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1907-2025 Welcome to the 119th Montessori School Year!
Montessori planning is not about racing through a checklist. It’s about understanding where each child is on their unique learning journey and preparing lessons that truly meet them where they are. Montessori Compass 2.0 gives you the tools to do this with precision and flexibility.
Responsive
In Montessori, planning begins with observation. What did you notice today? Is a child showing new interest in number work, or struggling to complete a Practical Life activity? With Montessori Compass, you can log these observations immediately, then plan lessons that respond to the child’s needs—rather than following a fixed schedule that may not fit.
Individualized
No two children progress at the same pace or in the same way. Montessori Compass allows you to create and track lesson plans tailored to each child’s development, interests, and readiness. You can assign lessons to individuals or small groups and see at a glance where each child is in their learning sequence.
Flexible
Even the best plans need room to breathe. Children may be absent, disinterested, or ready for something more challenging than expected. Montessori Compass lets you adjust on the fly—moving lessons forward, postponing them, or swapping them out without losing track of your original plan.
Reflective
Good planning doesn’t just look ahead; it also looks back. Montessori Compass makes it easy to review what has been presented, practiced, or mastered. This history helps you spot patterns, celebrate growth, and decide what’s next. You’re not just planning for tomorrow—you’re learning from yesterday.
With these four principles—Responsive, Individualized, Flexible, and Reflective—you can create a dynamic, child-centered lesson plan that grows and changes with your students, supported every step of the way by Montessori Compass 2.0.
Creating a Lesson Plan in Montessori Compass
In Montessori, lesson planning is both an art and a science. It blends your knowledge of the curriculum with your observations of each child’s unique progress and interests. Montessori Compass 2.0 makes this process intuitive, so you can spend less time wrestling with logistics and more time focusing on what matters—guiding your students.
Step 1: Choose the Curriculum Area
Begin by selecting the appropriate area—Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math, or Cultural. If your school has customized curriculum strands, you can navigate those as well. This keeps lessons organized and makes them easier to find later.
Step 2: Select a Child or Group
You can assign a lesson to an individual or to a small group. For efficiency, consider creating custom groupings in Compass, such as “Early Readers” or “Golden Beads Explorers.” These groupings make it faster to plan for multiple children who are working at a similar stage.
Step 3: Set the Lesson Title and Date
Add the name of the lesson and the date you plan to present it. If the lesson is part of a series or a sequence, Compass will help you keep track of what has already been presented and what’s coming next.
Step 4: Add Notes
Use the notes field to capture your objectives, focus points, or any special considerations. For example, “Emphasize place value” or “Encourage peer teaching if interest is high.” These notes will help you stay intentional and provide valuable context for future reflection.
Step 5: Tag Learning Goals or Sensitive Periods
By tagging each lesson with relevant learning goals—or noting if it’s connected to a sensitive period—you’ll be able to pull reports later that show progress in specific skill areas. This tagging system also helps ensure you’re meeting developmental needs across the whole curriculum.
Tip:
You can create groupings such as “Early Readers” or “Golden Beads Explorers” to simplify weekly planning. This is especially useful for multi-age classrooms where several children may be working on the same concept at different times.
When you plan lessons in Compass with this step-by-step approach, you create a clear roadmap for the week that is flexible enough to adapt when children surprise you—which they always will.
Why We Recommend Montessori Compass 2.0
Among other assets, Montessori Compass contains the most robust and carefully designed Montessori curriculum scope and sequence.
Over the years, we’ve seen some Montessori schools drift away from Montessori Compass — often trying other platforms or piecing together multiple tools. Many later tell us they miss the way Compass was explicitly designed for Montessori. Now is the perfect time to take another look.
Montessori Compass 2.0 is not just an update — it’s a complete rebuild from the ground up, informed by over a decade of feedback from Montessori schools worldwide.
Why Montessori Compass 2.0 Is a Game Changer
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Faster, cleaner, and easier to use — redesigned interfaces for both web and mobile make lesson planning, observation, and parent communication far more intuitive.
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Teacher and parent apps — purpose-built for each audience, keeping daily records and updates quick for staff and crystal-clear for families.
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Deep Montessori scope and sequence — developed with the Montessori Foundation to ensure complete coverage of both Montessori materials and the developmental expectations of your country or region.
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Smarter recordkeeping — track progress with clarity, see who needs follow-up lessons, and plan your week with fewer clicks.
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Better parent communication — share photos, notes, and progress updates that help parents truly understand the learning happening in your classrooms.
Montessori Compass 2.0 makes it practical for teachers to plan, record, and report in real time — not at home in the evening or in a rush before conferences.
Enter the Montessori Growth Suite
For schools ready to connect classroom work with the rest of their operations, Montessori Compass 2.0 is now available as part of the Montessori Growth Suite — a partnership between Montessori Compass, AiMS, and the Montessori Foundation.
Growth Suite adds:
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Admissions management — inquiries, tours, and applications in one streamlined system.
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Digital contracts & online tuition — send, sign, and bill without paper or multiple logins.
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AI-powered marketing — manage Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads plus all your social media from one place.
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Multi-channel communication — newsletters, email, and text messaging, all integrated with your parent database.
Why We Recommend It
If you’ve been juggling separate tools for recordkeeping, admissions, billing, and marketing — or if you left Montessori Compass years ago — this is the moment to take another look. Montessori Compass 2.0 delivers the Montessori-specific classroom and parent communication experience you need. Growth Suite takes it further, bringing your entire school into one integrated system.
The Montessori Foundation is here to help your team not only master the technology, but also use it thoughtfully — so these tools strengthen your Montessori practice and help your school thrive.
