Classroom Jobs
The Importance:
Classroom jobs are an important aspect of a Montessori curriculum, in every age group. Giving students a stake in their community promotes self-discipline, responsibility and care for their environment. Classroom jobs will vary from school to school, dependent on your needs and environment. Every year, we add new classroom jobs after pondering what could have been done to make [our] lives a little easier or make the environment more prepared.
Job Distribution:
We distribute jobs by way of a Job Auction. The auction allows a fair system of determining which students get a job. The auction begins by a teacher stating the job that is "up for auction," and having interested students stand up. If more than one student stands up, this begins the auction process. The auction consists of a teacher writing down a number (1-100) and letting those who stood up choose a number. The student that is closest to this number gets the job. In our classroom, to give everyone a chance to try a variety of jobs, students may only have that certain job once a school year (you must keep these records!)
Some students need heavy support in understanding this auction process. If you can carefully explain how jobs are selected, especially for the first one of the school year, this will help these students be more prepared.
Job Ideas
Mentioned before, no two classrooms are alike! Therefore no classroom jobs will be the same from classroom to classroom. If you are interested in thirty five ideas we have for our Lower Elementary classroom, you can download that here.
Job Display Board
We are proud of our lovely job display board! As the years went by, our student count grew. Unfortunately, this means utilizing the wall space, but we'd rather grow than shrink! You can see our job board, as shown from the photos on this page