Torgerson, C. J., Brooks, G. & Hall, J. A Systematic Review of the Research Literature on the Use of Phonics in the Teaching of Reading and Spelling (Department for Education and Skills, Sheffield, UK, 2006) Some studies report positive outcomes for certain curricular areas but not others. One, for example, investigated scores on maths, science, English and social studies tests in the final years of compulsory education, several years after children had left their Montessori classrooms. 28 Compared to the non-Montessori group (who were matched for gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and high school attended), the Montessori group scored significantly higher on maths and science, but no differences were found for English and social studies. What might explain this differential effect? The authors suggested that the advantages for maths might be driven by the materials themselves, compared to how maths is taught in conventional classes. 28 Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, children in Montessori classrooms might spend more time engaged in maths and science activities compared to children in conventional classes, with the amount of time spent on English and social studies not differing. However, the authors were unable, within the design of their study, to provide details of exactly how much time children in the Montessori school had spent doing maths, science, English and social studies, in comparison to the time that children in conventional classes were spending on those subjects.

Elkind, D. Montessori education: abiding contributions and contemporary challenges. Young. Child. 38, 3–10 (1983). Lopata, C., Wallace, N. V. & Finn, K. V. Comparison of academic achievement between Montessori and traditional education programs. J. Res. Child. Educ. 20, 5–13 (2005). Laski, E. V., Vasilyeva, M. & Schiffman, J. Longitudinal comparison of place-value and arithmetic knowledge in Montessori and non-Montessori students. J. Mont. Res. 2, 1–15 (2016). Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in.

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Banta, T. J. The Sands School Project: First Year Results (Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 1968) The Montessori approach to teaching phonics is certainly systematic. Many schools in the UK, for example, use word lists drawn from Morris’s 'Phonics 44'. 42, 43 Furthermore, the Montessori approach to phonics is synthetic rather than analytic: children are taught the sound-letter code before using it to encode words (in spelling) and decode them (in reading). One of the criticisms of synthetic phonics is that it teaches letters and sounds removed from their meaningful language context, in a way that analytic phonics does not. 44 It has long been recognised that the goal of reading is comprehension. Reading for meaning requires both code-based skills and language skills such as vocabulary, morphology, syntax and inferencing skills, 45 and these two sets of skills are not rigidly separated, but rather interact at multiple levels. 46 Indeed, phonics instruction works best where it is integrated with text-level reading instruction. 39, 40 The explicit teaching of phonics within a rich language context—both spoken and written—is central to the Montessori curriculum. No evaluations have yet pitted phonics teaching in the Montessori classroom versus phonics teaching in the conventional classroom, however, and so whether the former is differentially effective is not known. Seidenberg, M. S. The science of reading and its educational implications. Lang. Learn. Dev. 9, 331–360 (2013). We offer a number of Massage treatments to help you do just this from Swedish Holistic Massage which focuses on soothing tired and stressed bodies to Deep Tissue and Sports Massage which will aid specific injuries and conditions and generally alleviate muscular tension.

Principles running throughout the design of these learning materials are that the child learns through movement and gains a concrete foundation with the aim of preparing him for learning more abstract concepts. A further design principle is that each piece of learning material has a 'control of error' which alerts the child to any mistakes, thereby allowing self-correction with minimal teacher support. Self-directed engagement with the materials National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the Subgroups. NIH Publication no. 00–4754 (US Government Printing Office, Washington, 2000).Cossentino, J. Big work: goodness, vocation and engagement in the Montessori method. Curric. Inq. 36, 63–92 (2006).

Wyse, D. & Styles, M. Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading: the debate surrounding England’s ‘Rose Report’. Literacy 41, 35–42 (2007). Central to Montessori’s method of education is the dynamic triad of child, teacher and environment. One of the teacher’s roles is to guide the child through what Montessori termed the 'prepared environment, i.e., a classroom and a way of learning that are designed to support the child’s intellectual, physical, emotional and social development through active exploration, choice and independent learning. One way of making sense of the Montessori method for the purposes of this review is to consider two of its important aspects: the learning materials, and the way in which the teacher and the design of the prepared environment promote children’s self-directed engagement with those materials. With respect to the learning materials, Montessori developed a set of manipulable objects designed to support children’s learning of sensorial concepts such as dimension, colour, shape and texture, and academic concepts of mathematics, literacy, science, geography and history. With respect to engagement, children learn by engaging hands-on with the materials most often individually, but also in pairs or small groups, during a 3-h 'work cycle' in which they are guided by the teacher to choose their own activities. They are given the freedom to choose what they work on, where they work, with whom they work, and for how long they work on any particular activity, all within the limits of the class rules. No competition is set up between children, and there is no system of extrinsic rewards or punishments. These two aspects—the learning materials themselves, and the nature of the learning—make Montessori classrooms look strikingly different to conventional classrooms. Rule, A. & Stewart, R. Effects of practical life materials on kindergartners’ fine motor skills. Early Child. Educ. J. 30, 9–13 (2002).

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Some breeds, especially hotblooded ones such as the Thoroughbred, Arabian, and Akhal Teke, show stress much more than other breeds but that doesn’t mean to say other horses don’t, they just don’t outwardly show it as much. Some horses are perfectly calm most of the time but get very anxious when they’re put in certain situations such as being in traffic, being loaded into a trailer, or the farrier turning up. This is often the result of a bad experience or improper training but with patience can easily be dealt with. Boredom While some change is unavoidable and to some extent, a good thing for horses (after all if you’re always riding your horse over the same trail or around a set jumping course he’ll get very bored) making any big, sudden changes to your horse’s feed or routine can have a very negative effect on his mental wellbeing. Confusion While horses prefer things to stay as they are sometimes this just isn’t possible, you may need to change your horse’s feed or are about to start a new job that means you’ll have to change when you go to the yard. Don’t worry though this doesn’t need to be a problem at all if you plan ahead and make the necessary changes slowly. Over a period of around two weeks (but no less than a week) begin to change the time you visit your horse slightly (or give him a handful of the new feed if you’re changing his food). This will help your horse acclimatize to the change. Berninger, V. W. & Swanson, H. L. in Children’s Writing: Toward a Process Theory of the Development of Skilled Writing (ed Butterfield, E. C.) (JAI Press, Bingley, UK, 1994).

Besançon, M. & Lubart, T. Differences in the development of creative competencies in children schooled in diverse learning environments. Learn. Ind. Diff. 18, 391–399 (2008).Daoust, C. J. An Examination of Implementation Practices in Montessori early childhood education. Doctoral thesis, University of California, Berkeley (2004). Duin, A. H. & Graves, M. F. Intensive vocabulary instruction as a prewriting technique. Read. Res. Quaterly 22, 311–330 (1987). Rumelhart, D. Toward an interactive model of reading. Technical Report No. 56. (San Diego Center for Human Information Processing, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, 1976).