Montessori believed learning should occur in multi-age classrooms where children at various stages of development learn from and with each other. By consciously bringing children together in a group that is large enough that it will allow for two-thirds of the children to return every year, the school environment promotes continuity and the development of a very different level of relationships between children and their peers, as well as between children and their teachers. Her developmentally appropriate approach was designed to fit each child instead of making each child fit the program. Montessori teachers know that children learn more by touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, and exploring than by just listening. Teacher training prepares them to create dynamic, interactive learning environments that encourage each child to reason, cooperate, collaborate, negotiate, and to understand.
Development is active.
Development cannot be taught. Normalization comes through concentration on a piece of work. The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that is engages the child's whole personality. In our schools, this 'moment of healing' is not the point of arrival, as in the clinics for difficult children, but it is the point of departure, after which 'freedom of action' consolidates and develops the personality. The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.