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At GVM, reading is introduced in a way that nurtures a child's natural curiosity and love for language. The Montessori method emphasizes hands-on learning, phonetic awareness, and progression at the child's own pace.

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Key Components

1. Phonetic Awareness:
   • Sandpaper Letters: Children trace textured letters while saying their sounds, building a strong connection between letters and their phonetic sounds.
   • Sound Games: Activities that help children identify the sounds within words, such as starting, middle, and ending sounds.
2. Pre-Reading Activities:
   • Object and Picture Matching: Children match objects or pictures with corresponding words, which helps build vocabulary and word recognition.
   • Classified Cards: Cards grouped by themes (like animals or plants) that children match with corresponding words.
3. Phonetic Reading:
   • Movable Alphabet: Children use letters to form words, which teaches them how sounds come together to create words.
   • Phonetic Readers: Simple books that focus on phonetic words to help children practice decoding.
4. Reading Comprehension:
   • Picture Books: Books with rich illustrations that help children connect text with images and understand the story.
   • Read-Alouds: Teachers read stories aloud, engaging children by asking questions to ensure they understand the story.
   • Sequencing Activities: Children arrange events from a story in the correct order to understand narrative flow.
5. Vocabulary Enrichment:
   • Three-Part Cards: Matching cards with a picture, a word, and a definition or description to enhance vocabulary.

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Benefits

1. Phonetic Skills: Children learn to decode words based on their sounds, which lays a strong foundation for reading.
2. Vocabulary Expansion: A variety of language activities help children learn new words.
3. Comprehension Development: Interactive reading activities improve children's understanding of texts and stories.
4. Critical Thinking: Children learn to interpret and think about the information they read.
5. Love for Reading: The Montessori approach fosters a lifelong interest in and enjoyment of reading.
6. Confidence: Children build confidence as they learn to read at their own pace.

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Reading activities are part of everyday life in GVM classroom. Children might read instructions for tasks, look at books about things they like, or write labels for parts of a plant. This makes reading useful and connected to what they do each day.

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