Upper Elementary and Middle School are finishing up a unit of grammar. The Montessori method of grammar instruction uses manipulative symbols for various parts of speech. UE enjoyed reading the Parts of Speech fairy tale, which is a method of memorizing the parts of speech and explaining their function, and played games that helped explain various parts of speech. For example, students tossed a tennis ball to one another, demonstrating a preposition using the tennis ball when they caught it. In the photo, two students are under the ball! Montessori Grammar is also taught using miniature environments, beginning with the Grammar Farm, where students set up a scene and then write sentences about it to analyze.
In the Upper Unit, a model grocery store and cargo ship are the miniature environments for both UE and MS, allowing them to construct more complex sentences to work with. Upper Elementary identifies the parts of speech in a sentence and learns that some parts of speech, such as nouns, have several different roles they can play. In Middle School, grammar study extends to studying subtypes of speech, such as kinds of conjunctions, and diagramming sentences. All of this work helps students understand how the English language is put together, and provides excellent preparation for learning foreign languages.
