My Last Week

My last week at Montessori Valkenbos was bittersweet. I am so thankful for my time here and have learned so much these past three weeks. On Wednesday, the school celebrated Juffendag. This day was set aside for all of the teachers to celebrate their birthdays on one day of the school year. Teachers who had birthdays in the summer got to be celebrated, too. It was a day filled with food and games! Students brought flowers or a small gift to honor their teacher’s birthday. Wednesdays are half days at Montessori Valkenbos, so the students go home at 12:15, while teachers stay at the school to plan. In the Netherlands, most all schools get half days on Wednesdays—the reason being so parents can be with their kids in the afternoon. I like that this system is built into the school schedule. It gives time devoted to families to be together during the week.

I was also asked to teach an English lesson in my bovenbouw class this week. I did not write a plan, as I was asked the morning of; however, during my lunch break I was able to plan a lesson in-the-moment. I had a copy of the teacher’s workbook to follow along, so this helped with my planning. The strategies I learned in my ESL class quickly came flooding back. The lesson of the day was telling time. So, I prepared to introduce the concept and do a walk-through of what the students were to learn for the day. For the first activity, I used the I do, we do, you do model. We worked on how to say our birthdays. The end goal was for the students to tell what day something occurred on. We also reviewed the place numbers (i.e. first, second, etc.) because in Dutch it would translate to “my birthday is on the ten of March,” instead of tenth. Overall, the students did excellent! I was hesitant to teach when it was time for the lesson to begin, but I just jumped right in.

The last day I was in a middenbouw classroom. This day was particularly interesting because the students broke into their reading groups. Amongst the 4 middenbouw classes, each student is assigned to a reading group dependent upon his or her level or reading. There are about 7 reading groups and four of those groups are teacher lead. Each of the 4 teachers works with her group on Thursdays. The teacher I had that day was with the lowest group of readers, or Level A. However, this does not correspond to the Fountas and Pinnell levels. If I had to give their books a level dependent upon Fountas and Pinnell, I would categorize it at a level C-D. Likewise, there is not an emphasis for students to know how to read until age 6 (Group 3) at the Montessori school. Students before Group 3 are not pressured to sit down and read, as the Montessori method feels as it should be more natural for children to develop reading skills.

I’ve had an amazing time here and I cannot believe it’s over! I am so grateful for my experience teaching abroad. I will truly miss all the students and teachers from Valkenbos Montessori.

Sunrise on our last day of school. 

Flat Stanley says "goodbye!"