The Art of Teaching Language

By K. Meagan Ledendecker, Director of Education

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 began with spoken language, then advanced into forms of writing (think of the first cave paintings and picture writing), and later moved into reading as a way to interpret the thoughts of others. How amazing that our young children do the same in a matter of years from birth to age six!

One of the joys of the Montessori learning environment is how language learning is woven into all aspects of the children’s experience. When we present dusting, for example, we model a left to right, top to bottom pattern, which prepares the eye for tracking words on a page. When the children use sensorial touch tablets and the rough and smooth boards, they develop lightness of touch and a relaxed hand necessary for writing. Every time children grasp a knob of the knobbed cylinders, they prepare their hand for holding a writing instrument.

The genius of Dr. Montessori’s approach is that it breaks down individual skills and abilities, so that children can practice them in isolation. So by the time children have mastered these individual skills, they seem to spontaneously know how to write or how to read.

Once this explosion into writing and reading has occurred, then children are excited to refine their writing and access worlds of knowledge through reading. A new journey of discovery and learning begins.

Through the sound game, children become aware of the fact that words are made of sounds and eventually can identify all of the sounds in a word and place them in order. Through the sandpaper letters and sandpaper phonograms, children associate the sounds of our language with their symbols. This is exciting work for the children because not only can they see the isolated symbols, but they can touch them, too! Through the moveable alphabets, children are able to write their thoughts even before their hand is ready to control a pencil.