and the color coding gives a quick reference for how the work was being used. On the right of the above image is a legend for the colors. These colors were deliberately chosen with a parallel to a Montessori work for ease of memorization. In the Sensorial curriculum, a series of works known as the Knobless Cylinders help a child hone the ability to grade by size. There are four Knobless Cylinder boxes, each with their own uniform color scheme. The boxes are ordered red, yellow, green, and finally blue. As with this work, my spreadsheet follows a sequence of colors to indicate progress: red means the child needs to be shown the work again; yellow means the child has been shown the lesson; green means the child is continuing to build a skill; blue means the child has mastered this activity, and is ready for something new. The consistency between these two color systems alleviates a possible problem, as the user wouldn't need to continually consult the legend to remember what the colors signify.
As we observe children working, it is helpful to take objective data to inform our decisions. As such, many Montessori classrooms keep written records of children's work choices and progress. In my experience this has typically taken the form of a printed spreadsheet, and can contain very lengthy, in-depth lists of skills and materials for the child to master. This collecting of data is crucial to our ability to assess, as we can look for patterns about the child's work to draw conclusions. However, when applied to a class of 17 children or more, record keeping can become a challenge in terms of both upkeep and readability.
To try to alleviate the clutter of pre-printed spreadsheets, I have turned to Google Sheets as an alternative. Through this service, I have created a table that can be used as a weekly log of a student's chosen activities, with color-coding to label the child's progress. This page can be copied any number of times and added as a new sheet for each student in the class. This way the children's data is kept separate, but can be easily accessed from the bottom of the window. A sample sheet can be seen below:
The columns represent a day of the week, and each curriculum area is grouped into four rows. I decided to leave three empty cells per curriculum area per day, as the child is not likely to fit more than that into each day's work cycle. If they do choose more than three works from a certain area, however, the sheet can easily be adjusted to provide more spaces. The blank cells are used to track which activities were chosen, and the color coding gives a quick reference for how the work was being used. On the right of the above image is a legend for the colors. These colors were deliberately chosen with a parallel to a Montessori work for ease of memorization. In the Sensorial curriculum, a series of works known as the Knobless Cylinders help a child hone the ability to grade by size. There are four Knobless Cylinder boxes, each with their own uniform color scheme. The boxes are ordered red, yellow, green, and finally blue. As with this work, my spreadsheet follows a sequence of colors to indicate progress: red means the child needs to be shown the work again; yellow means the child has been shown the lesson; green means the child is continuing to build a skill; blue means the child has mastered this activity, and is ready for something new. The consistency between these two color systems alleviates a possible problem, as the user wouldn't need to continually consult the legend to remember what the colors signify.
One great benefit of this system versus the paper copies is the ability to share and collaborate. All of the classrooms in my school have two or more teachers, which can make sharing a binder difficult. However, each teacher has his or her own device to use. By sharing a Google Sheet, two teachers can access the same document without the need for physically sharing a document or taking turns.
A foreseeable problem with this system is similar to the paper documentation: throughout the day, document upkeep may be challenging, especially with larger classes. However, sharing the document with another teacher could help with this problem, as one teacher could take on the role of observer while the other is available for giving lessons and assisting children. Quick, contemporaneous notes could also be taken during the work cycle, then added to the Google Sheets accordingly at a later time. If the volume of data taken becomes overwhelming to record, the model could be adjusted at teachers' discretion: perhaps the teachers could focus on one particular child or small group of children each day, or choose to watch one specific curriculum area. There is room for flexibility!
Accurate and accessible record keeping is an essential part of assessment in the Montessori classroom, so that a teaching team has a body of concrete data to inform the direction of the curriculum. Therefore, implementing a more efficient, easy-to-read recording system could make a great difference in the effectiveness of assessment. A link to the sheets I created can be found below:
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