by Tim Seldin 

The process of learning how to read can be as simple and painless as learning how to speak.

Montessori begins by placing our youngest students in classes in which the older students are already reading. All children want 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.

The first exercises that the young child encounters are the sandpaper letters. Each letter in turn is cut out of sandpaper and glued onto a wooden tablet. Consonants are mounted on a red background, the vowels on blue to set them apart for the young child. Only lower case letters are used in the beginning.

The sandpaper letters offer the child three distinct impressions: she sees and learns to recognize the shape of each letter, second she is drawn by the tactile feel of the sandpaper letter to trace its outline just as if she were writing it with a pencil, and finally she learns to pronounce and recognize the spoken sound that the letter represents.

In Montessori, children normally learn to recognize the letter by their sounds rather than names before they ever learn to recite the alphabet. This facilitates the process of learning to read, because the child does not need to go through the normal decoding process. Most young readers might attempt to decode the word cat by saying to themselves something like this, "the letter c (cee) says "kuh" or "c stands for cat, castle, and cake." The Montessori child looks at the word and sounds it out letter by letter: "kuh aaah tuh...cat!"

The Montessori teacher will usually present two or three letters at a time, showing the child how to trace and pronounce each letter. She follows a lesson made up of three steps. First, she shows the child the letter, traces its shape just as it would be written, and pronounces its basic phonetic sound. As a second step, she asks the child to show her each letter in turn, giving the child the cue of asking for a specific letter; "please show me the 'tuh." In the third step, she points to each letter and asks the child to identify it without any cues. As the child masters the first group of letters, new ones are added until she knows the alphabet.

Next the child begins to compose words with the moveable alphabet, a set of letters cut out of plastic and following the same colour scheme as the sandpaper letters. The teacher prepares a basket of small objects representing simple three-letter phonetic words. The child selects an object, pronounces it out loud, and selects the moveable letter that corresponds to the first sound in its name. She does this for the second and third sound in turn and then reads the entire word out loud. Gradually children are introduced to consonant blends (such as fl and tr), phonograms (such as ae, oo, and ough), and words with more than one syllable.

Using her growing knowledge of the phonetic sounds of the alphabet, the child learns to read and write increasingly complex words and sentences. Mastery of basic skills normally develops so smoothly that Montessori students are often described as suddenly "exploding into reading," which leaves young children and their families, beaming with pride.

Once our young students have made their first breakthroughs into reading, they tend to proceed rapidly. There is typically a quick jump from reading and writing single words to sentences and stories. At this point, we begin a systematic study of the English language: vocabulary, spelling rules, and linguistics.

Montessori begins to teach young children the functions of grammar and sentence structure to students as young five or six, just as they are first learning how to put words together to express themselves. This leads them to master these vital skills during a time in their lives when it is a delight, rather than a chore. Before long, they learn to write naturally and well.

During the elementary years, Montessori increasingly focuses on the development of research and composition skills. Students write every day, learning to organize increasingly complex ideas and information into well-written stories, poems, reports, plays, and student publications.

The key to the Montessori language arts curriculum is the quality of the things we give our children to read. Instead of basal readers, Montessori introduces them from an early age to first rate children's books and fascinating works on science, history, geography and the arts.

© 1996 The Montessori Foundation