The Montessori Approach to Composition, Reading & Literature

The Montessori Approach

TO READING, COMPOSITION & LITERATURE

he process of learning how to read should be as painless and simple as learning how to speak. Montessori begins by placing the youngest students in classes where the older students are already reading. All children want is to “do what the big kids can do,” and as the intriguing work that absorbs the older students involves reading, there is a natural lure for the young child.

Beginning at age two or three, Montessori children are introduced to a few letters at a time until they have mastered the entire alphabet. ey trace each letter as it would be written, using two ngers of their dominant hand. As they trace the letter’s shape, they receive three distinct impressions: they see the shape of the letter, they feel its shape and how it is written, and they hear the teacher pronounce its sound.

READING, COMPOSITION & LITERATURE

The Metal Insets

 left To help children develop the eye-hand coordination needed to correctly grasp and write with a pencil, Montessori introduced them to a set of metal frames and insets made in the form of geometric shapes.

When the geometric inset is removed, the children trace the fi gure left within the frame onto a sheet of paper. Then they use colored pencils to shade in the outlines that they’ve traced, using careful horizontal strokes. Gradually, children become more skilled at keeping the strokes even and staying within the lines.

As they get older, children begin to superimpose several insets over each other, creating complex designs which, when colored in, resemble stained glass. Montessori children will often prepare beautiful little books of their Metal Inset work.

Sandpaper Letters

READING, COMPOSITION & LITERATURE

The Sandpaper Letters & The Moveable Alphabet

The Sandpaper Letters are a set of prepared wooden tablets in which each letter is printed in white sandpaper and glued down against a smooth colored background. Montessori’s research confi rmed what observant parents have always known: Children learn best by touch and manipulation, not by repeating what they are told. Montessori’s manipulative approach to teaching children to read phonetically is nothing short of simple brilliance and should have long ago become a basic element in every early childhood classroom around the world.

Children move from the Sandpaper Letters to tracing them in fi ne sand. The teacher and child will begin to identify words that begin with the kuh sound: cat, candle, can, and cap. Seeing the tablets for the letters c, a, and t laid out before her, a child will pronounce each in turn—kuh, aah, tuh: cat! To help children distinguish between them, consonants are printed against pink or red backgrounds and vowels against blue. Many Montessori classrooms use Sandpaper Letters that don’t follow the traditional circle-and-line approach of teaching a young child the alphabet. Both cursive alphabets and D’Nelian letters (a modifi ed form of italic printing that facilitates the jump to cursive) are available and used with excellent results. Montessori found that children in her schools were capable of encoding words months before they developed the eye-hand coordination needed to control a pencil. By using specially prepared Moveable Alphabets, Montessori separated the process of beginning to write from its dependency on the child’s ability to write with paper and pencil.

Montessori teaches basic skills phonetically, encouraging children to compose their own stories using the Moveable Alphabet. Reading skills normally develop so smoothly in Montessori classrooms that students tend to exhibit a sudden “explosion into reading,” which leaves the children and their families beaming with pride. Another unusual result of the Montessori approach is that young children will often be able to write (encoding language by spelling phonetic words out one sound at a time), weeks or months before they will be able to read comfortably (decoding printed words).

Once children have begun to recognize several letters and their sounds with the Sandpaper Letters, they are introduced to the Moveable Alphabet, a large box with compartments containing plastic letters, organized much like an old-fashioned printer’s box of metal type. The children compose words by selecting a small object or picture and then laying out the word one letter at a time. As with the Sandpaper Letters, they sound out words one letter at a time, selecting the letter that makes that sound.

The phonetic approach, which has mysteriously fallen out of favor in many schools, has long been recognized by educators as the single most effective way to teach most children how to read and write. However, we have to remember that, unlike Italian and

Many parents fi nd it curious that Montessori children are not taught the names of letters; instead, they learn the sounds that we pronounce as we phonetically sound out words one letter at a time. For a long time, children may not know the names of letters at all, but will call them by the sounds they make: buh, cuh, aah, etc. This eliminates one of the most unnecessary and confusing steps in learning to read: “The letter A stands for apple. The sound it makes is aah.”

Spanish, English is not a completely phonetic language. Just consider the several different sounds made by the letters ough.

There is the sound off as in cough, or ufff as in rough or enough, or the sound oooh as in the word through, or the sound ah as in thought. Altogether, there are some ninety-six different phonograms (combinations of letters that form distinct sounds) in the English language (such as, ph, ee, ai, oo, etc.).

It is not surprising that in the early years, as young children are beginning to compose words, phrases, sentences, and stories, their spelling can sometimes get a bit creative. For example, the word phone is frequently spelled fon. Montessori teachers deliberately avoid correcting children’s spelling during these early years, preferring to encourage them to become more confi dent in their ability to sound words out rather than risk that they will shut down from frequent correction. The process of composing words with the Moveable Alphabet continues for many years, gradually moving from three-letter words to four- and fi ve-letter words with consonant blends (fl , tr, st), double vowels (oo, ee), silent e’s, and so on.

As children begin to work with the Sandpaper Letters, teachers will lead them through a wide range of pre-reading exercises designed to help them recognize the beginning, and later the ending and middle sounds in short phonetic words. One common example would be a basket containing three Sandpaper Letters, such as c, b, and f. In addition, the basket will contain small inexpensive objects that are models of things beginning with these letters. The basket might contain little plastic objects representing a cat, cap, can, bug, bag, bat, fi sh, fi g, and fan (no consonant blends). In another exercise, we will substitute little cards with pictures instead of the small objects.

Cards with the names of familiar objects are commonly found in most kindergartens. However, in Montessori, children take this much further, learning the names of and placing the appropriate labels on a bewildering array of geometric shapes, leaf forms, the parts of fl owers, countries of the world, land and water forms, and much, much more. Montessori children are known for their incredible vocabularies. Where else would you fi nd four-yearolds who can identify an isosceles triangle, rectangular prism, the stamen of a fl ower, or the continent of Asia on a map?

When will children start to read?

There is typically a quick jump from reading and writing single words to sentences and stories. For some children, this “explosion into reading” will happen when they’re four, for others when they’re fi ve, and some will start to read at six. A few will read even earlier, and some others will taken even longer. Most will be reading very comfortably when they enter fi rst grade, but children are different and, as with every other developmental milestone, it’s useless to fret. Again, the children are surrounded by older children who can read, and the most intriguing things to do in the classroom depend on one’s ability to read. This creates a natural interest and desire to catch up to the ‘big kids’ and join the ranks of readers. As soon as children, no matter how young they are, show the slightest interest, we begin to teach them how to read. And when they are ready, the children pull it all together and are able to read and write on their own.

Teaching Children the Consonant Blends and Phonograms of the English Language

Montessori uses two sets of small Moveable Alphabets, each made of a different color, to help the children master consonant blends, such as fl , st, ch, cl, cr, or tr. A consonant blend requires the child to blend two distinct letter sounds together into one, as we do when we say fl ag or train.

fl fl fl fl fl fl ag at eet ee ing ower

The child lays out several copies of the consonant blend with one color of the Moveable Alphabet. Then she completes the words by adding the remaining letters in the Moveable Alphabet printed in the second color. An example might be tr...ip, tr...ade, tr...ain, and tr...iangle.

Phonograms are the combinations of letters in the English language that form new sounds on their own, such as ee, ai, oa, oo, and ou. Some phonograms, such as ow, can make more than one sound. For example, ow has one sound in tow and still another in down.

The children construct words containing phonograms using two Moveable Alphabets just as they do the Consonant Blends. Montessori teachers will normally prepare little booklets, each of which contains many examples of one particular Consonant Blend or Phonogram.

Puzzle Words: Some words, most of which have come to English from other languages, just don’t follow the familiar rules. Examples of Puzzle Words are: the, was, you, they, and their. They have to be learned by memory. The Study of Grammar & Sentence Analysis

We begin to teach the functions of grammar and sentence structure to children as young as age fi ve and six, just as they are fi rst learning how to put words together to express themselves. This leads them to master these vital skills. Before long, they learn to write naturally and well.

 This young lady is diagramming a simple sentence with the fi rst sentence analysis materials.

Montessori Grammar Materials

Montessori children use geometric symbols to represent the parts of speech, as in the simple article, adjective, noun, verb, and adverb sentence pictured above. Montessori created a set of symbols to represent each part of speech, which helps children learn them easily during a time in their lives when it is a delight rather than a chore. For example, the symbol for a noun is a large black triangle. Because they are related to the “noun family,” the symbols for an article and an adjective are also triangles.

To distinguish them from the noun, which they modify, the symbol for an adjective is a dark blue triangle about one-third smaller than the larger symbol for the noun, and the symbol for an article is a much smaller light blue triangle.

The children will often call the noun a “naming word,” an adjective a “describing word,” a verb a “doing word,” and so on. The symbol for a verb is a large red circle (implying a ball, or movement, since verbs describe action), and the symbol for an adverb is a smaller orange circle, showing that it is related to the verb.

 This eight-year-old is analyzing the grammatical structure of a complex sentence using the grammar symbols and the grammar boxes.

The Verb Command Cards

One of the early reading exercises introduced to Montessori children, once they have begun to read, are the Verb Command Cards. This is a set of red cards on which a single one-word command (a verb) is printed. Typically, two or three children will do this work together as a little game. They pick a card, read it, and perform the command: hop, smile, yawn, sleep, clap, sit, stand, wave, eat, drink, and so on. Once they can read these one-word command cards, later sets will use complete sentences to command them to, “Bring me the smallest cube from the Pink Tower,” or, “Waddle across the room like a duck.” Command Cards are used with older children to suggest specifi c challenges in every area of the curriculum. For example, in Geography, a Command Card might challenge the child to look in the atlas to fi nd the location of the largest inland lake on Earth.

 The Verb Command Cards have a simple oneword command (verb) printed on them. This little boy has just read the word wave and is acting out the command.

 above Montessori students make use of traditional research methods as well as new technology. Some schools are providing tablets in the classroom to literally put information at their fi ngertips.  top right Montessori students match nouns to adjectives and verbs to adverbs as they work with the Grammar Boxes.  below right Settling down in a cozy spot for a good read!

READING, COMPOSITION & LITERATURE

Composition & Library Research

During the elementary years, Montessori focuses on the development of strong writing skills and library research. e curriculum does not depend on textbooks, as much as on primary and secondary resource materials found in classroom library collections, media centers, public libraries, and on the Internet. Elementary Montessori students commonly use reference materials and public records to seek out additional information when they are doing research. Students write every day, learning to organize increasingly complex ideas and information into well written stories, poems, reports, plays, and student publications. ey begin a systematic study of the English language: vocabulary, spelling rules, and linguistics. Montessori schools commonly teach elementary and middle school students how to use the computer to write, illustrate, and lay out their work. ¢