Fostering Community

Through 'Brother-Sister' Relationships in the 6-9 Classroom

By Roberta L. Williams

An essential aspect of Montessori Education is the development of community in the classroom and the school. The multi-age classroom offers the opportunity to develop community through family groupings.

I teach 6-9 year-olds in a public Montessori magnet school. I have always attempted to foster supportive relationships among my students. In the past, I have used class meetings, stories and role-playing to encourage students to interact in positive ways. I have encouraged older students to help younger ones with mastery of materials and classroom routines. While I have had some success, I continued to look for improvement in relationships between students.

At the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, I found my class list consisted of ten first, ten second and ten third grade students. Having perfectly even age groups for the first time in my thirteen years in the Montessori classroom, I seized the opportunity to form brother-sister groups.

I assigned each student to a group of three children. Each group was racially diverse and contained both sexes. During the first few days of school, the older brothers and sisters interviewed the new students in our community, wrote about them and introduced them to the class. This allowed the children to become acquainted with each other.

Next, during our study of the Solar System, each brother-sister group was assigned an object in the Solar System to research. The children read together, answered research questions, then made a poster to present to the class. Each sibling contributed to the poster and the family group presented their research to the class. With the success of this activity, I was encouraged to continue the groupings.

As the year has progressed, sibling groups have completed experiments together. It has been interesting to observe which students take leadership roles during experiments. It is not always the third grade student. After completing experiments, students record their observations in journals. Older siblings were very helpful with this process early in the year. Second and first grade siblings have also participated in buddy reading on a regular basis, taking turns reading books to each other.

It has been very interesting to observe the relationships between siblings flourish. They identify each other as brothers and sisters. Some siblings greet each other daily as they arrive in the classroom. Younger siblings have been invited to birthday celebrations. Some parents have reported that their children enjoy being the older or younger sibling, a role different from their position in their family at home.

I have found this to be the most peaceful year thus far in my classroom. Although I cannot scientifically conclude that the supportive relationships exhibited by the students are due solely to our sibling groups, I feel it is likely that the brother-sister relationships have encouraged a feeling of community and commitment to each other. It will be interesting to observe what happens in the future, as the children change roles from younger to older sibling, or move on to the 9-12 classroom.


Roberta Williams is a teacher at Garfield Montessori Magnet School in Decatur, IL. She can be reached at rwilliam@dps61.org.