Barbara Isaacs suggests proven Montessori literacy resources that will nurture fledgling language skills…
Maria Montessori recognised children’s need for a language-rich environment more than a hundred years ago. She advocated babies’ exposure to the spoken word used in the context of everyday life. She also recognised adults’ role in promoting rich vocabulary and grammatically correct use of language.
Maria Montessori also acknowledged children’s inherent potential to absorb and learn several languages at the same time, if used in an appropriate social context.
She experienced the same pressures many early years practitioners experience today – the mothers of the children attending her first nursery pleaded with her to help their children learn how to read and write. This is how her multisensory approach to using phonics was born.
She introduced phonics because her native language, Italian, is eminently suited to this approach. It gave young children the opportunity to encode words using the one-to-one correspondence between the phonemes and graphemes, between the letter sounds and shapes.
She added the kinaesthetic experience to the sounds and shapes in the form of sandpaper letters. With this Montessori literacy resource, children trace the shape of the letter as they see it, say it and feel it.
All Montessori settings use these sandpaper letters (using a lower case cursive or script alphabet). So do many other nursery schools (particularly those with children with SEND). They give a solid start to recognising as well as reproducing the letters of the alphabet.
We can consolidate this knowledge when children start using the moveable alphabet. It’s a tray containing all the letters of the alphabet that distinguishes vowels (blue) and consonants (red).
The moveable alphabet facilitates the building of short words with direct letter shape and sound correspondence. For example, words like ‘cat’, ‘bin’, ‘frog’, ‘pond’ and so on.
Children use collections of suitable objects to remind them of an appropriate word, then sound it out and build the word. Those who have the skill also have an opportunity to then copy the ‘build’ words into their word books.
You can easily reproduce this activity using the lower-case magnetic letters available through many education suppliers (however, the colour coding of vowels and consonants may not be possible). Begin by suggesting words and ask children to compose them from the letter sounds comprising each word.
Once introduced to the activity by an adult, having a basket of objects will enable children to build their own words. This is really enticing to young children and enhances their interest in the activity. It’s also a relatively cheap and fun resource that can be made into a home-based activity. You’ll need:
Organising the boxes according to a level of difficulty is helpful. I’d suggest the following:
Box 1: contains objects such as: cat, hat, mat, pan, fan, dog, pot, box, etc.
Box 2: focuses on objects representing words with initial blends such as: pram, frog, flat, crab, plum, clip, stag.
Box 3: looks at final blends as in: lamp, desk, kilt, band, list, milk, tent.
Box 4: can be a mixture of blends and introduce more complex words such as: tractor, taxi, panda, strap, zebra, zigzag, dustbin.
Building the words on a magnetic board makes copying them onto a piece of paper easier and will contain each child’s work.
Barbara Isaacs is the academic director of Montessori Centre International.
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