The Science of reading and Montessori method means to understand the cognitive processes that are essential for reading proficiency through scientific Montessori language material. It describes the development of reading skills for both typical and atypical readers.
Most reading difficulties can be prevented in young students. In other grades, studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive phonemic awareness training, intensive phonic decoding training, and opportunities for repeated practice of reading text. Intervention in these skills leads to efficient degree of success.
Teaching whole word memorization is limited, and learning phonics empowers students with an extra effect.
If a child memorizes ten words, then he can read only ten words. But, if the child can learn the sounds of ten letters, the child can read…
More than 300 three-sound words.
Reading development can be divided into three stages:
Letters and sounds: Letter-sound knowledge is essential for both phonic decoding and sight-word learning.
Phonic decoding: Early phonological awareness skills enable the development of letter-sound knowledge and should be targeted for direct instruction through first grade. Advanced phonological awareness skills should continue to be assessed and practiced through third grade to ensure that a solid orthographic lexicon is established.
Reading Sight Words: It allows teachers to support students who struggle to read. It is the process that occurs when unfamiliar words become automatic sight words. The research explains how students develop this vast sight word bank for accurate and automatic word retrieval and also why students with reading problems struggle to develop this skill.
Phonics and phonemic learning and manipulation must be proficient to allow for students to build a sight word bank. To support this, students need sufficient practice and review in decoding and encoding, knowledge and application of concept skills, lots of exposure to decodable text and practice.
Comprehension is the most important goal for reading. It is driven by other initial reading skills.
Most teachers have received little knowledge about language structures that are used in reading, speaking, and writing. Montessori Language activities are based on the scientific concept of language learning.
Students with reading difficulties present on a continuum of severity and require highly skilled teachers who have the knowledge and expertise to provide intervention based on the Science of Reading and Montessori method.
Scientific Language and Literacy: How we teach
Through Scientific language and Literacy , teachers implement methods that are appropriate for all students and particularly necessary for students with learning differences.
Instructions for the lesson in this method are assessment-driven. The diagnostic aspect requires continued progress monitoring to measure outcomes and guide differentiation. It is also called data driven instructions.
Students are provided repeated opportunities for a lot of practice of reading the text and working with the activities based on scientific rules of reading and comprehension.
Through regular dictation and scientific Montessori language material of words and sentences containing the phonetic concept, students become skilled in spelling words within and outside of the text and comprehension of the reading text.
What we teach children
The Science of reading identifies six essential components that make up the Simple View of Reading process. Structured Literacy applies all six components:
- Phonemic Awareness
- Phonics
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Spelling
- Comprehension
Students who have difficulty decoding need a focus on phoneme-grapheme and blending automaticity for both phonetic and sight words. Teachers get better at differentiating instructions based on assessment results.
Phonemic awareness is emphasized as a necessary pre-reading skill and teachers recognize and target the sequence of skills to build phonological awareness from early to advanced reading skill levels.
Phonics is an important component in early, effective literacy-based instruction. Learning to spell is far more complex than just memorizing words. Spelling learning is a developmental process that impacts fluency, writing, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
Through scientific language exercises students understand why words are spelled the way they are spelled. They learn to identify the overlapping features of words including word origin, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, position constraints, and patterns and conventions. This helps them to acquire the alphabetic principle.
Regular words are taught according to phonetic patterns and irregular words are analyzed for their irregularities. When proficient readers encounter new words, they phonemically analyze the word for the regular grapheme-phoneme patterns and are able to identify the irregular patterns easily. Teaching each reader to activate this process allows them to align the letters to the phonemes in their memory. Writing practice also helps language learning process.
Morphology is the knowledge of meaningful parts within words. Students are able to increase their vocabulary when they are directly exposed to the study of root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
The Science of Reading has proven that a Structured Literacy Learning approach is a necessary foundation for successful readers.
As teachers, we make a commitment to continue our education through professional development to support the learning of every student.
This approach allows teachers to incorporate the six components essential to an effective and total reading program into their daily lessons of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
The mission here is that all children must have the ability to read to fully realize their potential. We are committed to providing all teachers with the knowledge and tools to present proven literacy education to students of all ages and abilities.
Role of Parents in Learning Reading
One more important part of the science of learning and Montessori method is to involve parents. A child spends al most twice of the total time at home than he spends at school.
If they know how to support their child for learning reading scientifically, it will make the process faster.
Parents need some guidance from the teacher. Teachers can recommend activity books and strategies to help them.
The ‘Montessori Activities Guide’ is a collection of engaging and fun activities. In this set of activities, simplicity is common. All the activities are age appropriate. Children learn through expression of their inner urge. Interest and motivation are the key elements to learn a language. Parents can use it at home to involve their child positively.
Thank you for reading. Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
Shahlla Anjum