Language: Setting up your reading & writing shelves
...Montessori's writing road to reading includes the metal insets
A teacher asked me about the language shelf setup for the Pink to Green series (thank you!!!), so I realized that many of you likely have the same question.
My Montessori classroom virtual tour post is a useful place to start, and the graphics below provide specifics for language shelves. Remember that your independent reading area and formal language shelves should be in two different areas.
The area rug provides a place for children to work with or without individual mats. If your classroom has lots of space, your students will be able to sit in the middle of this space with their material. (I do not like the tile floor. Our original floor was a warm wooden one.)
The shelf below must be long (the shelf graphic is too narrow) for everything to fit nicely.
These two shelves are more common. Notice how material flows from left-hand shelf (top to bottom) to the right-hand shelf (top to bottom): It follows the level of difficulty. Children start at the top left (we do not say this to them, it is simply the layout).
For those of you who are working with all younger children in the first year of work, the graphic below is useful,
The Pink, Blue, and Green material should all be “on display” and visible to the browsing student.
If you have many beginning students, you will want duplicates of all this basic material. You can start with one set to see how it goes.
My gift 3-lined paper is here for download.
And you can download the Pink, Blue, and Green samples here.
Here’s my overview of non-Montessori work that you should avoid. But there is much more…eventually, I decided to create the Official Montessori Primary One Equipment guide here.
One big problem with the non-Montessori work is that it is like putting a tablet with Instagram on your work desk. You get stuck on the simple things, futzing around all day without learning or accomplishing anything … and feel dissatisfied and crabby at the end of the day.
Once you experience the magic of children concentrating on work they have independently selected, you will wonder how you ever survived in the classroom before.
The shelves themselves can even be made with planks of wood and cement blocks. Children can help prepare both!
In our first classroom, the children waxed and buffed the pine boards, and then painted the cement blocks with a mineral paint. During the school year, they took such good care of these shelves that they had helped build. It was really a wonderful Montessori experience for all.