Making Self-Paced Learning Work for Younger Kids

This differentiation approach frees teachers up to meet students’ needs. The result? Students only tackle material they’re ready for, and all students achieve mastery.

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© 2021 George Lucas Educational Foundation

[mohsinapatel]

Congrats to Modern Classrooms Project educators 👏 This is awesome!

[mireille]

How do you organize your road map? I'd like to know more!

[mrsshelton]

I'd love to learn how to implement this model in my classroom.

[itasaz]

How would this set up look in a ELA classes?

[shaundrastraughter]

I'd love to know whether or not the road maps are personalized based on student interests and ability.

[JeffreyStern-mq]

0:58 -- "There was a misconception that younger learners aren't able to be as self-directed..."

That's because 100 years later, mainstream education still purposely ignores Maria Montessori's foundational principle, "auto-didactism", laid out in the introductory pages of her book, "The Absorbent Mind": that we humans self-teach from the very first year of life, without the help of spoken or written language, formal instruction, or dictionaries. That this ability is /built-in/ to us as humans. And therefore that the ideal classroom should set up an environment where this auto-didactism is supported, not suppressed.

We are only now finally coming around to rediscovering her principle for ourselves after a century lost -- and it is more than a little ironic that MCP was created by teachers dissatisfied with what they had been "taught" in the mainstream academic pedagogical model.