Meadowbrook Montessori School | Freeport, Maine

At Meadowbrook, we believe the answer is a resounding yes! Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared in Education Week earlier this year. The link to the full article is below.

When handwriting is not taught, reader comprehension may suffer, according to Steve Graham, a professor of special education and literacy at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn., whose research was slated to be presented at the conference.

Karin Harman-James of Indiana University in Bloomington based her findings on results from functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, scans taken of children as they wrote and typed. The brain scans indicated that “handwriting, not keyboarding, leads to adult-like neural processing in the visual system,” which Ms. Harman-James says suggests that handwriting may have a particular role in setting children up for reading acquisition.

Summit to Make a Case for Teaching Handwriting

Follow us on the Great Mail Race!

• DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.
• DNA is found in all living things.
• DNA forms a double helix and has a pattern.
• It can unzip and make new DNA.
• The environment can cause mutations to happen (they’ll learn more about that next year)
• If we unwrap all the DNA you in our cells, it could reach the moon 6000 times.
• We all have 99.9% of the same DNA – the last tenth of a percent makes us unique.
• We share 50% of our DNA with bananas!
• DNA can help solve mysteries like ‘what kind of dog is this?’ or ‘who killed this endangered snow leopard?”
• If you unwrap all the DNA you have in all your cells, you could reach the moon 6000 times

The elementary students are participating in The Great Mail Race! Our class will send letters & questionnaires to Montessori schools in all 50 states (and Washington DC and US Territories). We hope to hear back from all of the states. We will hang a US map on the wall and place a pin in each state that replies. In addition to being a wonderful geography lesson, this activity is a fun way to practice letter writing. It also gave us a chance to have a discussion about some of the reasons that Maine is important.

What is your state famous for?
What are some important attractions in your state?
What are some important land and water formations in your area?
Which large city are you near?

Students spent the afternoon discussing these questions. Our younger students thought very locally - Maine is famous for LL Bean, Wolfe’s Neck is an important attraction, Moosehead Lake is an important water formation, etc. The older groups made lists (as usual) and debated each item. Which is more important to our state, lobsters or blueberries? Some people travel a long way to eat lobster, but people all over the country also eat food with Maine blueberries. What about pine trees – we are called the pine tree state. Do people in other states know about Prouts Neck or should we just list the Gulf of Maine as an important formation? Is Portland a large city or should we say Boston?

This is a great example of the shift in thinking that occurs around age 8. At that time, students enter a new plane of development that allows them to think more globally. They can put themselves in other people’s shoes – if you lived in Oklahoma, would you think Winslow Park is an important attraction? Portland is the largest city in Maine, but it isn’t as big as Boston – would someone from New York think Portland is a big city? It isn’t on the list of “major cities” in our atlas. Another question asks if Freeport is rural, urban or suburban, which allowed us to discuss and define those terms. They quickly ruled out urban, but the rural/suburban debate was still going at the end of the day.

It is important for students of this age to have many opportunities for these types of discussions. It helps them to practice higher order thinking skills. For those of you who have spent time observing our elementary classrom you know that these conversations are happening daily (hourly even!).

Feel free to peek into our classroom after spring break to see if we have any pins on our map or you can track our progress using Google Maps by clicking on the link below:

The Great Mail Race Interactive Map: http://g.co/maps/r27k9