Restoring Better Reading to Our 2 ½-6 Classrooms: Part I

Montessori Life, Summer 2004 by Wolf, Aline D

This article is in two parts. The second part will appear in the fall issue of Montessori LIFE.

Recently I have become concerned about some deficiencies in language, particularly reading, in some of our Montessori early childhood schools. Although many of the children entering the elementary from our 2 ½-6 classes can read at various degrees of competency, there seems to be a growing number who have not acquired this skill and seem to have little interest in doing so.

To my mind any deficiency in language skills is a serious problem because language is the subject on which all other learning depends. No one can learn science, history, geography, social studies or even math without first becoming fluent in his or her native language, which for us is oral and written English.

Language is, in fact, one of the highest accomplishments of human beings. It enables us to communicate with others, to express our feelings, to express our needs, to listen to others, to play games, to shop, to laugh, to participate in our government, and many other daily activities. Speaking reflects how we are thinking. The book of Sirach in the Hebrew scriptures says, "The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one's speech disclose the bent of one's mind." Because language, both oral and written, is so basic to our lives as human beings, it deserves very special respect and attention in our Montessori tradition.

From my observations over 40 years, most of the children who spent 3 years in a Montessori class for 2 ½-to 6-year-olds had moved through the sequence of language materials and were able and eager to read. Some were comfortable with small phonetic books, others could read almost anything. Between these two extremes there were many levels of ability, but the basic phonetic instruction had given them the fundamental keys to the world of reading. They were ready to develop this skill further in the Montessori 6-9 class.

My own recollection is confirmed by the writings of Nancy Rambusch ( 1962). In her book, Learning How to Learn, she writes,

Montessori rightly assumes that the interest of children in the lower elementary grades is further stimulated because of the learning skills they have mastered before the age of 6. The child of 6 who has been in a Montessori school.. .knows how to read and write, has an interest in Mathematics, Science, Geography and History, (p. 114)

But this degree of proficiency acquired by 2 ½- to 6-year-olds over the past few decades may not be the standard of today. Some 6-9 Montessori teachers are complaining that quite a few of the children coming into their classes have poor reading skills or cannot read at all. This is a significant problem because they feel that their Montessori elementary teacher training did not adequately prepare them to teach children who need beginning reading instruction and who are well past the sensitive period for Sandpaper Letters.

To rectify the situation, some have chosen what their local public schools were using-Houghton-Mifflin readers, which are now called literature anthologies, with their accompanying workbooks. In my opinion, this is a very questionable step that docs not mesh well with our Montessori tradition.

Before we can arrive at effective solutions for this problem in either the early childhood or elementary level, we must ask "Why?" Why has our children's ability to read declined in recent years? Why do some children have little or no interest in reading? When I posed these questions to several 2 ½-6 teachers, their responses focused on two significant reasons.

The first reason is that children's preoccupation with television has weakened their interest in reading. They are so used to being entertained with fast moving images that it is very difficult to interest them in the slower and more precise manipulation of Montessori materials. Furthermore, very few parents read to their children at home, and some children are always tired in school because they go to bed so late.

The second reason is that teachers are losing faith in the phonetic system. They said that the Montcssori reading system was formulated in Italian and doesn't do the job for English. Phonics, they said, couldn't give children clues to the common non-phonetic English words-such as, does, mother, was, goes, said, pretty, etc. They felt they needed to start with another method, such as whole language, in order to ease the children into reading.

Both of the reasons deserve our attention.

The first, I think, is a fair assessment of how conditions in the home, especially TV, affect our children. Teachers cannot directly control these factors because they are primarily the responsibility of parents. But because language experience in the home directly affects our work with the children, we must make a bigger effort than ever before to bring awareness to all the parents of our students and even to parents of newborns.

The teachers are correct in blaming television as one of the main reasons for children's lack ofinterest in reading, as well as for their difficulty in focusing in the classroom. This assessment was detailed some years ago by Jane Healy, an internationally recognized authority on learning and brain development. In her book, Endangered Minds (1990), she makes the distinction between involuntary attention that is continually grabbed by the fast-moving images on TV and the voluntary attention required for learning to read.