By Gay C. Ward, PhD

As a teacher educator of both Montessori and Non-Montessori teachers, I often get asked to reflect on my perspectives of teaching reading in the two pedagogies.   I will always be grateful to the Whole Language and then Balanced Literacy movements in the United States because they have resulted in a boom in children’s book publishing in multiple genres from which we have all benefitted. However, the reading ‘wars’ in America sadden me as I feel they are due in large part to a competitive marketplace.   Many products are sold when the pendulum swings from a focus on meaning to a focus on phonics.   This swing has happened three times in my lifetime.  The first time was whole word [Dick and Jane] vs. phonics [Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolph Flesch, 1956]. Then it was Whole Language vs. phonics [1980s-1990s] and more recently Balanced Literacy vs. Science of Reading.   My knowledge and experience tell me that Montessorians should have been spared being casualties of this war because they were already meeting the stated goals of both ‘camps’ in giving children what they needed to use language and literacy effectively.  

Montessori was an incredible visionary in modeling what language and literacy instruction should be.  She put the umbrella of meaning and purpose over all language learning.  In other words, one explores and learns about language when one is engaged and inspired, experiencing meaning and purpose.  The whole comes before the parts (including phonics) and motivates and engages the learner.  Lessons are purposeful which aids in supporting comprehension and vocabulary development. The Montessori curriculum includes hands-on skill lessons which are important to learn the parts so that learners can make sense of their literacy discoveries. This includes comprehensive phonics and word study activities. Continued exposure to rich literature and conversation are also important so learners can continue to make new discoveries, and practice and apply the skills they are learning to new texts and new genres.  As modeled by Montessori, the child is provided with the best environment in which to learn language. Montessorians prepare a world in which students are engaged in meaningful content learning while enhancing their comprehension and honing their decoding and encoding skills in oral, listening, reading and writing activities.  Teachers also recognize, as modeled by Montessori, that they must differentiate instruction, that it is nonsensical to aim to teach to ‘age level’ or ‘grade level’. The most effective and exciting learning experiences occur in an environment where the teacher follows the child; the teacher determines where the child is at and provides an environment with meaningful experiences that will support language and literacy growth.   

The Montessori method supports learning mathematics in a similar way.  Students are introduced to the extraordinary history and work of numbers and hierarchy of numbers and thus become familiar with the existence of very large numbers in early years.   At the same time, they are beginning to develop their number fact skills and explore patterns of numbers.  Even though it will be sometime before they can do advanced operations with numbers, they can still practice basic operations with these large numbers just as they can reinforce their language skills by engaging with rich literature. The hierarchy of numbers is an umbrella of meaning with number facts to 10 nestled within, just as rich literature is an umbrella of meaning with phonics lessons nestled within.