Ecole Montessori Bilingue de Saint-Cloud

BROCHURE 2016

Ecole privée hors contrat, légalement déclarée.5 Rue de Garches, 92210 SAINT-CLOUD

Tél.: 01 46 02 64 33/01 47 71 61 03 Fax : 01 47 11 09 03 E-mail : embcci@gmail.comEMB – SARL au capital de 41161 € - SIRET 415 137 603 – RCS Nanterre.

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THE CHOICE OF INDEPENDANCE

Founded in 1972, first as a Montessori nursery school, completed in 1986 by the Primary

sections, the Montessori Bilingual School of Saint-Cloud chose to be independant.

1. We are a private, non-religious school ; we function without subsidies.

2. In the Nursery school, we apply the Montessori pedagogy, in the Primary we are inspired by it.

According to the initiator, a Montessori class should group together children of different ages :

the 3/6 year olds’ class in the Nursery school, the 6/9 year olds and the 9/12 year olds in Primary.

This organisation is as fruitful in Nursery school, as it is unrealistic and undesirable in the Primary

school, for our children that we do not want to marginalize.

This is why we do not apply the Montessori organisation to our Primary classes, but the spirit is still present.

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A BILINGUAL SCHOOL

A MULTILINGUAL PUBLIC.

Our school welcomes non-French speakers, as well as French children. This multicultural environment offers young foreigners a progressive integration into the French school system. The daily contact with French children helps the natural immersion in the French language ; in exchange, they bring their language and some fresh air to the French children. This remarkably fruitful coexistence enriches the children, both on the verbal and relational plane.

THE LANGUAGE, A TOOL FOR THINKING AND CODE OF COMMMUNICATION

Due to an active method, founded on the progressive immersion in the language, the children adopt a way of thinking, linked to a way of expression, without ever translating.

A language covers a way of thinking, being, behaving. To speak another language, one needs to change states : children do this naturally. They think in English, they speak English.

TRUE BILINGUALISM

In Nursery School :

Time shared between French (native French speaker), and English (native English speaker) .

From C.P.2 to C.E.1

5 hours of English per week

From C.E.2 to C.M.

6 hours of English per week – study of the language, spoken and written work.

Practical workshops of spoken English.

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BILINGUALISM AT THE BEGINNING OF SCHOOL   : TEACHING A SECOND

LANGUAGE TO YOUNG CHILDREN.

To accustom the very young child to hear the rhythms and intonations that are

specific to the language being learnt, the first immersion is based on :

1) songs and nursery rhymes.

2) language games, for a progressive learning of the structures of the

foundation of the language.

These two years at the Nursery school make up the premises of the progressive

installation of bilingualism. One can see as soon as the first years in the Primary school, that

the acquisitions gathered in the Infant School have been fruitful.

The daily length of the activity in English, at this stage of the first immersion, depends

on several things :

- curiosity and pleasure

- attention span

- rhythm of acquisition of each child.

- threshold of saturation

The length of each lesson is modulated according to these criteria, which obliges us

to be flexible in the interest of the child.

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A MONTESSORI SCHOOL

In

Nursery section

A GLANCE AT MONTESSORI PEDAGOGY

Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952)

As the first Italian female doctor of medicine, she devoted herself to ‘mentally retarded’

children, then extended her pedagogical experience to other children, and founded a school in

Rome in 1907. She formulated a pedagogy which spread through other countries with success.

«Help me to do it alone»

This formula holds the essential ideas of Montessori Pedagogy. It resumes our objectives in

a few words : help the child to build and gain his autonomy.

To respect the child’s rhythm, to control his body and his balance in space, to educate the

senses, and through them, the intelligence, to master oneself and respect others, free choice in

tasks ; such are the main ideas.

Within this framework, each Montessori School specializes and functions according to it’s own individual criteria and pedagogical choices.

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. PEDAGOGICAL PROJET

The atmosphere in which the child evolves during the essential stage of the Nursery school,

will prepare his future academic and social life. The infant Montessori class, an emotional, social

and educational environment, is a lively place where children can come and go, take their material

and work, alone or in small groups.

GUIDING THE CHILD TO AUTONOMY

The sensitive periods

These are particular and brief sensitivities in the child at different stages of his evolution.

They are short-lived and are limited to determined acquisitions such as language, order, co-

ordination of movement (premises to writing). Once these periods are past, the natural sensitivity

ceases. That is why it is fundamental to approach the learning at the most favourable moments.

How the class works

The child is free to choose his work and must finish it at his own speed, helped by the

teacher who is attentive, calm and available.

The activities are part of a flexible timetable and the small number of children per

group allows personal attention which helps them whilst they are learning.

N.B. – Do not confuse this freedom of choice with « just any activity ». Nothing

should be more organized than a Montessori class.

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SOCIALIZING THE CHILD

The freedom of the individual is limited by the collective interest.

The discipline

To be disciplined, is first of all to be capable of mastering oneself, then mastering

one’s everyday social relations in order to adapt to each rule of social life.

At the beginning of the school year a rigorous presentation defines the fundamental

rules of community life in a way that the child understands clearly the limits. These rules are

repeated gently and with perseverance through the year. Order and discipline are necessary

for the child’s stability, and something forbidden will help set a framework within which the

child may progress, with reassurance.

Structure of groups

Each class consists of fifteen to seventeen children from two and a half to five years

old. The bigger children help the smaller children spontaneously and are a model for

behaviour

The eldest who teaches the youngest is not slowed down. To the contrary, he may

perfect his knowledge, analyse, reorganize and confirm it, due to him helping. It is in such an

atmosphere of help and mutual comprehension that he will discover the pleasure to learn.

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THE MONTESSORI MATERIAL

This material, to which one should not reduce all the pedagogy, is an indispensable

auxiliary to the education.

PRACTICAL LIFE

The use of « practical life material » before the use of Montessori material itself,

favours very varied motor activities : the repeated movements with perseverance lead to

good muscular co-ordination and to a suppleness of movements (especially of the wrist in

view of writing).

The child might want to do a practical exercise that he has already seen an adult do.

Therefore it is not altogether new, as he builds on observation : cleaning a table, polishing

shoes, cleaning brass, sweeping… . The end product of these exercises is not to master a

certain practical activity itself, but to develop in the child, apart from manual dexterity, the

sense of organisation (all that is necessary must have been prepared carefully and with

method), and the concentration on a complete cycle of activities.

The child, who in daily life has acquired discipline and self-confidence, is ready to use

the sensory apparatus.

THE SENSORY APPARATUS

The sensory objects are those that interest the child at first. The alphabet and

calculation come next.

The didactic apparatus is made up of a certain number of objects and games aimed

at exercising and developing the faculties which are still in the latent state in the child.

These objects, which stimulate the sensory development that corresponds to a need

at this age, also prepare a solid base for intellectual development. The aim is not to lead the

child to use the apparatus without error : if that were the case, it would have gone beyond

the exercise which would have become useless. The importance in his type of exercise is 8

the self-correction.

The young child practices to recognize and judge the shapes, colours, sounds,

textures, smells, volumes, weights… . He learns to differentiate, classify, recognize, and

match the information to knowledge already acquired.

The teaching material, which always contains a rational gradation, makes self-education possible by keeping the spontaneous attention of the child who works alone. He

perfects himself by his own work by repeating the exercises during which the teacher must not intervene.

Example : one of the first games consists of a series of blocks of cylindrical insets.

These hold 10 small cylinders whose diameter differs gradually by 2 mm. The game is to

take out the cylinders, to mix them up and put them back. The aim is to help the eye to see

the different dimensions. To start, the child works by trial and error : his natural curiosity

leads him to try all the possible combinations. Then, he observes the relationship between

the dimension of the hole and that of the object to be inserted. If he makes a mistake and

puts an object too large in the hole, he will try the cylinder that is too small in the hole that is

too big, and he persists in his mistake by putting in all the cylinders, at the end of the

exercise the narrowest hole will be empty and the biggest cylinder will be on the table : the

child corrects his mistakes himself.

The description of this activity gives a brief idea of a psychosensoriel exercise

amongst all those proposed to the child.

From the concrete exercise he moves on to the abstraction. The teacher intervenes

to guide the child in his research and leads him to transform a sensory exercise into an

intellectual exercise, himself.

It must be noted however, that all the material is designed with a view to an indirect

preparation for future learning. For example, the small knobs by which the child must hold

many objects will lead him naturally to the correct hold of the pencil.

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TIMETABLE OF ONE DAY

MORNING

8.45 - 9.00 a.m. Reception

9.00 –11.45 a.m. Individual workfree choice of activities

Group work presentation of material

11.45 –1.00 p.m. Lunch

AFTERNOON

1.00 – 1.30 p.m. Playtimegames outside and in

1.30 – 3.15 p.m. Workshops painting/modelling

music

gymnastics

cooking/baking

3.30 p.m. End of class

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A different schoolIn

primary section

PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT

AGAINST SCHOOL PASSIVENESS, PRIORITY TO THOUGHT

The child learns to learn, he acquires the skills at the same time as knowledge.

He develops the capacities to think and to reason that will lead him to be able to make choices.

Permanently stimulated, the child is trained to mobilise his thoughts rather than his memory : In reading he learns to find the information to make sense of it.

In a maths exercise, he is invited to reform the instructions before carrying them out.

In history, he is led to build up a stock of references that do not belong to his daily life, which will act as landmarks

These are some examples of the intense activity that prevails in our classrooms.

THE MUTUAL WORK OF PUPILS AND TEACHERS

They question, search and find ; we guide and give their bearings. We lead the child to the threshold of « knowing how to do it alone », our objective is not to transmit our knowledge, but to awaken a desire to know in him, and to help him to build his culture.

AN INTER-DISCIPLINARY PROJECT

The lessons are not juxtaposed ; but harmonize around a project, the mastery of the French language being the core. Verbal and written expression, reading and all the linguistic activities condition the approach to other disciplines.

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ENTERING THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

A STEP PREPARED FOR AT THE NURSERY SCHOOL

The sensory exercises carried out at the Nursery school quickly lead to exercises of comparison suitable for arousing judgements, appraisal, reflection. They no longer satisfy a child of 5 who longs for other activities and other knowledge, he wants to write and read.

One must give the child nourishment at the moment that he is ready to receive it. He will then enter the period of learning.

The entry to the Primary school is gentle and takes into account the development of the child more than the child’s legal age.

Legal age, emotional age, mental age, these ages do not overlap exactly.

It is impossible and even detrimental to grade the children like lentils, classified according to age group : being able, knowing how, and liking to carry out the same acivities at the same time. One needs time to understand, time to absorb, time to reinsure one’s knowledge. This time is not the same for everyone, and its measure is not a criterion by which one can judge.

After two or three years at the Nursery school, therefore over the age of 5, and only if the child is ready, he may enter the first year of the « Cours Préparatoire » (C.P.2) in the Primary section.

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FIRST-YEAR INFANTS CLASS

The « Cours Préparatoire » is spread over two school years (C.P.2 and C.P), the child therefore acquires the solid and lasting foundations that will allow him to go through the successive stages of his future education, in the best conditions.

The objective is not to take short cuts by gaining a year, but to give the child time to :

1. acquire the complex mechanism of writing, reading and numerical manipulation.

2. favour the practice, in everyday situations and not just academic situations, of the act of writing, reading and counting.

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« COURS PRÉPARATOIRE »

FUNDAMENTAL LEARNING

Writing and reading The child is led early on to perceive that the written signs are the transcription of

phonic signs, and that, all that is written carries a message. Here lie the objectives of writing and reading.

Parallel to the discovery of specific sounds of the language and to the correct practice of their pronunciation, the preliminaries to writing started as soon as the child entered the Nursery school : holding a pencil, dissociation of the two hands, mastery of movements, being at ease in the environment.

Drawing attention to French phonetics allows the child to be led to auditory recognition of the thirty-six phonemes constituent of the language and to the mastery of their graphic reproduction. The properties of the association of phonems which, when combined, form significant groups, words then sentences, allow the child, from the beginning, to read meaning.

The child learns without a manual by using collective and individual material.

The loose reading worksheets are flexible to use which allows each child to progress at his own speed and his own level. He acquires thus the ability to read a book and not a text book and discovers the pleasure of reading.

MathematicsThe mathematics programme is strictly respected, the child may go even further,

thanks to the material that he manipulates and that helps him discover the decimal system, and master in concrete terms the operating techniques and the numerical activities.

Concrete realizations are proposed to the children, who manipulate the Montessori material and thus may touch abstraction.

The aim is not to train the child to succeed in an exercise, but to understand what is asked of him and to work out the strategy which leads him to the answer, to help to build what he does not yet know, from what he does know.

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PRIMARY CLASSES AND INTERMEDIATE CLASSES

« CLASSES ÉLÉMENTAIRES » (C.E.1-C.E.2) : CONSOLIDATION AND EXTENSION OF FUNDAMENTAL LESSONS

The fundamental lessonsThe mornings are reserved for fundamental lessons :

- French - Mathematics

- English

Class workshopsEach of the subjects below lead to bodily, manual, technical or musical activity, which take part in the afternoon.

- anatomy / gymnastics- botany / gardening and cooking- poetry / music and painting- English /English drama- history-geography / friezes and maps

COURS MOYEN (C.M.1-C.M.2) : CLASSES OF CULTURE

The lessons are grouped together into subject groups, entrusted to teachers who master and particularly appreciate the teaching of those subjects.

- Mathematics- Natural and technical science

- French language- History – history of art - civics- Geography

- English

- Theatre

- Art - Music- Gymnastics

In « Cours Moyen », since they have acquired a rigorous way of thinking, succintness of vocabulary, capacity for research, analysis and synthesis of documents,the children work together on the writing of a newspaper.

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BILINGUALISM IN THE PRIMARY SECTION

C.P.2 - C.P. - C.E.1

Thanks to a very progressive way of teaching the structures of the language, with the

help of a video (method of the B.B.C.) the children play the characters in games based on

the method, and practise the structures over and over. No reading or writing is involved,

which allows the child to absorb the language without resorting to translation.

C.E.2

Beginning of the written language. Written exercices structured according to a

rigorous progression reinforcing the spoken acquisition. Reading and exploiting short texts.

C.M.

The language is integrated enough to allow the children to follow certain lessons in

English : science, geography of English–speaking countries, gymnastics. The exercises

allow the child to fix the automatisms firmly and to understand the way the language works.

N.B. At the end of C.M. the children have acquired an ability to speak in English but they do

not have the same level as English-speaking children in an English or American school.

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ENTERING SECONDARY SCHOOL (« COLLÈGE »)

A different school, we prepare the children for a Secondary education of a classical

style. Our difference is built on the arms that we give them to face their future.

The curriculum of the « Education Nationale » strictly followed, all the children enter

the « 6ème » being the first year either in the « collèges », or in the bilingual public school

(International College of Sèvres) or private schools.

They obtain excellent results there, with the knowledge and the competence very

superior to the level expected, because they possess a major asset : wanting, knowing how, and liking to learn.

Later when the children are adults, they will be able to enrich their culture and their

know-how due to them knowing how to think, which they learned in our school.

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HOW THE SCHOOL FUNCTIONS

TIMETABLE

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday : - Lessons from 8.30 or 9.00 a.m. to 3.30 or 4.30 p.m. according to the timetable established at the beginning of the school year for each class (with lunch break from 12.00 to 1.00 p.m.)

Wednesday- Lessons until 12.00 a.m.

LUNCH

Children bring a meal that is re-heated in a micro-wave oven. The lunch, eaten together, is part of the daily activities.

PARENT PARTICIPATION

Class visitsThe parents are always welcome and may come to spend a few hours at the school

with their child. If they wish to, they are asked to sign up on the calendar available, to avoid too many adults in the classrooms.

Parent meetingsIn Nursery and in Primary, a meeting for parents and teachers is held at the

beginning of each term.

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SCHOOL FEES

SCHOOL FEES

School fees for school year 2013-2014 :

Annual registration fee per family All sections : 450,00 €

School fee per month Nursery section : 470,00 €

Primary School : 510,00 €

Reduction : 20% for the 3rd child admitted.

PAYMENT SCHEDULE

- at admission : registration fees and September (not refundable).

- In October : October November, December.

- in January : January, February, March.

- in April : April, May, June

- The dates for the term fees are indicated in the new academic year form sent in july.

- Each term started is payable.

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TERMS OF ADMISSION

INITIAL CONTACT

Familiarization of the brochure

Interview with parents with the child present.

For the infant school: possibility to visit a working class between 8:45 and 9:30 by

appointment.

For the primary school: a half or whole day visit in a class corresponding to

the child’s current age-group.

DOCUMENTS

- Up-to-date vaccination book.

Admission form, filled-in dated and signed, with 1 passport photo of the child.

A confirmation of enrollment will be sent in july along with the new academic year forms.

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