THE ART OF TEACHING Language By K. Meagan Ledendecker Over 100 years ago, when Dr. Maria Montessori created the first Children’s Houses in the slums of Rome, she saw a curious phenomenon happen. Young children, who not that long before had been considered street urchins, developed a sense of pride in their work and soon were eager to read and write. In fact, Dr. Montessori tells a story about how the children and their parents begged her to teach them writing and reading, despite the fact that at the time, society didn’t think that children under six were capable of this type of learning. Then Dr. Montessori did what she did so well: she observed the children, she identified what skills they needed, and she provided opportunities for the children to develop. The result? Dr. Montessori saw what she described as an “explosion” into writing and reading. “Six months after the inauguration of the House of Children, some of the mothers came to me and pleaded that as I had already done so much for their children, and they themselves could do nothing about it because they were illiterate, would I not teach their children to read and write? At first I did not want to, being as prejudiced as everyone else that the children were far too young for it. But I gave them the alphabet in the way I have told you. As then it was something new for me also, I analysed the words for them and showed that each sound of the words had a symbol by which it could be materialised. It was then that the explosion into writing occurred.” –Dr. Montessori writes of San Lorenzo in 1942 In Montessori environments, we support children’s progression (and “explosion”!) in three aspects of language development: spoken language, written expression, and interpretive reading. This progression that young children go through —spoken language to written expression to interpretive reading—follows the pattern of early human language development. Early humans
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