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Language, Language Everywhere! The Elementary environment brims with language throughout the subjects. We invite children to read the steps to a science experiment by presenting the experiment and then showing them where they can find and repeat it. Each area comes with its own set of nomenclature booklets that name, picture, and define key vocabulary in that subject. Montessori Grammar Boxes help students gain a deeper understanding of the parts of speech. Montessori Grammar Boxes help students gain a deeper understanding of the parts of speech. We isolate each part of speech in colorful grammar boxes that provide lots of practice with reading words in isolation and considering them in context. We investigate irregularities with dives into verb conjugation and explorations of language features like nouns that don’t change from their singular to plural, or that don’t indicate a plural with –s. When we introduce new vocabulary in a lesson, we write a label for it so we tie the visual to meaning. All of this

Reading in the Elementary Environment One of the most beautiful things about Montessori education is the way its methods are so carefully aligned to child development. Children in the Elementary (what we sometimes call the second plane) aren’t absorbing everything in the environment anymore. Instead, they’re building concepts through analysis, logic, reason, and imagination. English Word Spelling: A Mystery To Be Solved We know from decades of research into reading that children need a multidimensional approach. They first need to be able to hear and manipulate the sounds in a word (a skill called phonemic awareness). Then they need to build understanding that those sounds can be represented by letters and groups of letters (phonics). While it’s true that English letters make lots of irregular sounds, with elementary children we approach this as a fun puzzle through which we can see the history of our language. For example, did you know that if words have a long-i sound spelled “igh,” they come from Middle