The Montessori Moveable Alphabet is a box of letter cutouts for each of the 26 letters in the English alphabet. Children take the letters out, put them together, and move them around to form words and sentences. There are multiples of each letter to allow several words or sentences to be constructed at a time. The vowels are a different color to set them apart from the consonants. The Moveable Alphebet is one of my Top Ten Language Materials for Lower Elementary!
Once children recognize written letter symbols in association with the sounds they make and can differentiate beginning, ending, and middle sounds, they can begin constructing (building) short Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words with the Montessori Moveable Alphabet.
Children use Montessori Sound Objects or pictures with the same middle vowel and build CVC words with the Movable Alphabet.
For example, children identify the middle /o/ sound with the objects mop, cot, top, and pot. They then build the words by isolating the beginning, middle, and end of each word using letters from the Movable Alphabet.
Using the “mop” sound object, the child listens to the sound at the beginning of the word and retrieves the letter “m.” He does the same for the middle and ending sounds encoding the word “m-o-p” from left to right.
Children who don’t yet have the hand muscle coordination to write letters can “write” words by finding the letter that represents the sound they hear, and place it at the beginning, middle, or end of the word.
Next, children look at the word they constructed (wrote) with the movable letters, segment each sound, then blend them together. Suddenly, they are reading!
The technical term for constructing words is encoding. Children encode words when they listen to sounds and represent the sounds with written symbols. This is writing.
Children decode words when they look at a written word, break it down into sound parts, then blend it smoothly. This is reading.
In a Montessori classroom, we see children writing (encoding words by listening to the individual sounds and choosing a letter to represent that sound) before they begin reading (decoding a word by breaking it down into its sound parts, then blending the sounds together smoothly as a whole word) using the Montessori Movable Alphabet.
Advanced Word Construction
Once children master CVC words, they move on to blends, digraphs, and “silent e” words. Children use sets of objects or pictures focused on a particular phonetic pattern and construct the words with the Montessori Moveable Alphabet. Children who are able write the words on paper, perhaps even making little booklets of words learned.
Invented Spelling
The success of making and reading words with the Movable Alphabet often blossoms into writing sentences with the Movable Alphabet letters. This creates the opportunity for children to use invented spelling for non-phonetic words, or words with phonetic rules they have not yet learned. Invented spelling is an acceptable stage of writing. An emergent writer’s efforts should be encouraged as they practice listening to the sounds they hear in words and represent them with written letter symbols. The emphasis is on listening to sounds and writing letters, and not on standardized spelling at this stage. Standardized spelling becomes important as they repeatedly encounter spelling patterns through constructing words and reading them in books.
Sight Words
When children become excited about writing (constructing) and reading words, we support them by introducing “sight words”. Typically, sight words are non-phonetic and occur frequently in early reading materials. For this reason, we sometimes refer to these words as “high frequency” words. Examples include we, I, a, see, the, etc. Teaching these words to children gives them higher success in reading a writing.
Non-phonetic Word Construction
Children continue constructing words with the Montessori Moveable Alphabet for non-phonetic patterns like long vowel teams (oa, ee, ea, igh), Diphthongs (oy, oi, ou, ow), and other phonograms. Objects and pictures used in conjunction with the Montessori Moveable Alphabet create word sets highlighting specific spelling patterns.
Decodable Reading Books
It is important to further children’s confidence at this stage by providing decodable books for practicing their new reading skills. Concepts of print like reading left to right, putting spaces between words, and moving down and left to the next line need reinforcing. One example of decodable books I use with emergent readers is the Bob Books series.
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