Parents who may be implementing a Montessori curriculum at home often ask about when the best time is to begin to introduce the Movable Alphabet. Some Montessorians will say that students need to know the sounds of every Sandpaper Letter prior to beginning to use the Movable Alphabet, but that isn't necessarily the best time to begin. Actually, students can begin to use the Movable Alphabet to build three letter phonetic (CVC) words as soon as they:
- Can identify several consonants and at least one vowel by the sound the letter makes
- Can identify the beginning sound in words that begin with those same letters
- Can identify the ending sound in words that end with those same letters
- Can isolate the vowel sound they know in the middle of three letter phonetic (CVC) words
Once a student has mastered those skills with a small group of Sandpaper Letters, there is no reason to hold them back from building words with the Movable Alphabet. The first group of letters I teach my own students is usually a, m, s, t, b, and h. With just these six sounds, students can build several words:
mat
sat
tab
bat
hat
ham
However, if a student only knows those first six sounds, I call them the red letter group, it can be overwhelming to see all the letters of the alphabet displayed in the Movable Alphabet box. This can be remedied by placing pieces of card stock over the letter compartments that the student does not yet know, by removing the letters the student doesn't know yet and adding them in letter by letter as the student learns more, or by making a smaller Movable Alphabet that contains only those letters. Some teachers suggest starting out with smaller Movable Alphabets and the presenting the full Movable Alphabet once the student has learned all of the Sandpaper Letter Sounds. In my own classrooms, I created smaller, color-coded Movable Alphabets to go along with my Sandpaper Letter groupings. For more information on how I group Sandpaper Letters check here.
My red Movable Alphabet will contain a, m, s, t, b, and h. I place a basket with the pictures of the CVC words shown above next to the red Movable Alphabet for student to use to build words. The next is color-coded yellow and contains the red and yellow group sounds. I place a basket of pictures with all of the CVC words that can be made with the red and yellow group sounds. I continue in this manner until the student is able to use the full Movable Alphabet.
I have found that this systematic approach to teaching letter sounds and word building helps students to learn to read much faster than expecting students to know all of their sounds prior to building words.
Check out this FREE set of CVC printables for the red group here.
I also have a bundle of printables including each group of CVC words available here.
