The Three Hour Work Cycle
Of all the ways we consider time in the Montessori classroom, the Three Hour Work Cycle is one of the most important units. The work cycle represents one of Montessori's earliest observations about children's development: that, left uninterrupted, children would process through a regular and predictable pattern of engagement. The pace of the classroom, then, is ideally matched to the development of the child when the day's schedule allows for three-hours of uninterrupted time in the prepared environment.
What happens over those three hours? With some wiggle room and variation between individual environments, some pretty impressive stuff. Typically, the first half hour after the children arrive is like most liminal periods: a time when the children are getting on their feet, transitioning from one environment to another and settling in. It might include a bit of wandering about the classroom, or touching a lot of different materials. Some children might use this time to hold back and observe as the classroom becomes more active. Others might enter each morning ready to test each boundary set the day before. This first thirty minutes is a window within which the quiet, calming predictability of the teacher and the environment is paramount. However children respond, this is a time within which the child is leaving behind the outside environment and transitioning to the ease of the prepared environment. You'll see teachers waiting quietly during this window, not intervening too quickly and letting children work through the transition.
The second half hour usually sees children choosing from a variety of materials around the classroom and generally choosing materials that are easily mastered or that are familiar to them. Observers are likely to see simpler lessons repeated again and again in this window. Children may be attentive to their work, or they may "look busy," repeating activities and keeping one eye out on the rest of the classroom.
Following this window of busy-ness, children will often demonstrate what Montessori called, "False Fatigue," a period of time during which the children appear to be tired or bored, restlessly moving about the classroom, clumsier with their bodies and less attentive with their minds. In traditional classroom environments, this is when the adults would say, "Time to go outside!" and hustle children off to a new activity. Montessorians know, though, to sit on their hands and wait out the false fatigue. While it can be louder in this period and children can look as though they need an adult's intervention to find purposeful work, Montessori observed a deeper integration at work, as though the child was using this time of restlessness as a preparation for the more important work to come.
When children are allowed to remain in the classroom through false fatigue, they will emerge in the second hour of the work cycle seeking more rigorous, challenging activities. They'll choose lessons that are harder or that require a longer attention span or more engagement. We observe, then, that children who have a shorter work cycle avoid the longer lessons that require more concentration. Indeed, we believe they won't develop the same ability to attend that children in the longer work cycle do.
The protection of the work cycle takes special importance in the Early Childhood and Elementary classrooms. Infant and Toddlers don't benefit from the full three hours, demonstrating far wider variation in their own development and unlikely to present the same ability to concentrate as older children will. In Secondary, the work cycle is balanced by the highly social nature of the learners, and can often take a back seat to small or full group, civically-minded activities. In Early Childhood and Elementary, though, you should observe Montessorians protecting the work cycle, emphasizing, for example, that children arrive on time before the work cycle begins and scheduling recess, group time and “specials,” like art, music or physical education, after the three hour cycle. In full-day programs, teachers may wait to offer advanced lessons to children until the afternoon, protecting the morning work cycle for truly uninterrupted, child-initiated activity.
While protecting the work cycle requires faith and self-restraint, Montessorians appreciate that the great work of the child is often the work that comes at the end of the three hours. Just like we, as adults, may have to move through a lot of menial tasks before we’re able to attend closely to more challenging work, we preserve this time for the child, to meander both physically and intellectually, building toward the purposeful work that is perfectly matched to that child, at that moment in development and time. We just need to get out of his way.