Learning to read and write, December, 1934 - Ursula Wise offers her opinion on this matter whilst recognising that there are many approaches

 December 24, 1930 in The Nursery World

Learning to read and write: some modern methods

I have had a letter form a correspondent who is an advocate of the `Montessori method of teaching and reading and writing, and who appears to feel that I have not done justice to the merits of this method in my recent remarks about it. As the subject is undoubtedly one of general interest, I am quoting extracts from her letter (too long to print as a whole). I am naturally anxious that many readers should feel that in these columns they do get a representative view of such modern methods as have any serious claims to respect. 

But in the end, of course, one judges between rival methods on the evidence as one sees it, and when correspondents ask me to advise them about methods of teaching and reading and writing, I can but offer them the fruit of my own experience with children and my knowledge of the general consensus of opinion among practical teachers and psychologists. 

Here is the letter.

“X” writes: -

            “I noticed in your answers on November 5^ththat you did not seem aware of the value of the sandpaper letters originated by Dr. Montessori. I enclose a short account of the Montessori way of teaching two of the three R’s, as I am sure your correspondents will be interested in it, and will succeed in it, if they will only concentrate on hearing the sounds in words themselves. Adults lose the sensitivity of children. The Montessori way of teaching writing and subsequently reading is very simple, but it does not require to be understood by the adult before she initiates a child into it. Her most delicate work comes at the start. People who embark on it ought to do so because they recognise its superiority and are determined to make a success of it. The Montessori child comes to ‘letters’ accustomed to recognising shapes both through sight and with muscular experience in his play with the geometrical insets and form-cards. His little hand has gained strength and control in using coloured pencils in filling-in the shapes he has himself outlined. He knows something about sound, because in mastering vocal language he has had to listen carefully, and has often been corrected when he has substituted one sound for another in some word he has had to listen. ‘Not “chimley,” “chimney,”’ his mother may, perhaps, have said. The moment having arrived when he wants to learn ‘letters’ his mother takes two of the sandpaper letters, two vowels. She sits down beside him, and she shows him how to touch or trace over the sandpaper of the first one, ‘a’ (pronounced as in ‘at’), and at the same time she makes this sound. The child imitates her in tracing and sanding. Then she does the same for the second letter, ‘e’ (pronounced as in ‘egg’). Again, the child imitates her in the tracing and the sounding. Then the two sandpaper letters lie on the table. ‘Give me the “e.”’ Again the child joyfully offers the right card. Now comes the third stage of this little lesson. The mother takes up one of the cards. “What is this?” she asks, showing one of the letters to the little one. ‘A’ or ‘e’, as the case may be, he answers, and so also with the second one. This whole lesson, given on the plan devised by the Frenchman Seguin, occupies three minutes at most. The child is free to take the sandpaper letters with him and trace and sound at his will. As the lesson comes to an end long before he has begun to tire, at a time when his interest is fresh, there is an impulse to repeat on his own. If the lesson is prolonged, this impulse does not manifest itself. If ‘b’ and ‘d’ are taken next, and are immediately combined with the ‘a’ and ‘e, the transition to whole words comes at once. Some children themselves suggest the consonant sound necessary to convert these beginnings of words into known words, as when a little girl turned ‘be’ into ’bed’, or ‘da’ into ‘dad’. The mother or teacher follows, within the limitations imposed by the child’s incomplete knowledge of the symbols, the child’s lead, always suggesting words which as names of actions and objects are of interest to the child. the effect of hitting upon words which are emotionally interesting to a child is very great. Anyone who has never tried this way can have no idea of the facility of a child of four in analysing words he can say and is interested in into their component sounds, and representing these by movable letters. He will occupy himself thus for long periods with contentment and without strain, because of the exercise involved in fetching and replacing the letters and arranging them in words on his mat.”

This gives a clear account of the initial steps in the Montessori method of teaching reading and writing.

            At various times in these columns I have suggested quite other ways of beginning reading and writing – those that are known as “word-whole” or “look-and-say” methods. In these methods one does not begin with sounds and letters, but with actual names of things and people and actions in which the child is interested. The most natural unit of speech in the young child is the word. There are some psychologists who suggest that the real unit of speech is in fact the sentence, and some very interesting experimental work is now being carried on by one psychologist with a “sentence-whole” method in which the child is taught from the beginning the written forms of short, simple, sentences that are of vital interest to him. Most of us, however, think that the word is a more practicable unit for the young child, although we are awaiting the result of this experiment with great interest. For the young child, of course, a word very often does the duty of the sentence. “Down’ may mean “I want to go down “; “Out” “I want to go out.” Even “Daddy,” when said with an expressive gesture, may mean “Lift me up” or “Come along and play with me.” In any case, all through his early years the child has a great passion for naming all the things around him, and clearly gets a delightful sense of power from knowing the names of things.

Here, then, in starting with words as the unit of reading we are on very firm psychological ground. It is perfectly true, as “X.” suggests, that many little children are spontaneously interested in sounds and parts of words, and when they are so interested there is, of course, no reason in the world why this should not be followed up. And, even when we start with the “whole-word” method, we very often go on to the analysis of the sound-whole into its parts, and the linking of these phonic sounds with movable letters which represent them. But I have always found - and here the great majority of psychologists in England, Germany, and Belgium and America agree – that this interest in separate sounds is less sustained, less vital than the interest in names and word-wholes. A name is a real tool. With it the child can express his emotions, his wishes, and his thoughts. It is the unit of communication. That is why it makes the best jumping-off point for learning to read. 

I have described on several occasions in replies to correspondents the various stages of this method: how we label all the common objects around the child in clear, printed letters, each name on a separate card an play games with him, using these labels, such as saying aloud, “Give me the (pin) ,” here supplying the printed name, or “Where is the cup?” “It is on the table.” Then we go quickly on to simple demands (which are, of course, also used in the Montessori method at a later stage), printed as a whole sentence on different cards. For example, ‘Shut the door,” “Pick up the pin,” “Lie down,” and so on. We can then pass to a series of pictures of different sorts, with names printed below them and boxes of movable letters with which he child can make the names himself. Then, too, we print for the child, on a blackboard or large piece of brown paper, simple sentences dictated by him about things he has seen or done: “I saw a bunny,” “We went to the shops,” “Johnny is coming to tea,” and so on. Very soon little stories cab be composed by the child, which either he or we print on paper and made up into a little book, or on to a large sheet of thick paper hung on the wall. These are used over and over again for reading practice. 

            These methods are being used today in many of the more progressive schools and are found to be most fruitful and stimulating. In some cases, though not all, the children are also encouraged at a later stage to analyse the words they have learnt into separate sounds, and I think it is always useful, in fact, to do this. In every direction the living interests of the child should be appealed to and made use of, and our sense of the value of one sort of method need not bind us to the merits of another. They can always be combined. 

            This word-whole method of teaching reading and writing is also in wide use among the more progressive schools in Belgium, particularly those that have been influenced by the leading psychologist there, Professor Decroly. 

            And in further confirmation of the special value of the word-whole approach to reading, there is the interesting fact that in child guidance clinics where they have to deal with special backwardness and disability in reading amongst older children (often up to fifteen or sixteen years of age), their corrective methods are mainly of the word-whole type. 

            As to my own practical experience I have in fact worked with all these different methods, giving the Montessori method itself a thorough trial with different groups of children, and this experience led me to the conclusion that the word-whole method had a far more general appeal, and links up far more fruitfully with the child’s practical motives for learning to read and write. 

            In schools run on a strictly Montessori lines it is perfectly true that, as many correspondents say, children do acquire a great facility in recognising the different sounds and representing them with written or printed letters. But in these schools a very definite morale is built up by suggestion, which leads the children in this direction rather than in any other. Children in a freer environment, where a greater spontaneity of behaviour and a greater variety of occupations are allowed, so not so light-heartedly take to sound analysis and word building. As Stern, the leading psychologist in Germany, has pointed out (quoting with approbation another psychologist): “It is the paucity of other games in the Montessori schools which makes the children take to this new occupation. In the Frobel kindergarten, with their incomparably greater variety of occupations to exercise the child’s powers of intuition and imagination, his interest and independence, as a general rule, scarcely any instances of liking for reading and writing exercises are to be observed.”