Dear Bilingual Montessori Friends,

We are very pleased to launch our Bilingual Montessori CC series, which will happen for free Wednesdays on a bi-weekly basis from February 1 – June 14 and September 20 – December 13, 2023. We have invited colleagues with interesting experiences to share to be our “BM Ambassadors” and offer a talk in the Community Conversation format that we are taking over from Montessori Institute Prague.

Each talk will take place from 16 - 17.30h CET. We will use this 90-minute format so there is plenty of time for Q&A following the talk and, when possible, create break-out rooms towards the end so we can get to know each other and we can learn more of how we can support you in your work.

Join us to learn more about Dr. Montessori’s perspective on language acquisition and her multilingual grandchildren. Brigitta will share about the differences between language acquisition and learning. She will discuss the prerequisites for language acquisition and learning from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, from a pedagogical perspective and from the Montessori classroom (3-6, 6-12 years).

Takeaway: the importance of focusing on learning rather than teaching.

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“Approaches to Montessori English Immersion -

One School’s Experience”

Joanna Stewart

15 February 2023

Joanna will be sharing her experience of participating in an evolving bilingual Montessori program over the past 12 years. Her insights about how to build programs that create the conditions where children can communicate and understand through speaking, reading, and writing in another language.

Takeaway: factors that can tip the balance to create spontaneous conditions for the acquisition of another language.

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"Strategies to Support an Immersive Second Language Experience in a Montessori 6-12 Classroom"

Laura Cassidy

1 March 2023

Join us as Laura discusses key aspects of organising the adults in a Montessori Elementary classroom to enhance opportunities for target language acquisition. Find out how she promotes a love of reading and uses it to support language progression.

Takeaway: How to create activities and games to inspire second language learning in your Montessori environment.

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You can register for these talks at our Website Homepage and you will find more details about our Ambassadors at our newly created Community section where we will create an archive of the recorded talks.

Other news from the BM team

We held our second Deep Dive outside of Prague at the end of November and hashed out in detail the chapters of our “Field Guide” that when complete will be available for free on our website. The writing is now underway and we will reconvene for another Deep Dive in March in Córdoba, Spain to assess our progress and plan the next steps.

The interviews for our Case Study Research Project are finishing now in January and valuable information is being extracted to be used in the “Field Guide”. We are very grateful to those who offered their time and expertise for the interviews. Our guiding research question was:

What are the current effective practices for bilingual development in Montessori education, and the ways that they depend on or adjust to the different socio-linguistic characteristics of the schools?

Please feel free to write to hello@bilingualmontessori.com if you have successful practices from your school or classroom that you would like to share so we can continue to build our BM knowledge bank. We are interested in understanding practices in terms of the local linguistic context, so, if relevant, please add a line or two to explain.