An Explosion in Language Development

Almost 120 years ago, when Dr. Maria Montessori created the first Children’s Houses in the slums of Rome, she saw a curious phenomenon. Young children considered “street urchins” not long before developed a sense of pride in their work and were soon 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, identified what skills they needed, and provided opportunities for them to develop. The result? Dr. Montessori saw what she described as an “explosion” into writing and reading.

In Montessori education, we support children’s progression (and “explosion”!) in three aspects of language development: spoken language, written expression, and interpretive reading. 

Spoken Language

Because spoken language is the foundation for all work in the language area, we offer rich, complete, and beautiful language for young children through various activities to cultivate conversation skills. Our Enrichment of Vocabulary exercises focus directly on expanding children’s receptive vocabularies and cultivating children’s experience and intelligence. As we engage children in games using language, we also help increase their listening and comprehension skills. As part of spoken language development, we also take the time to listen to children’s own spontaneous efforts of expression so that they gain confidence in speaking and feel that their thoughts have meaning. 

Written Expression

The act of writing consists of two separate elements: composing and recording. Composing is mental work: thinking about what to say. Recording is the physical aspect of writing. In the Children’s House, we prepare these two elements separately by offering exercises to prepare the hand for recording and exercises to prepare the mind for composing. Writing is having a known thought that goes from sound to symbol, a process that is much easier than the process of reading. 

Because hand development takes longer than mind development, we use a material called the Movable Alphabet to help children compose words before their hands are ready to write. The Movable Alphabet is a box containing the letters of the alphabet, which are essentially the building blocks of all the sounds in our language.

Interpretive Reading

Unlike many traditional settings, reading is introduced after writing in Montessori environments because the process of reading is cognitively more difficult. Writing is essentially an expression of thought. When we write something, we know what we are writing. When we read something, we don’t know what the author intended to communicate, so we have to take the symbols, match sounds to them, blend them together, and then attach meaning to them. This is a much more sophisticated skill than writing out your own thoughts. 

While the hand needs to be prepared for writing, the eye must be prepared for reading. This includes the skill of following a left-to-right, top-to-bottom progression across the page. In addition, the eye must recognize that the symbols in our language are lines creating a shape. So, we have many activities with the Geometry Cabinet and other sensorial materials to prepare children for this visual discrimination. We also use the Sandpaper Letters to introduce the phonemes of language through three senses: tactile, visual, and auditory. Through games with the Sandpaper Letters, children get to practice tracing the letter by using the gross motor movement of the whole arm and hand, seeing the shape, and associating the letter sound (phonetic) with its shape and their own movement. 

Once children progress from reading words (mostly nouns) to reading phrases and, finally, sentences and paragraphs, we offer activities to highlight how different words have distinct functions with the Function of Word activities. These exercises also highlight the syntax or order of words (e.g., adjectives tend to come before the noun they are describing). Another set of exercises, Reading Analysis, highlights the order of parts of a sentence. With a greater understanding of our language's components, children can better interpret what the author is writing.

The Pattern of Human Language Development

The 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 this same process, yet only 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 children use sensorial Touch Tablets and Rough and Smooth Boards, they develop the lightness of touch and a relaxed hand necessary for writing. Every time children grasp a knob of the Knobbed Cylinders (also called Cylinder Blocks) they prepare their hand for holding a writing instrument.

Through the Sound Game, children become aware that words are made of individual sounds, and they begin to 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 they can see the isolated symbols and touch them, too! Through the Movable Alphabet, children can write their thoughts even before their hand is ready to control a pencil.

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

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