Playful Literacy: how the ‘science’ of reading reinforces the Montessori approach & what we can do to have fun at home.

As scientific discoveries reveal more about the workings of our brain, and then translate to policy and practice, a clear pattern is validation of the extensive research that Dr Maria Montessori carried out in the first half of the last century. The mainstream shift to ‘science of reading’ based instruction in the US of late and the fact that literacy is taught earlier in the UK (children entering the equivalent of kindergarten before their 5th birthday) got us discussing what is developmentally-appropriate to expect of children and what our role is as parents in partnership with guides.

So, at Playhood this week we held a lunchtime workshop with a mixture of in-person online participants to bring together a share-out of the science part with the chance to get hands-on with Montessori materials. Level-setting our experience of literacy instruction let us brainstorm ways to better support at home.


💡 A few headlines from the research:


  • Learning to read is a long game, shaped by our earliest experiences. It’s intimately bound up with writing and numeracy, and becomes critical to all areas of the curriculum. Unlike acquiring language and speaking, reading is not “natural” but requires explicit and responsively-sequenced instruction to rewire our brains for this skill (Gopnik, 2016).

  • Reading is a highly complex neurological and sensory process, with decades of research that is still being updated with new findings. It’s probably the hardest thing a young child will master! The critical period for success is when a child’s speaking becomes confident and their auditory discrimination improves — letters don’t make sounds, people do, and English has a particularly complicated code of combinations of letters and sounds to navigate. (As for writing readiness, the bones in a child’s hand mature dramatically between 3 and 5! Training the hands once they’re freed-up from learning to walk is best supported by a broad range of gross and fine motor skills so there’s no rush on perfect pencil grip…)

  • Reading enjoyment has been found to be more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status (OECD data, 2002). Reading for pleasure is a vital form of play; exploring others’ experiences and other worlds is a valuable creative and imaginative endeavour that boost vocabulary, general knowledge and empathy skills. Being switched-off from the pleasure of reading (e.g. by drills, rote-learning etc) is detrimental to a child’s academic and economic attainment.

  • Children are more likely to continue to be readers in homes where books and reading are valued (Clark and Rumbold, 2006) and young people that use their public library are nearly twice as likely to be reading outside of class every day (Clark and Hawkins, 2011).


So basically: it’s super-important but super-hard. Oh and it’s supposed to be fun, too 🤔

The plethora of workbooks and worksheets, tech devices and apps, and games and educational toys out there devoted to learning the alphabet and promoting reading skills is evidence of parents feeling under pressure to support their child’s literacy. How much of this is driven by awareness of the ‘baseline’ phonics test for all Reception children and SATs in Year 2 over meeting the unique child where they are? How many appreciate the intricacies of the brain’s processes and physical developmental stages that set the stage for fluent and confident reading? How much anxiety might actually be avoided by creating the right conditions for the family to have fun on their reading journeys together, instead?

When I was served an ad in social media recently by a local school “promising” reading accomplishment for all students in the first term of Reception I was dejected (but not surprised?) that this was still alluring to prospective parents. Teaching-to-tests and pushing children risks extinguishing that all important spark of intrinsic motivation. Reading can be bewildering and frustrating if not personalised and full of encouragement.


Comprehension isn't really a "skill" - it's more of a condition you create. A broad base of general knowledge is a greater determinant of reading fluency in secondary school than instruction focused on reading (Grissmer et al, 2023). In fact, a young child’s vocabulary skills are the key indicator of literacy attainment. So enjoy science, art, history, travel with them if you care about their reading!


In our session we discussed the difference between decoding skills like word recognition and the ultimate comprehension of a text, but also how interdependent they are. Beyond this ‘simple’ view of what reading IS, we delved into some diagrams of the areas of the brain involved in converting images and sounds into meaning. We learned that all human brains work in the same way to read, whichever language and alphabet they use, the experience of the overlap between functions of speech and digesting text is universal. At the same time, we discussed how by processing through our unique associations and experiences in the brain’s memory-centre, the experience of reading is also completely individual at the same time!


Sitting around the table like this sharing the expertise of trained child development experts with curious parents breaks down the walls between who holds any single source of truth about our kids. Wanting to be more involved in and informed about a child’s educational experience will prompt you to be fascinated by the diagram known as the reading ‘rope’, which outlines the increasingly strategic and automated skills that have to converge to edge towards reading fluency:


The “advantage” we have with Montessori materials is a set of practical tools to guide children responsibly through each of these strands in an empowering and rewarding way. The ‘science’ part of reading reveals the path to literacy as a highly active, experiential, individual process and that’s exactly the kind of learning a Montessori setting centres on. Some highlights of our discussion:

  • Training ears with the fun of song, music, speech-based games, and instruments like the bells all aids in sharpening the ability to distinguish individual sounds (in due course, vowels and consonants, in a logical order)

  • Attaching sounds to concrete items the children can recognise, explore, play with and take ownership of e.g. collecting items in a special box or basket that share the first sound of their name (everything moves from concrete to abstract as they mature)

  • Block play such as Duplo and the materials like the knobbed cylinders are all appealing to the children but they’re key to training the eye to discriminate shapes that help them with word (and number!) recognition as well as patterns and dimensions.

  • The inset for design shapes invite dexterity and refine lightness of touch with the pencil safely tracing shapes internally and externally, while the creativity the children express in turning an outline into an animal or decorating their little papers all builds towards controlled movements.

  • Multi-sensory experiences provide more impactful learning so the handling of attractive and textured objects makes the process richer (from pouring coloured water delicately to familiarise the muscles with the tripod grip; to the sandpaper letters where we trace shapes with haptic feedback; to the moveable wooden alphabet that enables children to encode and spell-out familiar words before they’re technically reading and writing. There’s so much delight when they discover they can write without writing!)

  • There’s a patchwork of subtle habits and gestures throughout which smooth the path towards confident reading and writing - many parents hadn’t noticed the left-to-right arrangement of tray activities which seeds familiarity with the way our texts are arranged in English, for example. The careful introduction of materials by our attuned guides means the right objects are presented at the right moment for the right child and the process is done with calm (the optimal state for effective learning), simplicity and order, training focus and concentration.


We are not advising or asking anyone to go out an purchase all these specific materials a setting is equipped with! Our shortlist of ideas for actions parents can take home for greater consistency with the seeing in their child’s reading journey includes the following:



  • Fun with associating sounds to shapes via playing with PlayDoh, sticks, sand, anything you have to hand, or when out and about and can spot letters in situ

  • Rhyming offers up loads of ways to be silly and inventive - from singing along while dancing to making nonsense poems or having a rap battle

  • Extending games like i-spy to include more sounds, exploring Boggle, Scrabble, noughts and crosses and board games with patterns and symbols, adapting for age and ability

  • Reading to pets (or toys!) is a calm and low-barrier way for children to build confidence (they correct or feedback less than adults…)

  • Creating comfortable, cosy and appealing dedicated places to read at home with cushions, beanbags etc. Carefully select a few books to display, so as not to overwhelm

  • Making reading and writing more visible and valued around the house — from using paper instead of your Notes app for a shopping list, or role-modelling not interrupting someone who is reading

  • Folding paper and offering children ways to make their own books that then sit alongside ‘real’ books on the shelf, to make sure they build identity as an author and reader

  • Mark-making — any kind of art and drawing activities that get them exploring line, symbols and shape

  • …. and many more ideas we will share in our community over time as the children grow!

FURTHER READING LIST

BOOKS, NEWSLETTERS AND ARTICLES

  • ''Discovery of the Child'; chapters 14-17, Dr Maria Montessori

  • 'Powerful Literacy in the Montessori Classroom: Aligning Reading Research and Practice’ by Susan Zoll, Laura Saylor and Natasha Feinberg, 2023.

  • 'The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding how the Mind Reads' by D. Willingham, 2017.

  • 'Reading the brain: the new science of how we read' by S. Dehaene, 2009.

  • Kindergarteners knowledge vs reading skill study: https/doi.org/10.26300/NSBQ-HB21

  • A nice newsletter about children’s books and building a culture of reading at home https://canweread.substack.com

  • Another lovely newsletter about children's book authors and poets https://moonbowbooks.substack.com

PODCASTS

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS & WEBSITE RESOURCES

https://clpe.org.uk - Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

https://literacytrust.org.uk/primary/ - National Literacy Trust

https://www.instagram.com/readlikearockstarteaching/

https://www.instagram.com/sunnyseedco/

https://www.instagram.com/lemons.and.literacy/

Georgia NortonComment