RE: Small Settings EYFS
by: monty - 15-12-07 09:55
Montessori discovered how young children loved attaching the symbols to the sounds and then blending these symbols to communicate through a written language. This is not at odds with her quote above bemoaning the teaching of empty disconnected facts - filling an empty vessel. The approach Montessori devised from her observations of children was developmental rather than teaching, i.e., children are natrually inquistive of the world around them, our task is to satisfy that natural curisiity rather than dictate the timing and content of their learning. If a child has had experience through rhymes, songs, and lots of i-spy, has had the chance to coordinate the movement of their hand through practical, purposeful activities, has had the opportunity to move from puzzles to more precise discrimination of shape and form, they all that is happending at around 3.4 or 4 is that the next step is to combine interest in sounds of words with the symbols that represent them. From there is is not great leap to express youself though construcing short phonetic words, and doing similar with reading. This is not teaching reading and writing, it is following a natural interest at a timetable dictacted by each individucal child. This is very different from saying to a group 3, 4 or five year olds 'we are all doing to these letters together now' (whether you like it or not).