The most important reason for having a language arts curriculum in a Montessori classroom is the child himself. "It is in childhood that the motor mechanism is fixed, that the child is elaborating and stabilizing, by his own exertions, the characters of his individuality, and in this he is obeying an invisible individual law. At this age, the motor mechanism is in its sensitive stage and is quick to obey the hidden orders of nature". (Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, pg. 271) He is as Montessori has said in a sensitive period for language never to come again.
Language has many functions. It labels objects in a child's world. It expands a child's vocabulary. It allows a child to categorize his world. From a child's growing use of oral language, he is better able to communicate with others and to understand what others say to him. It is the responsibility of the adult to provide an environment rich in materials that will allow the child's language development to be optimum. Montessori said, " And what is it that becomes fixed? As in the learning of language, it is like the weavers warp that is placed first on the loom - not the cloth which is going to be woven, but the basis for it. This warp corresponds to the sounds of words, with their rhythms and their vocal cadences and the order of their arrangement in grammatical form". (Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, pg. 224)
Initial shelf works provide the materials for this rich beginning. They are invaluable, simple as they are, because they provide the adult with a tool to assess and then lead the child onward in his own level of development. Naming fruit is one work that could be found in this section of the language area. It is a work that could be made more challenging or scaled down if vocabulary knowledge needs broadening. The oral language section moves from the very general to increasingly more specific usage of language. Activities found in this section vary from naming of fruits and vegetables, opposite matching, homonym matching, sequence stories and classification of like things.
Following the section on oral language is a brief but important area that focuses on listening through receptive language. By the time a child has reached the end of this brief section he is beginning to exercise visual discrimination skills to match picture and label cards to a separate picture label control card. He is also making an essential connection that a picture has a corresponding word that always stands for itself. Opportunity is then provided for the recording of words special to the child as in story painting. This work reinforces for the child that their words can be recorded and communicated to another and most especially what they have to say is important and valuable.
Auditory experiences follow the visual section with singing, rhyming, alliteration, initial sounds and rhythm and movement patterns being the focus. This section of activities can be used with the entire class on the line and interspersed throughout the day to aid in classroom management and transitional times while having the primary purpose achieved of increasing and enriching language experiences for the child. Picture books, songs and finger plays lend themselves to this section. This section of language allows the child to begin to play with language on his own as he makes it more and more his own. Receptive language will become expressive. Expressive language usage by the child will provide the teacher with continuing means of assessing each child.
Visual experiences, which refine discrimination of similarities and differences, indirectly prepare the child to move into the alphabet. Materials found in this section include puzzles, parquetry blocks, global matching activities and conversational pictures. Cut and paste exercises provide an indirect preparation for movement into writing. Attribute blocks provide visual patterns to prepare for movement into reading.
Indirect preparation along with utilizing the child's sensitive periods for movement, language, order and sensory learning within a prepared environment now allow the child to move into writing. The pink tower has heightened his sense of discrimination, his wrist movements and his ability to grasp. The touch boards have refined his finger touch. The geometric cabinet has increased his visual and muscular impressions of shape. The cylinder boxes have further refined his ability to indirectly hold a pencil and the sound boxes have allowed him to use personal judgement to discriminate and associate like sounds.
The metal insets provide the preparation for writing through both development of pencil control and eye and hand coordination. This material allows for increasing movement both in self creativity and in difficulty as the child progresses from simple tracing of the inset to creating designs using multiple insets. From the insets the child moves to an unlined chalkboard, to tracing, to structured paper and lastly to the sandpaper letters. Lines will now have a new reality.
The sandpaper letters provide visual, auditory and tactile impressions, along with sound and symbol association to prepare the child to move into both writing and reading. Additional materials in this section would be the salt tray along with teacher made works that emphasize initial sound reinforcement and vocabulary enrichment. Materials such as consonant flip books, initial sound sorting activities, initial sound letter games, treasure hunt of sound games, child made sound booklets, letter pricking, and activities which refine recognition and discrimination of individual letters are a few examples.
The movable alphabet bridges the gap between writing and reading in the language curriculum. It allows the child to develop a personal understanding that talk can be written down, that talk is made up of phonetic elements that fit together in an ordered fashion and that once talk is written down, it can be deciphered by oneself or someone else.
Materials found in this section are initial sound to object matching, composition of short three letter words using objects and then pictures to encode or write words. Labels first with objects and then with pictures to move from writing (encoding) to reading (decoding). The level of difficulty gradually increases in the longer phonetic materials with the sequencing remaining the same. Small picture books with key words are presented beginning with one picture and one word to finally a scene with its key words printed to the right.
Phonograms are introduced in much the same manner as were the sandpaper letters. Their introduction provides yet another sequentially arranged series of works for the child who is ready.
Materials in this paper have been presented in an easy to more difficult progression. But one must remember that there is the possibility for a three year span of ages and abilities within the classroom. This brings with it children within all ranges of language readiness. Materials in each of the areas can and should be arranged and offered to meet the needs of both the inexperienced and experienced child. It is the teacher's task to know the individual needs of her children and accommodate materials to meet those individual needs.
Language by its very nature of labeling, categorizing, describing and providing humans with a means to communicate permeates the classroom. The organization of materials within a Montessori classroom itself allows the child a basis to begin to classify words into categories. Practical life has words such as glass, break, polishing, sweeping and dusting. Sensorial has color words, long and short, smooth and rough, triangle and hexagon. Math has a language of its own, numbers. Science has plants and animals, living and nonliving. Geography has places such as Europe and Asia. Art has tools such as brushes, paint, paper, and techniques such as collage and relief. Many of the works from the language area can be adapted to accomplish a similar skill in another area of the classroom. Examples are global matching of like materials. This can be art prints or animals in science. Classification skills can be used to categorize living and nonliving. Pricking can be used to make the continent maps. Story painting can be used in both science and geography. Books from the library can be found for enriching language in every area of the classroom.
I would like to return to Montessori's image of the weaver's warp. With every warp thread placed on the loom from within the child there is also a woof thread that can be interwoven into the prepared environment by the adult. This is seen as a whole in the language curriculum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Montessori, Maria, The Absorbent Mind: 1992, Kalakshetra Publications, 10th ed.
Montessori, Maria, The Discovery of the Child: 1993, Kalakshetra Publications
