flynn088

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself.” — Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (p. 88) Over the last few weeks we have been looking at equality and achievement in literacy as it relates to gender. We know that during the sensitive period for writing and reading (age 4–6) children spontaneously begin to read. By using the Montessori materials designed for learning to write and form words — the Metal Insets, Sandpaper Letters, and Moveable Alphabet — the child has already had exposure to the sounds of the written word. “Indeed, writing prepares the child to interpret mechanically the union of letter sounds of which the written word is composed.” (Montessori, p. 297) Reading, however, is more than mechanics. It requires fluency and comprehension. The question, then, is how do we keep the enthusiasm of early readers as we move from mechanics to fluency? The Montessori environmen...

“If writing serves to correct, or rather, to direct and perfect the mechanism of speech in the child, reading assists in the development of ideas and language. In brief, writing helps a child physiologically and reading helps him socially.” — Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child , p. 230. In 1995, a study was done in by the UK Office for Standards in Education that concluded that girls always out-performed boys by a considerable margin when it came to reading. (Coles & Hall, 2002) The authors, Coles and Hall went on to say that it is now widely accepted that boys have more difficulty with basic literacy than girls. The study also found that girls read more fiction than boys and that girls view reading more positively than boys (59.2% vs. 47.1%). (Coles & Hall, 2002) Gender and Literacy Another study cited by Coles and Hall, called The Children’s Reading Choices Project (1994), compared and quantified children’s reading choices by gender over a period of 25 years. This s...

A few weeks ago, my friend Katherine Brekke invited me to attend an Usborne book fair she was hosting at a local Montessori school. Usborne is a children’s book publisher that is known worldwide, and it is the leading independent children’s book publisher in the UK. At the book fair, I saw several Montessori lower-elementary students with pencils and clipboards in hand as they busily made wish lists. In typical Montessori fashion, the students were very serious about the choices they were making, asking pertinent questions about content as well as asking Katherine for her recommendations. When their shopping time was over, the students politely thanked Katherine for her time and assured her that their parents would be back for parent night that evening. As I watched the students shop, I couldn’t help thumbing through the books myself. I have a young niece and nephew, and I enjoyed looking at the books with them in mind. As I browsed through the books, I couldn’t help but notice that se...