Having entered the sixth year since the opening of “Frontierkids Global School”, we have
made great progress. Children have adapted as young bilinguals, frequently trying their
utmost to interact with their peers and foreign teachers. Below is a simple method we
Montessori teachers follow to teach reading and focus on bilingualism.

 

In order to help children, become fluent readers with a love for the written word, we guide
them through the Montessori progression of “Total Reading”.
In the Montessori classroom, the child is exposed to the four strands of “Total Reading” at
the same time: communication, mechanical, interpretation, and appreciation.
The child works with materials and activities that isolate these strands. These four strands
will ultimately come together to form “Total Reading”.

 

The first strand is communication. For children to be able to read, they first must be able to
speak; one cannot learn to run before learning to walk. Children develop speech at different
rates. Although learning one language may seem hard enough it is proven that learning
more than one language at a time improves the speed of learning. Multilingualism provides
children with a wider platform and community from which to gain knowledge. This kind of
exposure further helps children‘s development of speech in society.

 

The second strand of “Total Reading” is mechanical when the child learns to decode the written word. To read, the child must learn to break down a word into separate letter sounds, then fuse those sounds to form a word.

 

The child gains experience in decoding through early language materials and oral language games, like Sound Games (learning to isolate each sound in a word), Sandpaper Letters (learning the sound each letter makes), and the Moveable Alphabet (learning to put letters together to form words).

 

The third strand of “Total Reading” is interpretation when the child begins to read for meaning.

 

Pre-reading activities that support this include storytelling, poems, role plays, songs, and rich conversations with real, complex words, enriching the child’s vocabulary.

 

Once the child has begun, the mechanical phase and can fuse letters to form words, they can move on to early reading activities like the easy reader books, classified reading cards to match a word with an image, and action cards, which tell the child an action to perform e.g.- “skip, walk, dance, wiggle” etc.

 

The fourth and final strand of “Total Reading” is appreciation.
Reading to a child from infancy can instill a love for books. In addition to mechanical sounds and reading for meaning, we want the child to read with excitement and love for the written word.We want children to be able to interpret everything the author is trying to say, including the tone and intention so that the written word becomes a tool of expression, not just functional communication.We want to instill a lifelong love of reading and writing in young children. We want them to develop a passion for language, reading, and writing.
We hope that this appreciation for the written word will stay with them throughout their lives!

 

“The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” Dr. Maria Montessori

 

FrontierKids Global School

Vice-director Fathima Mohamed