The Moveable Alphabet is a classic Montessori material and one that is used often in our classroom. You might hear your child call it the “Musical Alphabet”. 🙂 I think that is charming mispronunciation.
The Movable Alphabet is a box consisting of 26 letters. The vowels are blue and the consonants are red. The children at FM learn their first 5 letters (typically a, m, s, b, t, c) with use of Sandpaper Letters and sorting objects. By learn I mean they learn the letter sound, not letter name, and they know which symbol represents the letter sound. Once the child is fairly confident in pointing out the correct letter sound, we introduce the Moveable Alphabet. First let me explain why, before I explain how.
Montessori was one of the early believers that children learn to read by writing. She also believed in strong phonetic foundation for reading. (Which mirrors current research labelled, the Science of Reading). At the age of 3 and 4, holding a pencil and constructing a letter symbol is a challenge. But children are ready to work with letters and symbols before their hands can catch up to this precise, fine motor work. Thus the Moveable Alphabet was developed. The children would not have to know how to write a letter, they would just have to find a wooden cut out letter in a box in order to “write” a word. Brilliant! So how is it used?
With 5 letter sounds learned, the child is able to “write” a word. The teacher will give them a word such as mat and by helping the child hear each individual sound, the child can find the correct symbols and “write” the word. This process is called decoding. Decoding the word is finding correct letters to put together to make a work. It is the first and most important step in beginning to learn to read. Children remain in this decoding phase for a long time. Through repetitive use of MA and other supporting phonics materials, the entirety of the alphabet is learned by the child. (We usually put sounds in 5 letter “chunks” – thereby having sound boxes with 5 unique letters to learn and we slowly incorporate those into the words with MA.).
What is that paper that comes home with words written in red and blue? This list of words that your child might be bringing home is the end result of the long work with Movable Alphabet. Once the child has “written” 6 words with the MA, we write them down (or they write their own if they wish). They take great pride in having a list of words they have “written” to show their parents. Can the child read these words to you yet? Mostly – no. Please don’t ask them to. The process of decoding is not the same as reading, but it is critical foundation work.
Eventually during the process of learning all the letters sounds and building words, children start to pick up on the idea of saying each letter sound out loud and blending them together to actually say a word. This process is called encoding. We model this process each time we do the work. This is a much harder step for the child. This is where the child will sound out the word and read it back to you. And so the excitement of becoming a reader begins! More on that in the next blog!!
Please see the attached video that Everett and his parents have given consent to share! It will show you this process at school. He, and many children, ask us each day to do the Movable (Musical) Alphabet with them!
Everett doing Movable Alphabet with Ms. Tina. Thanks, Everett
Child writing the words.