Statement of intent

When the children are ready we will begin by teaching them the letter sounds and not the names of the letters.  We will begin with a focus on the lower case letters and only introduce upper case through initial letter of names.

Methods

Before the children start to write they will participate in a lot of eye-hand coordination activities like painting, gluing, drawing, small world people and animals, blocks and the practical life equipment in the Montessori room etc.

 

A lot of children will be using both their right hand and their left hand at the same time or just trying them both out to find which side they prefer.

 

Before the children are ready to learn the sound of the letters we will play with sounds, songs and rhymes and participate in rhyming and rhythmic activities etc.  After that we will play games helping them to hear the initial sounds of words.

 

Once a child is ready, we will present the sand paper letters, which are part of the Montessori equipment.  We will mainly work on the letters in a child’s name. We will help the child to match the sounds with the letters visually.  Then the child will feel the sand paper letters and then write them in the sand.  Once they are able to hold and control a  pencil, then they will learn how to write the lower case letters. (see attached sheet)  We will only look at forming upper case letters, when it is the first letter in their name.

 

We will look at every child’s needs and stage of development. Some children are not physically ready to read and write until they have started at school, however, if a child is clearly ready and needs extending, we can teach them to recognise and form all the letters in the alphabet using the sand paper letters.

 

This is the order we will do them in.

 

sat pin

cer mhd

gou lfb

xy zvwk

jq