Materials Spotlight: Word Study
From time to time, we highlight one of the amazing Montessori learning materials here on our blog. This week will share information about a well-loved material in any lower elementary environment: the word study cabinet.
Typically housed in a tower of small, labeled drawers, groups of cards allow children to study a key areas of language, and to do so independently.
The Presentations
Perhaps it is easiest to start by listing the skills covered by the word study materials:
Compound words
Prefixes
Suffixes
Homophones
Homonyms
Homographs
Synonyms
Antonyms
Contractions
Syllabication
One of the most important parts of word study happens before a child even touches a drawer of word study cards. A small group of children gather with a Guide. The Guide brings supplies that may include strips of paper and pencils, a small chalkboard or dry erase board, prepared booklets, charts, or labels. What the Guide brings varies depending on the lesson.
Many of the skills listed above require more than one lesson to be presented to each child over time, as their understanding increases. Each of these lessons can look quite different.
Here is an example of one way the concept of contractions might be presented to a child:
Using the movable alphabet materials, the Guide lays out the letters for a group of words, appearing as follows. (Note the red used to isolate the apostrophes from the blue letters.)
she is she’s
can not can’t
you have you’ve
who would who’d
will not won’t
After reading through the words, which the children will recognize from speaking, the Guide defines the task of an apostrophe. The children are asked what else they notice, and they eagerly point out the missing letters.
The Guide asks the children to take a deep breath, pointing out how the ribs expand and contract. They say that to contract means to become compressed, or smaller, and then explain to the children that these types of words are called contractions, because they make the combination of two words that is smaller.
Continued Work
Once the child has a basic understanding of the skill, they are asked to progress through the drawers independently. For example, after having received the contraction lesson, the child continues with Contraction Drawer #1 the same day or soon thereafter.
The child takes the drawer out and lays out all the cards. They see before them a group of words similar to the ones the Guide had laid out using the movable alphabet. The child gets to work matching, and the nature of the material ensures they match correctly, or else the final cards would not make sense.
The child records the words in their notebook, cleans up the cards, and puts everything away. The next time they’re ready for independent word study work, they move on to Contractions Drawer # 2, and so on, until the Guide recognizes the need for a new lesson or skill.
The same process follows for each of the areas of word study mentioned above.
Extensions
Sometimes, a child may progress through the drawers more quickly than expected or have extra enthusiasm for the subject area. To provide more excitement and challenge, the Guide will have a file of black line masters intended to give children more practice with the same skills but using pencil and paper instead of the material.
Perhaps surprisingly, these are essentially worksheets. While it is rare to find a worksheet in a Montessori classroom, their novelty is what is needed in some situations, and can create a nice transition for the lower elementary child who is moving away from the heavy reliance on physical materials.
The Word Study materials add depth to the child’s vocabulary which allows them to have more sophisticated writing skills as well as better comprehension of reading materials.