“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

—

Albert Einstein

I read somewhere that humans remember

90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.
50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.
30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.
20% of what they learn from audio-visual.
10% of what they learn when they’ve learned from reading.
5% of what they learn when they’ve learned from lecture.

Dr. Montessori’s method completely supports this. Every aspect of the Children’s House works in this way. I’ll use the sandpaper letters to illustrate this idea.

When the directress introduces the child to the sandpaper letters she is offering him an exploration of the visual, auditory, and tactile aspects of a letter. The presentation goes like this:

The directress first gives the child the sound of the letter (no “A is for Apple” in Montessori – we say this is “ah” or “buh” or “kuh”) – We’ll explain this idea in more detail at another time.

Then, the directress feels the shape of the letter with her index and middle fingers, so slowly, as she would write it. Then she says the sound again.

Next she asks the child to think of any words that have “ah” in them. Words like “apple, lamp, cat, etc..”

Then she feels the letters over and over and offers the child a turn. In this initial presentation of just one sound, the child is receiving auditory, visual, and tactile impressions. Compare this to a teacher writing the sounds on the board and telling the children their names!

Then the child is left to feel the letters and say their sounds on his own. The directress keeps an eye out to make sure the child is feeling the letters as we would write them. Once the child is familiar with a few letters he can begin to play games with other children. This way, the directress isn’t the one correcting a confused child – other children have an excellent way of correcting one another!

When a child is confident in his knowledge of a few letters he will very often spontaneously begin to teach them to younger children.

So we see here that Montessori understood that we learn by doing. Not only is this in line with the development of a child, but it applies to everyone!