Montessori Primary Class Curriculum: Helping Children Learn English

A parent wrote in from Greece with questions on presenting the Primary Year One binder to her child in a way that would help introduce English to him, so we have included some ideas and suggestions from our own classroom experience below.

1. Write name labels for everything in the classroom: Shelf, bookshelf, books, mat, pitcher, glass, vase, tray, Pink Tower, Brown Stairs, and so forth. Use lower case and upper case letters where appropriate.

2. Make simple language presentations in English. For example, make picture and word matching cards for different animals. Present these the same way as we discuss in the Primary Year One album. Because there are clear photos, you do not need to explain the translation. If your child asks, you can verify that, for example, "dog" means "un chien."

3. Depending on your child's age, level of difficulty of the presentation, and his or her ability in English, you can also make entire presentations for more complicated material in English. For example, children, who have mastered addition for small numerals under 10, enjoy working with these numerals in foreign languages.

Whether your child is a native English speaker working on learning a foreign language or a non-native English speaker learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Second Language (ESL), the approach above will help introduce the target language in a natural in-context way.

In addition to formal work, we highly recommend songs, read-aloud for stories, movies, and select television shows in whatever language your child is learning.