This Thing - Called a Montessori Education
Who Was Maria Montessori?
What Makes Montessori Stand Out:
1. The Whole Child
Approach
2. The Prepared
Environment
3. The Montessori
Materials:
Language
/ Math /
Sensorial
Practical
Life / Penmanship
FAQ - frequently asked questions
Testimonials From Parents
Map - where we're located
School History
About Miss Ali
Parent Classes offered:
Emotional Intelligence
Spalding Reading Program
Montessori Training
Parenting
2005 - 2006 Calendar
Newsletters Online
Photo Gallery
Click here to email
us
Phone: 801-796-7672
Parent Education Classes
The Writing Road to Reading...The Spalding Method of Learning to Read! |
 |
We are so excited to have instituted this excellent and, I think, THE BEST METHOD of learning to read, here at Montessori. It is the way that Maria Montessori taught reading. It is adapted to the English language. Montessori was Italian & this is the closest to her method I have yet to find.
The program begin by teaching a set of phoneme-letter units called phonograms. There are 70 of these, the letters of the alphabet plus some multiple-letter units like ea and ng. These particular phonograms were selected by Anna Gillingham for Samuel Orton, the famous neurologist who later also asked her to develop a method for teaching reading to dyslexics. Spalding uses list list of 1,700 words compiled by order of frequency. Over the course of spelling, children learn, by example, 29 rules. Given 70 phonograms & 29 rules, you can spell about 80% of English words, & a higher percentage of the most frequently used ones.
An important point about the Spalding phonograms is that they are correct by modern linguistic standards. That is, the letters represent minimal speech units (phonemes), not blends.
After 54 of the phonograms have been learned, instruction in spelling begins. Each child thus accumulates a personal list of hundreds of words for which the spelling has been worked our & repeatedly practiced.
When about 150 words are learned, reading begins. A major shock is that reading is never taught. It just begins!
They simply pick up a book and start reading! (It is, of course, a pretty exciting day.) They fly right over the basal readers with their impoverished vocabularies, & start in with good children`s literature -- like Sendak`s Where the Wild Things Are. They also start right in thinking & reasoning about content.
Parent Participation
You will be involved in working with your child in this program of learning to read through writing! You will be taught along with your child, step by step, how to be a part of this process and those things you will be doing at home. Parent participation is vital to your child's success!
You will find that through this process that your child will learn at an accelerated rate, giving you at the same time, an excellent way to know where your child is at all times in this process of learning. AND IT WILL BE FUN FOR THE BOTH OF YOU!
HAPPY LEARNING TOGETHER!
