January Lessons 2012: Word Families

Earlier in the week I introduced our reading companion DVD's. Currently we are watching the 'Talking Words Factory' and working with the at, et and ig word families. This week we have been focusing on et words and continuing our work with vowels.

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Getting Started

In the Montessori method children of different ages often work colaboratively. We do our best to follow this model, and often do, but when we really need to keep our focus we change things up a bit.

Here is the Professors school table this morning, set up with two trays of Moveable Alphabet Letters:

The tray on the right holds the letters they will be using to sound out, and spell their et words with me. The tray on the left is a group of jumbled letters the two other Professors can use to spell and sound out words of their choice, an just have fun with. 

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Et words Lesson: 

In the lesson tray I placed only the letters we would need to build the et words, met, get and let. They were specifically from the movie, and I did it that way for reinforcement. I jumbled the letter piles  to make it a little challenging.

Here is a very quick shot of Professor #2 building his et word 'let'

In the Montessori method it is discouraged to correct the child by telling him that he did the work 'wrong,' but rather to show them how to correct it.  Professor #2 sounded out and spelled out this word correctly on his own, Masha' Allah, but they both made mistakes with the order of other words. I corrected them by asking them to read the word they spelled, and asked them if it sounds like the word we were trying to spell. I suggested they move the letters around, or eliminate letters to get the correct sound and word. It is also encouraged for the teacher to not be too hands on, but if things are really falling apart, I do dive in before tantrums ensue ; )

Here is what the other two Professors were working on while awaiting their turn at the et word tray: 

This is something they could work on colaboritvely and listen in on the et word lesson, Masha' Allah.