The Montessori Language Arts curriculum encompasses a wide range of skills and content that provide students with a rich foundation. Students develop writing skills by using cursive; learning the mechanics of punctuation, capitalization, and sentence placement; as well as learn how to form clear, detailed paragraphs. In Grammar, students use the Montessori grammar materials to visualize parts of speech (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) with colorful symbols, and later use additional materials to analyze sentences and understand the role of words within a sentence (subject, predicate, object, etc.). Vocabulary enrichment includes tools such as understanding common suffixes and prefixes for decoding new words, using dictionaries and reference books, practicing common spelling rules, and exploring the etymology of words.
We use the literature-based Reading Detective program to help students understand and apply challenging critical reading concepts such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, determining cause and effect, using context clues to define vocabulary, and making predictions and generalizations. The school day also offers multiple opportunities for students to read, helping students realize that reading is a key means to discovering the answers to questions that are meaningful to them.
