Too Young to Read?

I've written about this before, but I keep finding people (who usually support play-based learning) who seem to believe that young children aren't capable of academic learning. While I wholeheartedly agree that the vast majority of preschoolers aren't ready to learn the way traditional schools teach, I find it frustrating that many people assume that is the only way academic subjects can be taught. It also seems to be a common assumption that if academics matter at all to a teacher, (s)he must be undervaluing other areas of development. I find it frustratingly ironic that many of the same people who advocate for letting children develop at their own pace also advocate for restricting what we offer them.

The subject most commonly treated this way is reading. There is a huge segment of people – parents and educators – who believe that kindergartners should not be taught reading. And the research supports them to a certain extent, but it also only looks at children who are taught in traditional ways. It acknowledges the children who learn to read at four years old, but only as outliers. I haven't seen any research outside of the Montessori sphere that considers any methods of developing pre-reading skills that vary too much from the norm, so it's no surprise that they all conclude the same thing. I read another article about this topic today here. The author touches on some interesting and important research, but I believe she draws the wrong conclusions from it. Below is a comment I left on her post:

Have you looked into Montessori? It’s based on observation of the children and following them developmentally. In the early days, and to a slightly lesser extent now that we have a set of materials that work for most children, materials were brought in and removed based on the children’s interest. My knowledge of Montessori education leads to me to believe that most children CAN and SHOULD learn to read around age 4.5… but note that I did NOT say they should be taught. See, Montessori schools have teachers who are trained to demonstrate the use of materials, based on the child’s interest, and then back off and just observe unobtrusively. The children are free to explore as long as they are not doing anything dangerous, damaging the materials, or disturbing another child. The only “reading” material they had in the original schools was a set of sandpaper letters on small wooden boards. Children who wanted to learn them were offered instruction, but if they didn't that was okay, too. It was just tracing the letter and making its sound. Montessori herself believed 3-6 year olds were too young for anything more than that, and that they would learn even that much later, in formal schooling. So it wasn't urgent, and in any case she looked at these classes as experiments anyway. Her concern was not in making the children learn, but in finding out *how* they learned when no one was imposing a specific curriculum on them. But the children surprised her, and their teachers. In each class, there inevitably came a day when a four year old would make a letter with the chalk that had been provided for drawing. (S)he would write words, and then exclaim something along the lines of “I've done it! I've written!” The other children would crowd around and try it for themselves and suddenly all the older children were writing. This same scenario happened in classes across the world. Montessori wrote about children writing on everything, even the crusts of their bread, because they were so excited about it. And then, as if their teachers weren't astonished enough, about six months later some child would look back on something (s)he had written and read it, and tell everyone something along the lines of, “I can read!” Again, the other children would try it and find that they, too, could read. And when adults asked them who taught them to write and read, the children looked puzzled and replied, “Why, no one. We taught ourselves.” And at that point, most of the students were the children of illiterate day workers. They got no academic instruction at home.

So I firmly believe the issue is not teaching reading and writing at young ages, but in *how* we teach it. I find that most people who are against early academics (at least vocally so) assume that young children couldn't possibly be interested in reading or math or history. It’s the other side of the coin – legislators believe that all children *must* learn it (now), and detractors believe that all/most children *can’t* learn it (yet)… but Montessori schools have found the opposite. And the reason is that Montessori schools actually ask what the children are interested in and let them demonstrate what they’re capable of. They have all concrete materials. There are no worksheets and no homework. There are art supplies and free movement and building materials and basic activities to care for oneself and one’s environment. Academics are “taught” by the materials themselves, through the child’s interest, and in an environment where social and motor development are just as highly valued as academic learning. There are other benefits of it, but I've already written a book so I will just hope people look into it on their own. Suffice it to say that Dr Montessori consistently found that whatever age she developed materials for, it was children just younger who were enthralled by them.

So I hope not to offend you by this statement, but I think articles like this miss the point. The focus shouldn't be on what children learn when, but on *how* we teach them. When teachers believe children are too young, they usually don’t provide opportunities for the child to prove them wrong, and I think that is just as much of a disservice as pushing them to do things for which they aren't yet ready. The key is having an environment that includes materials we don’t think they can handle yet, all the way down to materials we think they have outgrown, and then let them tell us what they need by observing what they use and how they use it.

Read All About It!

This post follows "The 'Write' Stuff". It describes beginning reading materials and their use.

Once a child is writing proficiently (usually around 4.5) he will begin to spontaneously read what he has written. At this point the child begins to work with the phonetic object box. This, as the name implies, is a box with five to seven objects in it that are spelled phonetically. The teacher writes the name of one object on a slip of paper, slowly, and the child says the sound of each letter out loud as she does so. Then he puts the sounds together and “guesses” which object was named. This repeats until all the objects are labeled. For repeat use, there is a set of papers already labeled with the names of the objects, or the teacher may continue to write.

The phonogram object box is introduced after the phonetic object box. It is almost identical, but one of the objects (the last one named) is not phonetic. Rather, it uses one phonogram such as “ch” or “oo”, and the rest of the word remains phonetic. The teacher helps the child remember phonograms by isolating them if necessary, either covering the rest of the word or using a phonogram as the beginning sound and pausing dramatically while the child determines the sound. The phonogram is treated as one letter, just as it was in the sandpaper letter work.

Puzzle words are also introduced after the phonetic object box. While similar to traditional education's “sight words”, these are not simply easy words to recognize on sight. Puzzle words are, instead, words that cannot be figured out using either phonetic sounds or phonograms. They are like a puzzle – you can't tell what the “picture” is until you put all the pieces together and see the whole thing. These words are typed or handwritten on cards and the child learns three at a time, in a three period lesson. This involves learning the word (first period), matching the spoken word to the written word (second period), and giving the spoken word in response to the written word (third period, i.e. reading).

All words in the English language can be deciphered using one of those three methods, so once the child is reasonable proficient with these activities he can begin to do work with more challenging words. The picture cards used for spoken language activities come into use again, but this time as three part cards. One part includes both an image and the written word (all lowercase, in an easy to read font like Century Gothic). Another part includes just an image, and the third includes just the word. All cards in a set are cut identically. To use these, the child lays out the control cards with space between them. He then places the matching picture card next to the control card, and turns the control cards over so they are no longer visible. He reads the words, and places them beneath the matching image. When he has completed all the sets, he turns the control cards back over to check his work. Each classroom has several three part card sets on the shelves at any given time, and even more in storage for rotation.

The three part cards branch out into “parts of...” and “kinds of...” cards, as well as developing more fully into definition booklets. For example, a “parts of the flower” set will highlight the different parts of the flower (pistil, stamen, corolla, etc) in color, while the rest of the image remains an outline. These will be three part cards, but there will also be a booklet that describes each part of the flower on a separate page. For example:

The calyx

is the green part

that holds the flower together.

This definition is repeated, split up in different ways, for the child to match the parts of the definition to each other and to the image. The booklet is for initially defining terms and to use as a control so the child can check his work.

This list is (by far) not all of the reading work in a Montessori environment, but the next post will describe spoken language activities (which really should have been the FIRST post) so that after that we can go into the parts of speech and more advanced language work.

The "Write" Stuff

Though contrary to traditional education methods, Montessori discovered that children can write before they can read. In the first classrooms, children given instruction in the sandpaper letters (2.5 - 3) spontaneously began to write around age 4, and then to read what they had written about six months later. This pattern was repeated by many children in classrooms all over the world.
This is partially because, in our classrooms, we have many activities that start a child on the path to developing proficiency with written language, well before we expect him to do so. These activities build coordination and hand strength, recognition of sounds, and give practice in how letters are formed. Practical life activities help a child practice logical sequencing, develop his pencil grip, and increase his concentration.
Spoken language activities help a child develop vocabulary and learn syntax, as well as helping to classify the world around him, and a sensorial activity called the touch boards helps him maintain finger sensitivity. This helps avoid cramps when writing with a pencil.
These activities are started immediately (practical life beginning in the toddler community and sensorial from the first day in primary), far before writing and reading.

The first activity a child does that officially leads into reading and writing is called “sound games”. This game is usually guided by an adult or older child, and several objects are gathered strategically. Each object has a different starting sound, avoiding sounds that are too similar (like b and p). Each person takes turns holding an object in their hands, and says, “I'm holding in my hand something that starts with the sound ___.” Then the other players “guess” what he is holding. When the children are good at this, they can begin to do it without picking up an item. They might say, “There's something on the tray that starts with the sound ___.” When the children become more proficient they can play this game with middle and ending sounds as well.
Sound games are appropriate for any child who is reasonably verbal, and are played in the toddler class as well as the primary. In the primary they often run parallel to the sandpaper letters.

Sandpaper letters are formed out of (gasp) sandpaper, and backed by a painted wooden rectangle (blue, pink, or green). The child can easily see the shape of each letter, and is shown how to trace it with two fingers. We don't name the letters, but rather call them by the sound they make. This reduces the number of steps a child goes through when sounding a word out later – instead of, “this is b, b says 'buh',” the child can just say “buh”. The sandpaper letters with the green backgrounds are phonograms such as “ch” or “ea”.

The movable alphabet is the first opportunity a child has to actually “write”. He knows the sounds of several letters (from his work with the sandpaper letters), and can make lists, write a sentence, or even tell a story with these easily held cursive letters. Spelling is not a priority with this material (though it is part of the curriculum later), as it is important to develop confidence with the writing process first.

The metal insets are a series of geometric shapes which are traced with colored pencils to make a design. There are several lessons which become more challenging as the student becomes more proficient with using a pencil. This material isolates the difficulty of using a pencil from the difficulty of creating words, and the two are merged after individual mastery.

A sand tray helps a child practice handwriting before using paper, so he can simply shake away mistakes. Chalkboards can also be used for this purpose, and writing on a vertical surface helps to develop shoulder strength. Strips of paper are next, and finally sheets of special lined paper (feel free to use this paper at home or give a binder-full as a gift) which often have a space for illustrations.

The next post will describe the materials used next, to help a child teach himself to read! Stay tuned... :)