Dear Parents,

I am looking forward to working with your children either tutoring individually or in a class setting. It is important to me that you understand some of the significant principles of Montessori theory. I think this basic information will answer many questions and promote better understanding of what I am all about. Hopefully, this will lead to greater dialogue and curiosity about this amazing method for education. Below is a description of the concepts and principles I use to teach practical life lessons, reading, writing, and language rules.

A Few Tenets of Montessori Theory

Learning through the Senses:

One of the major tenets of Montessori education is that learning occurs through the senses. Without our senses we would have no way of interacting with the world. The more senses used in a lesson, the more likely it is for the lesson to be remembered and understood. Most lessons are therefore taught using multiple senses at once such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

Kinetic Lessons:

Lessons should incorporate movement. Children are not meant to be still. A child who has to sit all day will be using all of their energy to be still rather than using their energy to focus on a lesson. This is why Montessori lessons make use of movement rather than trying to diminish it.

The Work of Childhood:

Famous child psychologist Jean Piaget, and student of Dr. Maria Montessori, said, “play is the work of childhood”. It is no wonder he said such a thing when Dr. Montessori referred to the classroom lessons and play as just “work”. It is important to explain that while most Montessori lessons can be referred to as playing they are more than that. They are developmentally designed to gift the child a specific concept without the teacher specifically pointing out the concept. To paraphrase Dr. Montessori “learning is not a pouring in but rather a release from within”. For this release to occur, the child must be shown the lesson and then free to experience the lesson over and over again.

Multiple ages & Individual Lessons:

Mixed ages in a classroom allows a child to work at their own pace without being the odd one out. A three year old may have the ability of a five year old and will be able to work at that level. If a five year old is struggling they will be able to work on lessons they need without the whole class moving forward without them. Lessons are given one-on-one while the rest of the class is busy with their own activities.

Isolating Difficulties:

Another tenet of Montessori is isolating difficulties. Instead of trying to teach something complex all at once, a concept will be broken down into individual skills over multiple lessons, and then all the skills will be brought together. In the same vein, we also look forward to skills that will be needed for future lessons. Dr. Montessori found that practical life lessons prepare for language lessons, and sensorial lessons prepare for future math lessons.

Practical Life

Practical life lessons are the first lessons a child experiences in a Montessori classroom. The purpose of them is to develop: independence, coordination, concentration, and a sense of order, which are all skills needed for future academic learning. What does this mean? First, examples of practical life lessons are:

Hammering tees into clay, grinding coffee beans with a mortar and pestle, using an egg beater to make soap suds, spooning beans from one bowl to another, pour liquid from one pitcher to another, washing a table, sweeping the floor, buttoning buttons, tying a bow, using a screwdriver to tighten screws, spreading butter on bread, peeling and cutting a carrot with child sized peeler and safety knife, and so on.

Through these lessons children develop fine and gross motor skills to carry out activities (coordination).  The ability to follow through because they can focus on the task at hand (concentration). They understand steps in a sequence have a specific order in which they must be carried out (order). And once they can do all of these things they are free to do activities on their own (independence). For example, holding a spoon to pour beans prepares the same three fingers for holding a pencil in the future, which is a skill that many children need occupational therapy for these days.

Language & Reading

The foundations for reading are first in a child’s ability to hear and isolate the sounds we use to speak. For example, can they hear and repeat the /d/ sound in dog. This is called phonemic awareness and it is the first step in learning to read. Many children that struggle to read even at six, seven, or eight years old may not have fully developed phonemic awareness. It is one of the most essential steps in language learning but almost no preschools or elementary schools that I know of teach this step. Instead they skip to the next step, which is commonly referred to as phonics, but I refer to it as alphabetic principle.

Alphabetic principle is when an alphabetic symbol (letter) is paired to a sound and a child is learning to associate a sound with each letter. In this step it is important to teach children to recognize each letter by sound instead of by name. Instead of saying this is ‘a’ you say this is /a/. Teaching the names and sounds of letters at the same time creates confusion because in which circumstance does the letter say it’s name or it’s sound? When reading words the names of the letters are irrelevant.

Often times once a child is familiar with the phonics of letters most people will introduce them to spelling words and easy readers. There is two critical steps missing here that bridges the gap between letter sound recognition and beginning to read words. These principles are called Blending and Segmenting and both have to do with sounds.

Blending is when you sound out a word to a child without completely saying the words. For example, you would say /d/ /o/ /g/ instead of plainly saying ‘dog’. In order to know what the word is, the child has to blend the sounds together to hear it says dog. Children do not automatically have this skill. I use small objects that the child can point to, which makes the lesson multisensory the child gives the child multiple options. So I’ll say “Can you show me the /d/ /o/ /g/?” and I will have a small dog among multiple objects. After blending skills are mastered we will move to segmenting, which is the next step.

Segmenting is the opposite of blending. With segmenting you give a child a word and they sound it out. So I would say ‘dog’ and they would say back /d/ /o/ /g/. I could also say ‘fish’ and they would say /f/ /i/ /sh/. Segmenting is, in other words, the precursor on how to teach a child to spell from hearing sounds in a word. For clarity it is important to remember these two lessons are not using letters or words yet. They are pre-reading sound lessons.

When these 4 steps combine a child is ready and capable of building words. If a child can hear the sounds in a word, segment them, and know the symbols that represent the sounds, then they can spell the word, and read the word that they spell. Now they have the skills to look at a book and decode the words into meaning. Now your child is a phonetic reader! And the process has felt easy because the  method was broken down into individual steps.

Now if your child is already a phonetic reader we will begin to work on multi-letter phonograms. Starting with long vowels. Long vowels are two vowels paired together to create a sound that says it’s own name. For example, in the word ‘boat’ the oa pairing says /o/. It is important that long vowels are not taught with the short vowels learned during alphabetic principle. This is a huge hang up for most kids and creates reading paralyses because it can be confusing if taught together. Once the long vowels are taught, I will introduce consonant phonograms like sh, th, ph, and so on, as well as phonograms such as ough or augh.

Another important step is learning non-decodable words, which are words that cannot be phonetically sounded out. These words must be memorized. If a child is reading and comes across one of these words it is important to tell them right away what the word is and that it cannot be sounded out. Trying to sound out a word that makes no phonetic sense, and seems not to follow the common rules, can be frustrating and defeating for children. Here are some examples of non-decodable words: “the, there, are, you, I,” and so on.

The above language skills are the core concepts in learning to read. Depending on the child it will take two to three years to thoroughly learn these reading skills. It is always my hope to send a child to kindergarten with basic phonetic reading skills. Lessons do not end here though. Once a child has the skills above we will continue on with sentence structure, function of words: nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, articles, grammar, and so on.

Sensitive Periods:

I would like to end with an explanation of sensitive periods and why it is important for preschoolers to work on reading and independence skills. A sensitive period is a window of time in which a skill is learned best and with the least difficulty.  Most of us recognize that milestones fall within a general time frame for infants and toddlers. These have been well established by the medical community. We know that the time frame for a baby to walk is generally between 9 months and 15 months. We do not expect a child to start walking at 3 years old because the sensitive period for walking has passed.

Reading has a sensitive period and it is between 3 years old and 6 years old. This does not mean I expect 3 year olds to read. There are many pre-reading skills and learning milestones that children need to accomplish before reading can take place. But if you start phonemic awareness at 5, 6, or 7 years old you are at the end of the sensitive period, and the window of opportunity for easy acquisition of this skill is closing with years worth of skills that still need to be mastered. Like most things, some children are more acclimated to reading while others need more help. Working on theses pre-reading skills can help a child so much that they may never know that reading would have been a challenge for them.

Conclusion

Parents, thank you for reading this far. I am so passionate about these principles that it is important to me to take the time to explain them. I would love to invite you to my home for coffee or wine to see the lessons first hand, ask questions about the learning process, and get to know me better.

Sincerely,

Maria A. Wallace