What Mary knows about reading

I guess I should have answered this question before I read the articles. However, my idea of how reading is learned comes from only my experience as a pre-school teacher. I have always said for me personally the first time a child decodes a word is almost more exciting than the first step. My experience in a Montessori classroom has shown me that children can perform many exercises that prepare them for early reading among which include doing everything from left to right. Picture recognition and exercises in picture matching can provide good preparation for later recognizing letters. While working with children on the phonics, providing them with movable objects that begin with sounds we are teaching them seems to be helpful. Also having them trace the letter on raised letter boards as well as using a sand tray for tracing helps the child imprint the sound on their brain. I very much like the fact that we rarely call letters by their name but rather byt the sound they make. Reading seems to occur for many in our school in a very natural manner with little stress or frustration. Children seem to enjoy journal writing and picture story where they learn to talk about what they see and that words in the journal can tell their own story.

I think that many of the methods we use in the montessori curriculum to teach langauge and reading could be very beneficial to those who have difficulty learning and perhaps they could learn more easily by touching and feeling. It is far easier to teach with the concrete materials before moviung on the the written.

In conclusion, I guess I have a lot to learn about different methods of teaching reading and I am anxious to do so, and hope that i can adopt some of these methods too.