School grades are important, but they are not enough for us
The competencies, behaviour, personality and developmental abilities of our students are far too complex to be covered by school grades alone. Therefore, we do not make it easier for ourselves to assess the level of achievement by not awarding grades. On the contrary, we consider it our responsibility to enable our students over the years and according to their age to independently reflect on their own development – personally as well as cognitively – to understand feedback in dialogue and to increasingly derive action steps from both on their own responsibility and to grow from them.
In doing so, we focus both on the classical learning contents and on the central social and personal competencies, which are the actual basis for lifelong learning and for thinking and acting together. For us, this is the goal of our living learning:
Learning Status Talks / IzEL
Diary
Self-assessment
Feedback at
eye level
Homework
Self-organised learning
Learning outside school
Strategies for learning progress
Parents give confidence
The teachers of the Montessori School Herzogenaurach are in close contact with the parents and exchange information with them regularly during consultation hours or at parents’ evenings. The weekly study book notes, which are signed by the parents, also include the opportunity for communication. The children deal daily with the question of what they want to achieve today and what and how they have achieved it.
At half term, a learning development meeting is held between student, teacher and parents to reflect on the first months and set individual goals for the second half term. Instead of an annual report with numerical grades, the students receive an IzEL (“Information on Developmental and Performance Status”), which incorporates the teachers’ observations as well as the children’s and youths’ self-assessments.
The only thing we really have to do is to change the basic attitude towards the child and love him with a love that believes in his personality and that he is good; that sees not his faults but his virtues, that does not suppress him but encourages him and gives him freedom.
Maria Montessori